Emily awakened to Rin meowing and pawing at her face, which was partially obscured by her forearms on the computer desk. She blinked a few times and rubbed a pool of dried drool off her cheek. "Ugh, what time is it?"

Her computer monitor was still on, but had gone to sleep due to inactivity. She jerked her mouse, bringing the screen back to life. To her surprise, Jessica's webcam was still running. The other girl was curled up on her bed in front of her plugged-in laptop, fast asleep.

It all came back to her then. They had stayed up far too late chatting, and eventually Jessica had nodded off. Emily remembered watching her sleep for a little while (that wasn't weird, was it?). After some time she must have dozed off herself.

Her glassy eyes drifted down to the clock in the taskbar. "AGHHHH!"

Rin's ears swiveled backward at the sudden noise. Jessica startled awake, glancing about in a panic before she realized the source of the yelling.

"Oh, morning Em! I must've fallen asleep. Sorry about that…"

Emily continued to stare at the clock, eyes wide, shaking her head slightly. "It's 8:44," she murmured. "I start work at nine. I'll never make it. I can't make it. It takes me twenty minutes to get there on a good traffic day. I'm not even dressed yet."

She'd never been late. Not ever. At this rate she'd be at least an hour late – she still had to shower, get dressed, grab at least something for breakfast so she wasn't starving and unproductive all day…

"Call out sick." Jessica shrugged. "You get sick days, right? Maybe this is a sign you should take one."

"Call out? When I'm not sick?" Emily did have a ton of unused sick time. She rarely fell ill, and she preferred to be at work rather than her house all day anyway. Calling out sick would be better than unexplained lateness, at least in Emily's mind.

"If you call out, you can come over." Jess made a kissy face at her. "It can be like when we used to skip school together."

"Your neighborhood is terrifying. I wouldn't go there by myself."

"Oh, Camila could meet you at the bus stop! She's around today."

Skipping work. It seemed so wrong. Wouldn't her inferiors need her? She thought of the way they'd responded to her presentation the other day. They hardly seemed as though they needed her then.

She was already going to be embarrassingly late. And if she called out, she could spend the day with Jess…

"All right, fuck it," she said. "I'll call out."

Jessica cheered. "So you'll come over, then?"

"I guess so. Give me an hour."

"Aww yeah. Girls' night continuing into girls' day. I love it." Jess winked at Emily. "So I'll see ya then."

"Bye, Jess." Emily gave her a small finger-wave. Jessica ended the call with a smile, one that almost mimicked her old, carefree look of their younger days.


Terrified of looking the part of the "oblivious outsider" Matt had warned about, Em had stopped in a Wal-Mart (the horror) not too far from the bus station and picked up a pair of cheap black yoga pants and a nondescript grey pullover hoodie that was at least a size too large for her. Totally unflattering, but it served its purpose – she'd blend right in with the local clientele.

As she was heading for the checkouts she'd spotted something else of interest – a section of cheap, no-name flat-brim caps with various California sports team logos emblazoned upon them. She picked up a black 49ers cap with a red brim. Glancing about to ensure no one was watching, she popped it on her head. It was much too big, at least until she adjusted the snaps in the back. She glanced in the small mirror on the display rack. It was kind of cute, in a way.

"Looks good on you," someone said. Emily startled and whipped around. She discovered an older woman – an employee, she quickly realized – smiling at her.

"Oh, um, thanks," she said as she added the hat to her other selections.

All told she spent thirty dollars. A single stitch in most of her usual clothes probably cost more than thirty dollars, she thought as she handed the cashier the two twenties she'd brought specifically for the purchase.

After the harrowing shopping trip, she changed in the back of her car. The Wal-Mart clothes were surprisingly comfortable. They obviously did nothing for her aesthetically, but Em had grown so accustomed to clothing being tight and showy that slipping into slack-off clothes like these was oddly refreshing.

After the deafening silence of the solo bus ride Emily was dying to talk to someone. Apparently Camila was not going to be that person. She greeted Emily with nothing but a wordless nod. Then they were on their way. Camila didn't on her clothing choices, probably because they were nothing out of the ordinary to her. Emily noticed she walked with the same sort of slouchy shuffle that Matt had adopted in this neighborhood. Emily quickly mimicked it.

