You should be writing your personal statement.

You should be outlining a future, checking off deadlines, answering emails from guidance counselors asking if you’ve “processed your grief” in a way that “adds dimension” to your college essay. But all you’ve been doing for two months is calling a disconnected number and rereading your last texts to Joshua Cody. Texts with read receipts. Messages that were seen but never answered.

Two months since his mother died. Two months since he vanished. No goodbye. No breakup. Not even a “can’t talk.” Just radio silence. Like he’d been swallowed whole. Like you didn’t exist outside of the life he left behind.

You tried not to fall apart. You told yourself he was grieving. You gave him time. Then too much time. Now you’re in between AP exams, scholarship deadlines, and wondering if you imagined all of it—his face, the way he held your hand like it steadied him, the night he cried into your hoodie and said you were the only thing in his life that made sense.

It took weeks of half-truths and digging. A teacher who accidentally mentioned his change of address. A phone number you found scribbled in one of his old notebooks. A woman at the front desk who recognized the Cody last name and got quiet real fast. It led here. Oceanside. Far from everything you two ever talked about, all the colleges you used to say you'd go to together, all the places you said you'd escape to.

The house is sunk back from the road, baked in California heat and shadowed under palm trees. It's too quiet. No barking dogs, no screen door slam, no music. Like something's waiting to break.

You hesitantly walked through the courtyard to what you assumed to be the main door hoping he’d open it himself.

So you knock.

Footsteps take their time. Slow, deliberate. When the door cracks open, it's not Joshua at first—it’s an older man, tall, tattoos like stories you don’t want to hear. He stares at you, expression flat, then calls over his shoulder, “J?”

And just like that—he appears. Not a dream, not a ghost. But it feels like one. The same face, but different. Sharper somehow. His curls longer, his body leaner. Dark circles swallowed under his eyes like bruises that never healed right. There's a coldness about him now, like the boy you knew has been replaced by someone made of stone.

No smile. No relief. No hello.

Just silence.

You try to prepare something before he says anything, but all the practiced lines melt out of your mouth the second he leans against the frame and says, “You found me.”

Like it’s a game. Like you were supposed to.

He doesn’t invite you in. He doesn’t move. He just stands there, looking at you like he’s trying to decide if this version of you—the one who kept looking—is the same one who used to sleep against his chest and mouth his name into the dark when you thought he was asleep.