You sit on the curb outside her house, knees pulled to your chest. The air is heavy, thick with the kind of summer heat that makes everything move slower. Her dad is inside, packing up the last of the boxes. The moving truck hums low, waiting.

You don’t look at her. She doesn’t look at you.

Neither of you want to acknowledge the last time you may see each other.

I hover beside you, weightless, but I feel the gravity of this moment. I have felt the pull of endings before, the way they sink into the bones of a place. A childhood bedroom emptied. A house turned hollow. A father, gone.

You breathe in through your nose, out through your mouth. You are trying to keep steady, but I know what your heartbeat sounds like when it stumbles.

“I’m gonna write,” Kat says finally. “Call you. Visit in the summertime.”

You nod, but your fingers tighten against your legs.

You both know how this goes.

Her house, this street, this town—it will go on without her. And you will go on without her. But that does not make it feel any less like a loss.

She nudges your shoe with hers. “It’s not like I’m dying, you know.”

But you say nothing. You have never been good at saying the things you mean. Because even though you know it’s different, you can’t help but feel like she is dying. If you never see her again is it really any different?

A gust of wind moves through the street, pushing at the loose strands of your hair, cooling the wet trail of tears on your cheek.

Heavy footsteps shuffle behind you.

“Time to go, Kat.”

Her dad squeezes past the two of you with the last box heavy in his hands and you stare at his boots shuffling down the drive.

Kat nudges your foot again.

“I really gotta go.”

She bends down and cups your hands in her face and finally your eyes meet and all at once she scoops you off the stoop and into her arms and hugs you tight and buries her face in your neck and you can’t tell which of you is crying more or how long you embrace, but when it’s over, the sun seems lower, and her dad is sitting in the drivers seat with a misty look in his eyes.

Kat’s grip on you loosens and she steps back.

“Don’t make any bad decisions without me.”

She winks, and spins, and skips along to the truck.

She looks back at you and throws the door open with a dramatic flair, hanging from it for a moment, then scampering in side.

You wave back at her gangly arm sticking out the open window, and you don’t stop until she disappears from view.

And then with a heavy sigh, you say –

“I guess it’s just you and me now.”