I pocketed the phone and reached for my gown.
The gym was packed by the time I got there. Families with cameras, underclassmen looking bored, the smell of too many bodies in a space with bad ventilation. I found my spot in the alphabetical line and immediately started scanning the room for Soren. He was always easy to find. He had a way of landing in a crowd that pulled the eye without trying. But the gym was full of navy gowns and I lost him in the chaos.
When the march started, I caught him three rows up. Hands in his pockets, shoulders pulled in, walking with his eyes on the floor in front of him.
He didn't look for me once.
The speeches came and went. People laughed at the right moments and I watched the back of Soren's head and counted my breaths and told myself I was overthinking it.
When they called his name, I watched him stand and walk to the stage. The handshake with the principal, the diploma, and then he turned to face the crowd and for a second his expression was completely open.
My own name got called eventually. I walked across, shook the hand, heard my parents cheering from somewhere in the upper rows. None of it reached me.
The cap toss went up and the room broke into chaos and I was already moving, pushing through parents and cameraflashes and clusters of gowns, scanning for Soren's dark hair. I caught a glimpse of him near the side exit, already heading for the door, and tried to call out. The noise swallowed my voice whole. By the time I fought my way through to the exit, the parking lot sat quiet and bright in front of me with no sign of him anywhere.
My mom found me before I could figure out what to do with that.
She came through the crowd with that lit-up pride on her face that always made me feel guilty, and she pulled me into a hug and I let her, going through the motions of being someone's son who had just graduated. My dad clapped my shoulder. My grandmother straightened my collar. The camera came out. I stood between my parents and produced a smile that felt like it cost something I didn't have to spare.
“You okay, Ro?” My dad said it low, meant just for me.
“Fine.” I adjusted the collar my grandmother had already fixed. “Just want to get to the rink and clear my gear before the new skate session takes over the locker room.”
It was even almost true. My dad looked at me for a second like he was deciding whether to push on it, and then let it go. My mom started the speech about dinner being at six and everyone coming over and I nodded through it and kissed her cheek and told her I'd be back before then.
I drove to the rink.
The parking lot was mostly empty at that hour, just a couple of staff cars and a Zamboni trailer parked around the back. I pushed through the side entrance and stood at the top of the ramp that led down to the ice level, letting my eyes adjust to the dim. The rink smelled like it always did — cold air, rubber matting, the ghost of sharpened steel. The ice was freshly surfaced, glossy and undisturbed, reflecting the overhead lights in long pale strips.
The stands were empty. The rink was empty.
I checked my watch. Four ten. I was late by ten minutes, which meant he should have been here first.
I went to the locker room.
My gear was where I'd left it, piled in my stall with the taped sticks leaning against the wall beside it. I started pulling things down and putting them in my bag without really thinking about it, listening for the door. After a few minutes I crossed to Soren's stall.
The hook was bare. The shelf above it was clear. His gear bag was gone, his skates were gone, the roll of stick tape he'd left wedged in the corner was gone. Someone had run a cloth along the top shelf, too, wiping it down. Even the small photograph he'd taped inside the door — the two of us at regionals sophomore year, arms around each other, both of us grinning like idiots — was gone.
I stood there for a long moment looking at the clean empty space.
Then I pulled out my phone and called him.
It rang once. Then the recorded voice came through flat and automated. “The number you have dialed is not in service. Please check the number and try your call again.”
I lowered the phone and looked at it. Called again. Got the same recording. The same automated flat voice saying the same words. Not voicemail picking up after a few rings. Not the phone ringing out to nothing. The number itself was gone, the account closed, the line cut.
That required a decision. That required planning.
I finished packing my gear. I didn't let myself sit down. I just pulled everything off the hooks and into the bag and walked out of the locker room and drove to his house.
I already knew before I turned onto his street. The driveway was empty in the way that driveways are empty when everyoneis gone, not just out. Both cars missing. The windows bare, curtainless, the glass catching afternoon light and giving nothing back.
I parked and got out. Knocked on the front door and waited, then knocked again, and the sound came back hollow the way it does in empty rooms. I went around to the side of the house. His bedroom window faced the back yard, and we'd gone in and out through that window more times than I could count. The blinds were up now. The room was stripped bare. No bed, no desk, no stack of games on the floor beside the dresser. Just carpet and walls, and on the wall above where his dresser had been, a faint rectangular outline where the paint underneath was slightly less faded. His Leafs poster. Twelve inches of unfaded paint where the poster had blocked the light for four years.
He'd taken the poster with him.
I put my palm flat against the glass. The cold went straight through.