A couple of voices drew her attention to the other side of the street. Two young guys were sitting outside a run-down building. When they saw Camila they called out and waved to her. She gave them the same nod she'd given Emily, and said something in a language that wasn't English. The guys got a good laugh out of whatever she'd said. Camila smiled a little, but kept walking. Emily hurried after her.

Nobody ever greeted Em in her neighborhood. Everybody was too caught up in their own lives to bother with anyone else's.

This place almost had a strange bit of charm to it. Or maybe it just seemed that way because she was a visitor, she considered as they passed a car with its tires stripped off.

When finally they reached the decrepit old stoop of Jessica's apartment building, Camila lingered on the sidewalk. "You go in," she said, the first words she'd spoken to Emily since meeting up with her. "I'm going back." She gestured back the way they'd come.

"Oh." Emily swallowed. "Okay. Thank you for walking me here."

"Yup." The girl walked away, leaving Emily alone on the front steps. Em pulled down the brim of her cap, then slinked inside.


Apartment Nineteen was closed and locked. Emily could hear music drifting out through the thin walls. She could make out a muffled male vocalist, but she didn't recognize him.

She knocked on the door. "Jess?"

The music stopped. Moments later the door creaked open. One of Jessica's eyes, its pupil normal-sized this time, peered out at her through the crack.

Emily eased the brim of her cap off her eyes. Jess lit up with recognition as she pulled the door open. "I wasn't sure it was you, Em!" She led Emily inside and then closed the door behind her. "I like the new look. Very…'Inner City Lesbian'. It's kind of attractive." She blinked her long lashes at Emily.

Emily pushed her away, pretending to gag at Jessica's advance. "I'm not a lesbian."

"Whoops, sorry." Jess led her into her tiny bedroom, where it was obvious by the wrinkled sheets that she'd been lying on her bed before Emily arrived. "Inner City Bisexual."

Emily made an uncomfortable noise, trying to resist the urge to argue with her.

Jessica apparently noticed her discomfort. "…No?"

Emily sat down on Jessica's bed. "I've had enough on my plate recently with guys. Adding in anyone else might just do me in."

Jess sat down beside her. "What kind of guys do you have on your 'plate'? You didn't mention anyone to me."

Emily froze. She'd made a point of carefully avoiding Mike during their chat last night. On top of everything else shitty about her hooking up with him, what he'd done to Jessica hadn't been far from her mind.

"Oh, just…well…I kind of wish Matt wasn't married," she decided to say. It wasn't a lie.

Jess widened her eyes. "Really? You and Matt, that's still a…a thing?"

Emily shrugged.

Jessica rested her elbows on her thighs. "Honestly?" she said, "I wish he wasn't married, either."

"Why do you always want my sloppy seconds?"

"Hey, Matt's a gentleman. I'm a sucker for that kind of thing."

Em thought of how distressed Matt had seemed on the bus ride back to his hotel. He'd tried to call his wife a few times, but she kept sending it straight to voicemail. He'd lamented to Emily about lying to Jenn at the apartment. When Emily had eventually voiced her opinion that she seemed a little controlling, he had instantly turned defensive. She just cares about me a lot, he'd said.

"His wife seems like kind of a bitch."

Jess paused. "Yeah. She kind of is."

Emily sat back on her hands and stared up at the flaking, off-white ceiling paint. "What if we kidnapped him and hid him here?"

Jessica laughed. "I wish we could. His wife tracks him everywhere he goes, though. She made him install a tracking app on his phone. I think that's how she found him the other day."

"The hell? That's fucked up."

"Mhm. It is." Jess flopped backward onto the bed. "So anyways, what do you wanna do for our Girls' Day?"

Emily thought about breaking out the goal list she'd written for Jessica – she had brought it with her, after all. At the last second, however, she wimped out and decided to pull a Matt, pretending nothing was wrong with Jess' fucked-up situation.

"Want me to braid your hair like I used to?" she asked instead.

Jessica beamed.


Emily combed her fingers through Jessica's surprisingly-clean hair. It had thinned out since the last time Emily had done so. She wondered if it was just age, or the drugs, or the lack of Vitamin D from such little exposure to sunlight. Jessica's skin was so pale.

