It was that rarity that made me fear her anger the most. I could count on one hand the number of times I saw Julia lose her temper and those occasions frightened me to my core. Her blue eyes—inviting and bright—froze over in a chilling sweep, and any warmth in her big smile could be dimmed in an instant. She reserved her anger for the moments that truly deserved it and I very often prayed I wouldn’t ever be on the receiving end of it. Such prayers, of course, were never answered.

Two nights before the Easter break began, she came over to study with me, and I knew instantly that something was off. When she kissed me at the door her lips barely swept over mine, and when she smiled at me it was feeble and empty. We studied in silence together in the kitchen before I invited her upstairs to relax but rather than joining me on the bed, she began to slowly pace the room. I watched Julia thumb through the books on my shelf carefully, reading over each title. She studied my own study space, running her fingers along the clutter above my desk, analyzing the photos scattered around on the walls. She stood up on her toes and craned her neck to sneak a glance at the box that sat on the second-highest shelf in my room and though her back may have been turned to me I could still hear her exhale sharply.

“She’s everywhere in this room,” she muttered, easing herself into the chair at my desk. “Like a bad smell that you can’t get rid of.”

I sat up a little straighter on the bed. “Huh?”

“She follows you around, most of the time. But in here…every time I come into this room, I feel like I’m choking on her.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Connie.” Her voice was soft. Gentle and timid, almost. “You took down most of the photos but you kept them in different boxes. You have a drawer full of her stuff. Mixtapes—every single mixtape you have stashed away. Songs for Connie, Songs about Connie, Connie’s Birthday, Driving with Connie…I don’t even need to ask why you have a whole shelf full of band memorabilia—I didn’t even know you liked any of those bands. But they were something to do with her, weren’t they? Everything in this room has something to do with her…”

“Where—where has this come from? What—what are you doing?”

“I’m just having a look around, Alex. You know—all the times I’ve been in here, I never really realized how much of her there is. You didn’t throw any of her stuff out. None of it. You’ve kept it all. Fuck, you didn’t even bother hiding them away, just kept them out of obvious sight…”

I shook my head, frowning. She wasn’t looking at me but at a blank space on the wall—a space I remembered once held a framed photograph of Connie and I at the beach, laughing with a shared towel wrapped around the both of us. That photograph, like so many others, now sat stashed away beneath my bed. “Jules, what—what’s up?”