It was never locked to me. Not ever.
I knocked. Over and over until my knuckles hurt. Called, texted—nothing. Just silence.
And it didn't stop there. She kept avoiding me the rest of senior year. No more driving to school together. No more inside jokes. She stopped showing up at all after finals.
I thought—okay, graduation. I'll see her there. She has to be there with her parents. We'll fix this. We'll talk. We'll fix whatever needs fixing.
But she wasn't there either.
I came home that night with my chest so tight I could barely breathe. Something heavy pressed down on me, like I was choking on air that wouldn't go down.
And I told myself, fine, enough. I'll go to her. I'll make her talk to me even if I have to break her balcony door open.
So, I stepped onto my balcony.
And that's when I saw it.
The bridge. Our bridge. Gone.
The ropes cut clean, the planks ripped away. Like she'd taken a knife to eighteen years of friendship and sawed straight through the middle.
I just stood there, staring at the empty space between our balconies, like maybe if I blinked hard enough it would magically snap back into place. But it didn't. It was gone.
And it felt like more than wood and rope. That bridge was us. Every midnight sneak-out, every secret, every laugh we weren't supposed to share past curfew—it all lived on those planks. That stupid bridge was our lifeline. And she cut it.
What the hell was I supposed to do with that?
It was like waking up one morning and finding out gravity quit. Like the sun decided it was done rising. Nothing made sense. Just this hole in my chest I couldn't name. Anger. Panic. Sadness. All of it twisting together until I felt hollow and heavy at the same time.
Confused doesn't even cover it. It was like getting sucker punched by someone you'd never thought would swing at you.
And I couldn't stop thinking: why?
Why did she cut it? Why did she cut me off?
And it wasn't just me she cut off.
It was Ridgewater U, too. Our dream university.
She didn't show up on campus that fall like we'd planned since we were kids. She went to NYU instead.
And I never heard from her again.
I grip the balcony rail, knuckles white. Movement flickers in the room next door. My head jerks up, pulse hammering.
For a split second—just one—I swear it's her.
I squint, leaning closer, heart racing stupid fast.
But then the figure shifts. My shoulders drop. Another punch to the gut.
Nother.
She's taller. Thinner. Skinny in that brittle, birdlike way. Doesn't hold a candle to Caroline's shape.
My Caroline has curves. Real. Gorgeous. Soft in all the right places.
The figure moves again, turning just enough for the light to catch her gray hair, twisted up in a messy bun.
