The Ol' Pickaxe looked like a ghost. May Borowski knew ghosts - she could vouch.

The interior still lingered with a perfume of potting soil and pool-toy smell, its empty glass facade pleasantly haunted by once-present bags of road salt and the plasticine grips of a million types of hammers sold.

"It really is a shame to see the old girl go." Borowski's sentence-long eulogy didn't reach the store's echoing interior from her slumped position against the door of Beatrice Santello's car.

"Yeah." The interjection had come from the driver seat. "Maybe for you - I've got different memories of the place."
Bea punctuated her statement with the orange glow and moment of silence that accompanied her lighting of cigarettes.
"Thanks again for helping me pack her up."

"Yeah - Yeah, no problem. My parents are getting kinda antsy." With the shutting of her car door, Mae gave the Ol' Pickaxe its last rites.
"I think they want me to leave."

The engine coughed to life - Never an athlete, it now struggled with the added weight of the Pickaxe's closing inventory upon its back.
"I would be antsy too. How long has it been since you came back to Possum Springs?"
"Don't remind me." Mae didn't need a reminder. The years spent home accompanied her to every family dinner and sat next to College's ghost.
"Three years?" The inquiry came out as a judgmental phantom of tobacco smoke.
"Three years," came the reply.
"I never thought I'd leave this town before you."

May Borowski watched the train tracks grow and Possum Springs shrink.
"Like you're leaving Bea - You're moving to Bright Harbor - It is like, a thirty minute drive."
"A two-hour walk," corrected Beatrice.
The reality of Bea's car leaving to Bright Harbor with Bea had never established contact with Planet Borowski.
"Aw, ass - You're right!"

A lengthy silence gathered-up upon the gravel and cigarette butts on the car floor.
"So are we done?"
The shopkeep-turned-college-student snorted - Heh.
"Heh? What do you mean, Heh? I saw the Pickaxe and there isn't a damn thing in there but plaster and spiders."
"We've still got to hit the Storage Unit," said Santello.
Her accompanying drop-out wilted under the implication - a whole storeroom of boxed merchandise loomed over the remainder of her Saturday afternoon and cast an insurmountable shadow that left Mae silent and preemptively sore.
"Oh relax - Germ said he'll help."
The prospect failed to revive Mae.
"...I'll cover pizza and soda."
"Fiascola" Mae said. "None of that generic-ass Falcon's Best stuff."
"Yeah, yeah - Fiascola. What kind of pizza?"
"I was thinking Clik Clak's."
"You'll eat Clik Clak's but you won't drink Falcon's Best?"
"I am a woman of distinguished taste, Miss Santello."
"Don't you work there?"

Silence and engine purr set in again.

"You'll miss it when it's gone. Clik Clak's."

Silence.

"You'll miss me when I'm gone. Me. Mae Borowski."

Beatrice smiled weakly.

"I might, Mae. We won't know until I leave."

The Box of Clik Clak Diner's Pizza sat squarely in the center of Beatrice Santello's storage unit, its contents like a greasy clock-face spelling the time out with its cold, untouched upper slices - 8:00 PM.
"It's never good," opined Bea. The effort of moving every box of shingles, palette of canned paint, and box of varnish unsold glued her dress to her shoulders, leaving her a stringy, Ankh-clad scarecrow.
"It's always good."
"Pizza is pizza," concluded Germ matter-of-factly, or perhaps sagely. One could never tell with Germ.
"So what are you going to do with it all?"
"The pizza?"
"The merch."
Bea sprawled onto the cement flooring. "I don't know. Probably try and refund what's not opened. I haven't really thought that far ahead."
She lit another cigarette, and all the nostalgia of a thousand summers in Possum Springs went up with it for a moment.

"You'll visit right?"
"I'll try."
"You won't replace me?"
"I won't."
"Proximity's all I've got - you've gotta let me keep it."
"I'll visit."

Mae stretched her aching limbs. They didn't touch the walls. In fact - they were kind of far from the walls. In fact, she couldn't reach the ceiling.

"Hey - before you right off into the sunset, never to be heard from again..."
"I'm listening?"
Mae had that bad idea glimmer in her eyes. That one most people lose when they become adults.
But then again, Mae Borowski was never a very good adult.
"How much does this thing run you?"
"Like one-hundred and twenty dollars" came the answer. "Why?"

Mae Borowski surveyed the interior of her storage unit
Her combination couch-and-bed was smooshed juxtaposed to her combination dresser and part-time computer desk.
Grand Dad's apple crate full of books fit nicely in the corner, brimming with existential horror and unsolved murders next to the Pickaxe's old break-room mini-fridge.

"This is so illegal," Bea lamented.
One of Jeremy's old bikes neatly partitioned "Sleeping and Games" from "Food and Books".
"It's a little small," he stated.
"I mean, it's the same size as my attic."
Bea's hand was firmly glued over her eyes in dismay, as if concealing the bad-idea-made-reality would somehow unmake it.
"I can't believe I am even humoring this. Mae - how are you going to eat?"

Sprawled across the couch with a confidence that one might typically reserve for having bested their parents, Mae kicked a propane camp-stove from beneath the shade of her futon.
"Read 'em and weep."
"No Mae, I mean, where are you going to get food?"
"I've got like, two-hundred and fifty left over after rent. I'll just cycle."
"Don't call it 'Rent' " Santello doubled over under the intensity of her already-building migrane.
"It's totally rent."

The keys schlumped into Mae's hands with a dull shink!
Like someone taking off and discarding a shackle.
Freedom!
Freedom from guilt, and obligation, and parental blame-...

"'Rent's due on the first, I guess."

And parental care, and ease of access, and central heating-...

"You got it, Landlady."

Germ helped himself to the last two slices of pizza, folding them over each-other into a double decker sandwich of cold, damp Clik Clak disappointment.
"You're gonna have to find a place to shower," he said, swallowing. "And do laundry."

They weren't things Mae typically did frequently, or on her own. They had slipped between the cracks of impulse and excitement...

"Please try and keep a low profile," Bae fanned herself uncomfortably while lighting her third cigarette.
"Stealth is in my genes."
"I know you, Mae Borowski- and that is a lie."
"Aw, you care about me!"

Santello pulled the sectional door down from overhead as she left.
Germ climbed into the backseat of the car next to three sheets of drywall and a box of shingles.

"Wait-!" Mae's flailing limbs could be visualized through the shutters.
"Yeah?"
"...MaeBae all the way, right? Stuck together?"
"Don't suck together."

Beatrice Santello drive to college that night with an illustrious entourage of three palettes of rock salt, nine gallons of paint, one-hundred and twenty framing hammers, and a singular Jeremy Warton.

And she didn't visit again for three months.