Casey glanced at the clock on her living room wall. It was late; far later than she normally stayed up at anniversary time. Normally, she would have turned off her laptop thirty minutes ago and have taken her sorry ass off to bed. She would have been through the annual rituals and tears, and be "looking forward" to the morning and a new day – and the start of a new year of life without Derek.

In the early years following his death, the days after his anniversary were bad too because she fussed at the memories of her subsequent actions: phoning Mom and George to tell them Derek was on his way to the hospital by air ambulance and in a serious condition, calling Sam and asking him to meet her there because he was already in Toronto where the helicopter with Casey and Derek would land; and then the following days, taking on the task of phoning around all their friends with the horrible news.

Now the post-anniversary "new year" for Casey always held the (vain) hope that something would change. He wouldn't come back, but she hoped that at some point the "wound-healing time" would kick in.

Already this year was different. This year the pattern had been broken and she had something new to concentrate on. She tapped impatient fingers against the desk surface whilst she waited for the little speech bubble icon on Facebook to change colour.

It didn't. Instead the Chat box appeared with a pop.

"So what do you want to know?" Mikey typed.

"I want to know every story he ever told you about me." Casey replied.

"That might take a while." Casey could almost hear the smirk.

"Seriously?"

"Seriously."

"And you remember all of them?"

"Most of them. They are good ice-breakers. You know "Did you hear the one about the girl who fell down the stairs and bit a guy's butt?""
If Casey had spoken the next words out-loud they would have been through gritted teeth. "From Klutzilla until the brownie party?"

"Actually Klutzilla wasn't the first story."

"Oh?"

"Nah. The first story was the one about how you met."

Anger gave way to despair and Casey groaned inwardly. Great! Derek had told his friends about the retainer-ladened hormonal teen that had arrived in London with a chip the size of an iceberg on her shoulder. Casey wasn't hugely proud of herself aged fifteen. In the intervening years she had apologised repeatedly to her mother and George for the way she had treated them. She had looked in at herself a lot since Derek's death and realised that she had faults.

Of course, most of them were his fault…

"You still there?" The text appeared on the screen, and Casey realised her musings had been of some duration.

"Sorry. Just thinking about meeting Derek for the first time." She typed.

"Except you didn't. The first time. I mean it wasn't Derek who was waiting for you, was it?"

Casey smiled at the memory, despite herself, as she realised Mikey really did know most of the stories. She hadn't met Derek at the school entrance that first day because Derek had persuaded Ralph to stand in for him. "Except I didn't." She confirmed.

"You know, you and Ralph would have made a lovely couple."

"Ralph thought I was going to be his step-sister…how does that make us a couple?"

"He originally thought you liked him."

"Like liked?"

"Like liked."

"Ew!"

For a second Casey was appalled, and then she realised that was totally how Ralph's mind worked. It ran on few topics: music, "fashion" and, thanks to Derek's influence, the female of the species.

"Yeah. That sounds like Ralph." She frowned and returned to the subject at hand. "What did Derek say about me when we first met?"

She had always been curious what he had thought when they first met. She had had her own opinion of him…by then she already thought he was rude and arrogant and that was just when he was merely "Ralph".

As the real Derek he was rather too inclined to look her in the eye when she tried to stare him down. Teenage Casey hadn't liked that. She had liked it when people lowered their eyes when challenged by her. It made her feel in control.

Derek didn't let her feel in control. Their fights had always involved a lot of eye contact. Sometimes it was like he could see into her soul. Of course it worked both ways. Derek applied the same policy to his own confrontations, maintaining eye contact with his adversary who inevitably dropped their gaze. And Casey didn't.

The whole Derek-Casey thing was like one of those games you play in grade three where you sit and stare at each other until one of you blinks.

"You mean did he mention the bangs and retainer?" Mikey teased, bringing her back from (fond) memories.

Casey groaned. This did not bode well. Was there nothing Derek hadn't told this guy?

"Oh god, he told you about that too?"

"Believe me, Spacey, there is very little that Derek Venturi didn't share with me."

"I'll…I'll…!" She fumed.

"You'll what? Kill him?" her faceless companion typed.

"Tasteful, Michael. Tasteful." Casey snarked back.

