It had been years since Emily had seen this room with her own eyes. It had appeared so many times in her nightmares she sometimes thought maybe it originated from inside some deep place there, locked away to only escape when her waking mind was otherwise occupied. Of course, if that were true then it all hadn’t happened. If it all hadn’t happened then she wouldn’t have run away, none of the things in the last 10 years of her life would have happened, and Lucy wouldn’t be gone. As much as Emily wished her mind had been capable of inventing such torture, the knife stabbing into her heart with even the thought of Lucy reminded her how real it all was.

With a shuddering breath, Emily stepped forward into the dusty room that had belonged to her and Lucy all those lifetimes ago. Back then it smelled like a sweet concoction of vanilla, cotton candy, and hairspray, but now it smelled like stale air and mothballs. The dresser that once displayed all her favorite photos sat empty, and the once shining wood now faded with age and neglect. Emily noticed with a frown the beautiful knobs she had hand-selected as a child were now missing. Emily wondered how long she had been gone before her mother desperately unscrewed them to pawn them off for her next fix. Forcing herself to turn away from the dresser, she turned toward the bed. A sheet had been tossed over the bare mattresses but she could still see them the way they had been that night: covered in pillows with mismatched pillowcases and a fluffy comforter they had gotten for their 16th birthday — their grandmother had gone to every store in town to find the exact colors they wanted.

Emily scanned the walls of the room that no longer held the collection of posters and magazine articles she and Lucy had spent so many hours curating. A few small strips were remaining, evidence that her mother had thrown a tantrum at some point after she left and torn everything from the walls. The cushion on the window seat was no longer a soft lavender color and seemed like it would crumble if anyone tried to sit on it. She tried not to think about all the times she had sat on that cushion with Lucy, crying over all the little things teenagers go through and all the big things teenagers shouldn’t have to go through. Lucy had always given her hope to keep going. “It’s going to get better, you’ll see,” she would always say.

Emily wiped her eyes and looked over to the bookshelf in the corner of her room, full of dust and cobwebs instead of her collection of books and figurines. Rage bubbled inside of her as she imagined bumping into that shelf years ago, books tumbling to the floor as she had begged her mother to call paramedics when Lucy went unresponsive. The fear in her mother’s eyes quickly turned to anger when she realized the girls had gotten into her stash. Furious about her missing drugs and terrified of what the police would do when finding an OD’d teen in her house, Emily’s mother had refused to call anyone to help Lucy when the girls had decided to try what they thought was a line of cocaine from their mom’s bedside table. Instead, she had yelled at Emily that everything was her fault and it better be fixed by the time she got back from replacing what had been used.

Emily had never forgiven herself for leaving Lucy behind that way, even knowing that Lucy was gone before she slipped out the front door to never return. Emily now turned toward the door again, her eyes pausing for a long moment on the spot Lucy had lain all those years ago. She couldn’t be sure if there was a visible stain on the floor under the thick dust, or if it was all in her mind; at this point, she didn’t want to know which was which. She took another deep breath and walked out the door, down the hallway, and out the front door. She nodded to the man in a yellow vest and hard hat, “All clear. Tear it down,” he said gruffly into his walkie-talkie. Emily heard the first of the walls coming down as she closed her car door, her eyes shone with tears but there was a smile on her face as she yet again journeyed down the familiar street, again with no intentions of ever coming back.