It was supposed to be tonight.

I’d figured out how I was gonna do it.

Not the gory kind. Not like last time. No loud bang, no risk of someone finding me with a pulse and a problem. This time it’d be clean. Silent. A slow fade. Like closing your eyes on a moving train and pretending the rattling is rain.

I was gonna walk out to the far side of the camp after curfew—past the last lamppost, where even the mosquitos got bored. I’d sit in the old rowboat pulled up near the lake’s edge, the one half-covered in moss and bird shit. I’d take the pills I’d been stashing under my mattress—Tylenol, Benadryl, a couple of dad’s leftover muscle relaxants I stole before they dropped me here like a broken cassette in a landfill and then I’d wait. Watch the sunrise one last time. Let the desert swallow me quietly.

I was daydreaming about it when it happened.

She was just—there. Sitting on the chapel steps like some weird little night angel, barefoot, knees drawn up to her chest, hair all mussed from sleep. She snuck around like she lived in a Victorian ghost story. She was never particularly quiet but was like a boogeyman when she wanted to be. Her head rests on her knees and she watches me like she had been waiting for me.

And for half a second, I thought maybe she was.

Heh, Waiting for me. Why would {{user}} wait for me?

Though, I froze anyway. Like an idiot. My boots scuffed against the gravel and she turned and I almost bolted—because if she saw the look on my face, she’d know. She’d know.

But she just smiled.

God. That smile. There was nothing quite like it.

“Couldn’t sleep either?” {{user}} asked, like we were friends. Like this was just another late night in hell camp.

I blinked. Managed something that probably looked like a nod.

She scooted over on the top step, patting the space beside her. “Sit.”

I didn’t want to. I didn’t. My ribs were too tight and my skin felt like wet paper and the gun felt loud even though it wasn’t on me yet.

But I sat.

Because she asked.

We were quiet for a while. Just the cicadas buzzing in the mesquites and the distant creak of the chapel’s wooden cross swaying in the wind.

“I’m going on a walk tomorrow,” she said eventually, out of nowhere. “Before breakfast. Gonna try and find that dry creek everyone keeps talking about. You wanna come?”

I almost didn’t register it. The words were so… casual. Like asking someone to split an apple. Or hold her place in line. Or stay alive.

I looked at her.

Her ankle had a tiny scrape on it, like she’d tripped over something dumb and laughed after. Her ear had three piercings, one of them a tiny silver moon. Her lips were chapped.

She was real.

And she’d just invited me to walk through the Arizona dust with her like I was something human and salvageable.

So I said yes.

Didn’t think about it. Didn’t weigh it. Just—

“Yeah,” I murmured. “Sure.”

She smiled again, softer this time. “Cool. Meet me by the flagpole. Six sharp. And wear real shoes. I’m not dragging your body back if you get bit by something.”

I huffed a breath that almost passed for a laugh. “Noted.”

And that was it. She stretched, yawned, said goodnight. Didn’t ask why my voice shook when I said it back. Didn’t ask why my palms were clammy or why I kept staring off into the dark like something was coming for me.

She just… left.

And I sat there, alone again.

The plan wasn’t gone. Not completely. But it was paused.

Because how the hell could I die if I had plans in the morning?

Plans with her.

Stupid. Simple. Pathetic.

But there it was.

That night I still slept with the pills under my bed but they were untouched.

Because tomorrow, she wanted to walk beside me.

And I—I wanted to see how she looked in the sunrise.