Em twisted a lock of Jess' light brown hair around one finger. The strands were rough, broken. Emily handled them carefully as she separated her hair into three sections.

"I don't want to be here anymore." Turned away from Emily, Jess' words were quiet and a bit difficult to make out.

Emily paused her braiding. "'Here' as in, this apartment?"

"No. 'Here' as in anywhere." She remained faced away from Emily.

Emily's chest tightened. "You don't mean that."

Jess made a noncommittal sound behind closed lips.

"It's this place." Emily's voice took on that needlessly-loud, boisterous tone it always did when she was trying to hide a vulnerable emotion. "This fucking place would get anyone down." She pulled a little too hard on Jessica's hair. Jess yelped a little. "…Sorry. Just, I hate seeing you here. Seeing you miserable like this. Jess, you're not a bad person. You don't deserve to suffer like this."

Jess smiled a little. "That's nice of you to say, Em. Not true, but nice."

Emily tried to keep her hands steady as she crossed the sections of Jess' hair with meticulous precision. Jessica hummed to herself, the same tune as the song Em had heard her listening to earlier.

Jess didn't deserve to live in this shit pit. She deserved a nice home, surrounded by people who loved and wanted to help her. Somewhere safe. Somewhere clean. Some place like…

"I wish you lived with me," Emily said.

That spurred a laugh from Jess. "No you don't."

Emily fought back the urge to argue against her. God, how she'd love to have the company of someone she trusted in that awful house of hers. Jessica had no idea just how debilitatingly lonely Emily's modern life was. "I'd take you even with your messiness and your problems," she said. "The needles, well they might be a bit of an issue if you left them all around like here, but other than that…"

Jess turned slightly toward her. "You sound like you're actually thinking about this."

"I am." She'd actually thought about it last night, though only as a far-flung "what if". Now that they were together in person again, and especially now that Jess was hinting that she didn't want to be alive anymore, the thought refused to stop gnawing at her brain. The honest truth was that when she left Jess' apartment later on, she didn't want to leave Jessica behind.

"Emily, I can't even go outside." Jessica's shoulders drooped. "How would I even get to your house?"

Emily crossed two sections of Jess' hair over each other and pulled them tight. Jess yelped again.

"Maybe I can put a bag over your head and throw you in the back of my car."

"Wow, you're big on kidnapping people, huh?"

"Certain people."

They fell silent after that. Emily finished weaving Jessica's hair into a cute single braid down her back. Jessica handed her a hair tie from her nightstand, which Emily then used to secure the braid.

"I remember we used to talk about getting an apartment together for college." Jess played with her newly-styled hair. Then she stretched her fingers out and wiggled them, inviting Emily to turn around and surrender her hair to Jessica.

Em's roots tingled as Jess embedded her hands in her hair and scrunched them. It felt so nice. She knew it had nothing to do with braiding, but she let Jess do it anyway.

"Yeah. I remember that, too." After The Incident Emily had dropped all her classes for that semester. The following semester she didn't sign up for any classes at all. She didn't end up returning to school until the spring of 2016.

Jessica never ended up going at all.

Jess combed through Em's thin, silky hair with her spidery fingers. "Do you think I'm psychotic?" she asked out of the blue.

Emily hesitated. Her immediate reaction was to say no – no way, not you, Jess. You were always so perfect, and I looked up to you and there's no way you could ever be something like that. Emily wouldn't allow it.

Before she could vocalize a response, Jessica continued. "Some part of me knows the things I see – the monsters – aren't real. But the other part of me remembers when they were real. So real…"

Her hands had gone cold and clammy. Emily could hear her laboring to even out her breaths.

"You okay, Jess?"

Jess' hands fell away from Emily. "I know that those things exist in the world. That makes it so much harder to convince myself that what I'm seeing isn't real." She drew back from Em suddenly. "I – I need to go do something. I'll be right back."

Emily hopped off the bed and followed Jess to the bedroom doorway. "What are you going to do?" Her tone was more hostile than she had intended, but she wasn't an idiot.

"I…have to go to the bathroom." Jess' eyes flicked anxiously to the closed blinds over the windows.

Emily pursued her to the bathroom, with Jess backing up most of the way. "Really, Jess? Is that really what you're doing?"