Mikey's text-tone was amused. "Maybe there's an afterlife. When you die you could hide his halo or something."

"Believe me. Derek Venturi did not go UP when he shuffled off this mortal coil. The only consolation I have if there is an afterlife is that we'll both have boarded ghost trains to different destinations." Casey muttered to herself as her fingers pecked out the same words on the keyboard.

"Okay." Mikey relented. "You could steal his pitchfork or something."

"Don't tempt me."

"You do realised that George gave Derek a talking to before he met you don't you?" Mikey commented a moment later.

"And said what?"

"Well what do you think?" Mikey would let her work this one out on her own.

"Erm…'be nice to her'?"

"Ha ha. Derek was about to meet a girl of his own age for the first time…Does it sound like George to say "be nice to her"?"

"No. Derek would have taken that as an invitation to…"

"Exactly. It was actually the opposite."

"The opposite?"

"Yeah. George told him not to hit on you." Mikey typed.

"Derek hit on me! He wouldn't have…would he?" Casey protested.

Mikey's reply was a second late. "Yeah. He totally would have, this is fifteen year old Derek we're talking about."

"So I guess the retainer was a good thing…"
"That and the fact that George told him he was planning on adopting you after the wedding, which would have made you legally his sister. Even Derek drew the line at boning his sister."

"Boning?"

"His words."

"But George…"

There was a pop before Casey finished typing and Mikey had added to his previous comment. "I know George never did adopt you."

Casey sat forward. "I was going to say George lied to Derek." She typed.

"How so?"
"He could never have adopted me."

"Because…?"

"You can only adopt someone whose parents are dead or have relinquished parental responsibility. Both my parents were- are- still involved in my life."

"But your mom was – is- married to George."

"Makes no difference. Unless my dad died or went to court to say he didn't want to be my legal guardian anymore George could never have adopted me. Adoption legally wipes out your legal entitlement to your birth parent and prohibits you from inheriting from them by default. Dad would never have agreed to that."

"Sonofa…I never knew that!"

"It wouldn't have made a difference to Derek though." Casey reassured Mikey. "I still had big bangs and a retainer."

"Ah but Ralph thought you were hot."

"Ralph also thought pleather was cool."

"Good point. Hey did you just talk yourself down?"

"Yes. Unlike certain late step-brothers I don't have an ego that needs feeding."

"Hmmm….debatable."

"What's that supposed to mean…?"

"Ahem! Nothing. So what else do you want to know about?"
"I don't know…it's getting late."
"Not here it isn't."

"Where are you?"
"Currently? Vancouver. I move around a lot though."

"Oh. I knew someone who studied there once."
"Sally."

"You know about Sally?"

"Yeah. You weren't the only girl in Derek's life you know."

Casey snorted, though her "audience" couldn't hear it. "I never claimed to be. And Sally was in a different category of Derek "girl" - the love of his life. Or at least the closest he got to it."

"That's also debatable. Is she still here? In Vancouver, I mean."

"No. She married a Scot a few years back. She teaches French to seven year old Scottish children now."

"Really?"

"Really."

"Wow. Good on her. How do you know?"
"She emails Mom and George every now and then. Sends pictures of her two children because Mom likes to ask after them."

"Does she miss him?"
"Yes…as much as one does when an ex-boyfriend dies suddenly and before their time."

There was a long pause.

"That's nice…of her to remember him. Do you miss him?"

"Derek?"

"Yes, Derek."

Casey sighed. She might well have admitted that she missed Derek to his old Facebook account earlier but no one would ever read that. She didn't want to discuss this with the faceless stranger. She decided to throw it back to him.

"Stop changing the subject, I want to know what else he said about me."

"Tell me if you miss him and I'll tell you what he said." Mikey pushed.
"Tell me what he said and I'll tell you if I miss him."

Mikey was getting frustrated. "Casey."

"Nope."

"Come on."

"You aren't going to win Michael, I learnt from the best."

"And would that best be Derek Venturi?"

Casey wasn't about to admit to anything. "What about the bedroom fiasco?" Casey changed tact. "That started the day we moved in. What did he say about that?"

"You mean when you tried to steal his room?"

