There are a lot of things we don’t understand about orange juice, the house thought.

Diane walked to the kitchen and swung open the fridge. She did not want anything from inside it, and so stood in front of the open fridge for several moments, unsure of what she was doing next.

Her phone buzzed. A text. “Hello.”

She texted back to the unknown number, “Hello?”

Diane stared at the carton of orange juice in the fridge, at the bright round fruit logo, its straw hat shading unseen eyes on the pocked face, a tight grin with perfect human teeth, separated slightly, and a pink, leaf-shaped tongue. She didn’t know why she was fixating on the orange juice, but she didn’t know why she was doing anything.

Troy was everywhere. There were so many of him, and Josh wanted to meet just one of him. It was a meeting she didn’t think she was going to be able to prevent, so she needed more time to understand who Troy was now, and what he wanted. And then there was Evan. Why was she looking so hard for Evan?

It seemed to her that her life had slipped loose somehow, its progression all off track. Josh and Troy, that was one thing. But she felt a larger shift, and that shift had all started when Evan disappeared and became forgotten by all but her. There was something wrong, in her life, in Night Vale, maybe in the world. The magnitude of the thing was unclear, but wherever it was, she was inside it.

Her phone buzzed.

“it’s been a while”

She didn’t know what that meant, and didn’t want to reply. She should go to the movie theater. She was going to go to the movie theater.

She walked back to Josh’s closed door.

“Josh, I’m sorry. I know this all doesn’t make sense to you. It doesn’t all make sense to me either.”

Nothing.

“I love you.”

A long nothing.

“I’m not perfect. I’m not. I’m sorry.”

There came a faint “Love you, too.”

She exhaled. Her phone buzzed again.

“do you remember me?”

She stared at the phone. The area code of the texts was a postage-stamp-size photo of a burnt-out forest alive with luminescent snails in an array of vivid colors. She didn’t recognize that area code, but it wasn’t local.

Buzz.

“you remember me diane”

“Who is this?” she typed.

Nothing.

Nothing.

She was tired of waiting for things to happen to her; she would make something happen. She would just call the number. She put the phone to her ear.

It buzzed warm in her ear, and she yelped at the proximity. Another text.

“evan”

There was a photo attached.