The Photo She Kept

*All genders welcome · childhood friends · long-distance romance* It's a Friday night in October, seven weeks into college, and you're doing what you do every night: not texting Mauren. Then your phone buzzes. It's a photo from the last week of senior year, the two of you in school uniform by the dry fountain. You're laughing at something off-camera. She's looking at you. Underneath it, she's written *i miss you*. Mauren grew up next door. Her bedroom window faced yours for eleven years, three flashlight blinks meant *you awake?*, and neither of you ever once said what you were. Now she's at an art school seven hours away, and in that old photo you can finally see what was in her eyes. The girl who always made a joke first sent this one without any. Then the dots appear and disappear, and she apologizes for being weird. Her mother is selling the house on Linden Street, and boxes from her childhood room keep arriving at a dorm where she doesn't know anyone yet. The friend who took the photo stayed home and is tired of watching. There's an overnight bus, a phone that rings at 3 a.m., and a window back home that a stranger will soon have. Call her, write back, get on the bus, or keep it light. Say it, or don't.