"I didn't want his room I wanted some space of my own."

"The way I heard it, you had space…you just wanted more than your fair share."
Casey gasped. "I had a six inch strip between my bed and Lizzie's and a desk in the hallway."

"More than adequate."

"In your eyes?"

"In Derek's eyes."
"Huh. Well if you want to talk about taking more than his fair share…Derek used to eat us out of house and home."
"He was a growing guy."

"He was or his ego?" Casey asked.

She waited for a response, but none was forth-coming. After five minutes, the little box on the screen announced that Mikey Essen was "Off-line". She frowned, wondering where he had gone. Casey flicked back through the messages wondering if she had offended him. But there was nothing.

It was strange how empty she suddenly felt, as though he had partially plugged a missing hole in her for a short while. She waited, impatient for him to return but after a further twenty minutes, gave up and went to bed.

A very long distance away, Mikey ended the call he had just received on his cell phone, and tapped the device against his bottom lip thoughtfully. He glanced at the laptop in front of him and shut it down without closing his web brower first.

Casey would think it was rude of him, but he couldn't help that. His mind was on other things and he needed to remain focussed; something he wouldn't do if he was thinking about her.

He stepped back from the cooling computer, closed its lid and unplugged the power cord, wrapping it up and sliding it into a pouch alongside the machine itself. Then he ran his hands through his hair as a nervous habit, picked up the Glock pistol from the table beside him and slipped it into the holster under his arm.

Quickly, he moved through the apartment retrieving the few items that could not be left: The laptop, slim, high-end and not yet officially released to the general public went into the side pocket of the tiny suitcase. His clothes, whilst also expensive were non-descript and completely untraceable but he needed them to maintain his business man fiction so they too were packed. And of course, the solitary photograph wallet.

As he started to leave the apartment with his essentials, he grabbed the leather jacket from the hook by the door. It wasn't cold out, but he was usually wearing some kind of jacket. It was necessary to cover the hardware near his armpit. He glanced one last time into the apartment, checking he had missed nothing and left only his fingerprints and the spicy masculine scent in the air. (He wasn't worried about his fingerprints they weren't on any database anyway.)

Mikey descended to the ground floor with his suitcase at a brisk pace and using the stairs because he was young and fit, and also because elevators were little more than cages and he liked to have more than one escape route.

He took the door marked Parking rather than the one marked Lobby and within seconds was letting himself into a new, high-end but otherwise non-descript car.

Mikey didn't floor it out of the secure underground parking lot. Instead he drove calmly but skilfully out into the night.

A short time later, he pulled up at the rental returns section of the airport. His cardboard rental wallet and paperwork in the name of Paul Murphy were ready in his hand even as he climbed out. He unloaded his suitcase and fidgeted slightly as the Rental operative circled the vehicle looking for scratch marks and dents.

"Can we make this quick?" Mikey said in a heavy LA drawl. "I'm going to be late for my flight."

"Sorry Mr Murphy. I just need your signature here."

Mikey signed the paperwork with a frustrated sigh, grabbed his suitcase and ran for the terminal building.

Inside, there was a large party of skiers taking up much of the check-in desk area but that didn't seem to phase him. Mikey slipped into their midst, turned a corner and entered the washrooms. Glancing at the communal space and deciding he was alone, he chose an end cubicle because it was designed with wheel chair users in mind and slipped inside, bolting the door.

The man who emerged from the cubicle three minutes later looked nothing like Mikey. The suitcase was gone, replaced by a large holdall, the leather jacket was a brightly coloured Leaf's jersey, and he wore a mis-matched baseball cap on his head. A set of thick-rimmed, thick-lensed glasses were resting on his nose.

The washroom now had other occupants and Mikey smiled warmly at them, and all previous sign of hurry had disappeared. He held the external door open for an elderly man, and nodded and said "good evening" to the cleaner in a Toronto accent.

Mikey left the washrooms and re-entered the concourse again, but instead of queuing up for a flight, he made his way to the exit, turned right towards the Long Stay car parking and made his way towards the battered dark pickup he knew was waiting for him, its key tucked under the fender.

It was ten thirty pm and an hour since he had logged off.

And he had many hours of driving ahead of him.