She reached for Jess' arm. Jess pulled away.

"Jessica. You don't have to do this. I want to help you. I can get you help. Please."

Jess hesitated, seeming to think it over. As Emily was about to reassure her again, she bolted for the bathroom and slammed and locked the door behind her.

"Jessica! Jess come out here this instant!" Emily delivered a swift kick to the door that rattled the shitty old thing on its hinges. "Jess! Don't do that! Please!"

Nothing but silence answered her. Emily's yelling was choked off by a strangled cry as she kicked the door again, then threw the entirety of her body weight against it.

"Why?" she cried as she sank down to the floor. "Why do you have to do that? I could help you…I want to help you…" She fought back tears that threatened to destroy the last of her composure.

What felt like a lifetime later, the bathroom door crept open. Emily was immediately on her feet as Jess slipped out of the bathroom. By what Em could see from Jess' fleeting glances her pupils appeared unchanged, though that probably didn't mean much so soon afterward. A glimpse into the bathroom revealed no obvious signs that she'd been injecting herself with anything, though.

"Did you…" Emily's tone was somewhere between cautious and callous.

Hugging herself, Jess shook her head.

Emily straightened. "You didn't?"

Jessica bit her lip, but failed to stifle it from quivering as she made a tiny noise. "I…I need help. I want help. I don't wanna just st-stab myself with needles and get high all day. But I want the monsters to go away. That's the only way they do…"

"Unless you get proper help." Emily took Jessica's shaking hands in hers. "Look Jess, I know I've fucked up a lot over the years. I know we both have. But one thing I've always known was god damn true, even when it hurt to know it, is that…I love you. Fuck, I love you so much. You were my first friend. We may have had our moments over the years but when it comes down to it, I…"

She looked into Jessica's eyes, now just as teary as her own.

"I would do anything for you, Jess."

The confession broke down the last of both of their emotional resolves. Jessica pulled Emily tight to her chest, and they cried. Oh God, they cried. They cried until Emily couldn't tell whose tears were whose anymore. Crushed together like they were it all just melded into a weeping mess of sorrow and love. Cradled against her, Emily could barely even distinguish her own breaths from Jessica's.

When finally they drew slightly apart, Jess stared down at her with the purest look of vulnerability Emily had ever seen her wear. "Please help me, Em," she whispered, her voice hoarse from crying. "I can't do it on my own."

Emily clutched Jessica's hands once more. "I'll help you," she said. "I promise I will."

Jess looked past Emily, to the apartment door. "I wish I could go with you. I hate it here…"

"That hate should be your motivation, then." Emily's tone regained its usual brashness. "You want to get the hell out of here, don't you?"

Jess nodded weakly.

"I meant what I said earlier, you know," Emily continued. "I would let you stay with me. If you could just take a few steps out that door I could come pick you up in my car and–"

"You wouldn't want me, Emily. I'm more trouble than I'm worth."

"Bullshit. I know what I'm getting into. I've known you since we were seven years old."

Jess sniffled. "But now I'm such a mess. It's different."

"Stop." Emily shushed her. "Do you want to get out of here or not?"

"…Yes…"

"If I come back for you in an hour with my car, will you come with me?"

"…I'll try, Emily."

"Good. Be packed and ready to go when I get here." Emily sauntered over to the door. "You're going to do this, Jess. It won't be like last time. I'll make sure of that."

Jessica wiped her reddened eyes. "Don't let me back out of this, okay?" she said in a quiet voice.

"I won't."

"Thank you, Em. I need a really big push, but I…think…I hope…I can do it."

"You can. I'll be back in an hour."

As Emily was stepping out of the apartment, she turned to catch one more glimpse of Jessica. Jess was already hurriedly packing things into an empty cardboard box that had been lying beside the couch.

Emily closed the door, hoping she hadn't just made another terrible decision. The first time she had a breakdown because of me. Would this time be any different?

Regardless of her fears, Emily couldn't help but feel a tiny twinge of excitement in her stomach. If this worked out, if she could help Jess like she wanted to, she might actually begin to get her best friend back. She might finally be able to prove to herself that she could be a positive force in other people's lives.

It could turn out to be one of the few good choices she'd ever made.