A/N: Er… here it is, the third installment of the saga. Yeah, I know, preeeetty engaging stuff. Do you have a problem with my self-deprecation? Eh, sucks for you. Well… I love all of you guys reading this! Thank you so much. I'm really not confident in this at all, but… I figured I had to start writing it sometime. Had to… keep the story going or something… I don't know. I'm weird. Let me know if this is hard to follow, too. I'm not sure. Maybe it's supposed to be? A final word of … something: Please, please, please, please, please What? Didn't you know repetition is the key to everything? review! Please?

"No, no, Vee, you know I love to hear from you, but-" Keely was distracted. She glanced around her apartment, absent-mindedly twirling her long golden hair around her fingers. "You know my thesis is due next week."

"Yes, but I also know I haven't talked to one of my best friends in over three months. Come on, Keely. What's the problem?" Keely looked up at the ceiling in annoyance, and mumbled something about school stress.

"Keely, that is a load of complete crap and you know it. School has never been a problem for you..." It was true. After he left, Keely had dealt with it the only way she knew how. She threw herself, all her energy into the one facet of her life she knew to be unchangeable. School. It was always there; it was always boring. But, at least it was something. Once Phil left, Keely virtually lived at H.G. Wells. Owen kept jokingly asking if she'd filled out a change-of-address form yet. Keely's only solace was book learning, and eventually it paid off. A full scholarship to her top-choice school, Amherst. Four years later, she'd graduated magna cum laude, then headed off to the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern. After seventeen years of education, Keely was almost finished with school forever.

"Fine. It's not school."

"So? It's him, isn't it?"

"Via, Phil Diffy-" her voice cracked as she spoke his name for the first time in years, "is not the source of all my problems." Phil - he wasn't the reason for this uncertainty, this wild spinning feeling she felt in her gut, every time she thought about life after graduation. This uncertainty, sudden second-guessing of her life-long dream. Would Phil really make it any better?

"Come on, Keely, I'm the practicing psychologist here. He randomly left in the middle of your formative teenage years, just picked up and left without so much as a postcard coming your way. That's the textbook definition of trauma. Now, according to Freud..." Keely let her mind wander as Via drifted into her psychobabble.

Would he have made a difference? She could still picture his arms around her, comforting her. The lopsided grin he would flash at her, as he reassured her. Maybe she would believe everything really would be all right if she could hear it from him. Yet, she had moved on.

She was a different person. She knew he had to be different, too. Besides, she had an entirely new life now. She was no longer the carefree, happy-go-lucky girl of fifteen she had been when he'd fallen in love with her. When she'd fallen for him.

"Vee, think about this realistically. It's not healthy to blame all my issues on some boy."

"And you're the picture of mental health," Via muttered.

"What did you say? Anyway, you need to think realistically about this. We were sixteen. Even if he had stayed, we'd have lasted a year at the most. Honestly, Via, it was high school."

"Yes, but the way you guys looked at each other. Keel, it's undeniable."

"Don't call me Keel," she demanded, more harshly then she meant. She could feel the hurt look on Via's face. "No, no, I'm sorry. It's just."

"Look, don't hate me, but... you guys were brilliant together." Keely sighed.

"Via, I still need to go."

((My indicator of a scene change is NOOOOT working, so, imagine one of those weird little symbols here. Sorry if that breaks up the story.))

There were no thoughts running through his mind as his feet led him down the familiar path. Rain trickled down the inside of his waterproof collar. Phil didn't know why he came here. It seemed like some sick inner torture. Whenever he felt at his worst, a lost man in a desperate world, he always found himself here, back to this site to remind himself just how alone he really was.

He stepped across the soggy grass, not stopping until he kneeled in the wet blades. Unshed tears in his eyes, but acceptance in his heart, he read the engraved stone he knew by heart. Slowly, he spoke to himself.

"Keely Ann Teslow. March 23, 1990 to September 6th, 2014." He watched as it continued to rain, the fresh water collecting in the crevices of the engraving. As Phil looked at the surface of the pool, he saw his life reflected back at him. Emptiness.