“Whatever people do after college. Get a job or something.” Melody was always talking about which schools were on her list, how she was going to be a doctor. I’d never thought that far ahead. I didn’t know what kind of life I’d have. I just knew there was another one out there waiting for me. A Remy Tsai I’d step into once I left home. Someone who’d know what to do, who’d never feel lost again.

“Get a job, get married, have kids, retire, wait to die,” Elise said with a sigh, like she was disappointed in me. “Boring. Don’t you want anything more?” She lit yet another cigarette and offered it to me. “More than what our parents have. More than an ordinary existence in an ordinary town like Lyndens Creek. More than a one-size-fits-all life. Just more.” Her voice was threaded with confidence, her eyes wide.

A shiver slipped down my spine. Take me with you, I wanted to say. Don’t leave me behind to live this ordinary life. Elise played with her lighter, flipping its heavy top open and shutting it, the metal gleaming even in low light. She sighed, turning away from me, eyes focused on the sky.

“Then what?” I asked, my voice a whisper, like she was telling me a fairy tale and I didn’t want to break the spell.

“I know what I don’t want more than what I want,” she said, her eyes faraway. “I don’t want my life to be a waste. I don’t want to blindly follow some checklist. I don’t want to be forgotten.” She snapped the top of her lighter closed a final time, the strike of metal against metal ringing in my ear.

“No one could ever forget you,” I said, my hand reaching for hers, tugging her back to earth. She turned from the stars to me and smiled.

“I want my life to mean something. I want to be remembered. Because why even bother being alive if you’re not going to leave a mark, if you’re not going to really live?” I’d never thought about it that way. If anything, I did everything I could to not leave a mark, to become invisible and avoid setting off my parents.

We were quiet on the drive back, her words echoing in my mind. “Want to go to my place?” she asked when we were close to my house. She was going to drop me off but she didn’t want to say goodbye and neither did I. “My dad’s not home,” she added.

“Where is he?” I looked at her curiously.

“Oh, at his girlfriend’s again.” She shrugged.

Elise never talked about him, except to say if he was home or not. He reminded me of my parents, always absent. But instead of buried in work, he was always at his girlfriend’s house.

I knew almost nothing about the girlfriend, just her name, Heidi, and that she worked as a real estate agent—Elise called her The Realtor. I’m not sure Elise knew much more.