Mariah heard the car pull into the driveway, but she didn’t move, not even when she heard the car door slam shut. She stayed right where she was, lying on the couch, staring up at the ceiling, with her feet resting on a pile of old laundry that she hadn’t bothered to shove to the floor. The curtains were drawn, so she couldn’t see who was outside.

Not that she cared much. She didn’t have any friends or family or anyone, really, that she cared to talk to.

So when there came a knock on the door, Mariah didn’t bother getting up to see who it was. Lately, she couldn’t muster the energy to do much of anything anymore. She worked at a graffitied, dingy old gas station on the outskirts of town, and every day, it was the same old thing: standing on her aching feet, ringing up cigarettes and lottery tickets and cans of cheap beer for a bunch of old loafers who all reeked of ash, pot, and sweat. Guys would hang around the gas station, waggling their eyebrows at Mariah and trying to seduce her with their lewd pick-up lines while she counted out their change.

She’d ride her bike back to the dingy old trailer where she lived, cursing under her breath, swearing that she wasn’t coming back tomorrow. She’d dig out the bottle of pills that she kept tucked away in the back of the kitchen cabinet and stare at it for the longest time.

“Just do it,” she’d mutter. “Just take the fucking pills. And then you’ll be with your daughter again. What are you waiting for?”

But she never did.

She’d just stand there, staring at the pill bottle, unable to go through with it. With a deep sigh, she’d return it to its place and drop onto the couch, exhausted.

“Tomorrow,” she’d promise herself. “I’ll do it tomorrow.”

Except she never did.

There came another knock on the door. Mariah groaned. It must be her landlord, wanting to know where she month’s rent payment was. No one else would have bothered to knock twice. Mariah dragged herself to her feet, dug through the clutter on the kitchen counter until she found a blank check, and hastily scribbled out the information.

She flung the door open.

It wasn’t her landlord.

Mariah crumpled up the check and tossed it on the ground, staring in disbelief at the young woman standing on her doorstep. Here she was, as if she’d sprung straight out of Mariah’s memories: she had the same unnaturally pale, bony face, with the same dark auburn hair pulled back into a ponytail. She looked small and childlike, wrapped up in a puffy black coat, with a baggy pair of jeans and worn gray tennis shoes. She had a small black purse slung over one shoulder.

She smiled nervously. “Hi.”

“Joanna? Jo?”

“Yep, that’s me.” When Mariah didn’t say anything, Joanna went on, “It’s so good to see you, I can’t even tell you how much…can I come in?”

Mariah sighed. “What do you want?”

Joanna’s smile faded. “It’s about Aspen. She and I always kept in touch, even after my family moved. And after she—well, you know—one day she just stopped answering my messages. I kept trying to call you guys and no one would answer. I wound up on an Internet rabbit hole trying to find her and that’s how I found out that she…”

“Died,” Mariah said.

Joanna nodded. “And anyway, I wanted to come and tell you how sorry I am about what happened.”

“I—that’s okay. I’m fine,” Mariah said. “You didn’t have to drive all the way out here just for that.”

The sight of Joanna standing on her doorstep was already flooding her with memories: whenever the school bus full of high schoolers would come rumbling to a stop in front of Mariah’s trailer and Aspen would get off, more afternoons than not Joanna would get off with her. She’d had hung around so often and eaten so much food that if she’d been an adult, Mariah would’ve made her cough up some cash to help pay for it. But she’d been Aspen’s friend, not Mariah’s—and Mariah couldn’t help but feel like a third party, even in her own home.

Now, the sight of Joanna, with car keys dangling from her hand, without Aspen by her side, was strangely painful.

Joanna shrugged. “I was in the area. And I’ve been wanting to talk to you for a long time.”

Mariah didn’t know what to say. People didn’t usually come to her doorstep, wanting to talk to her.

“I don’t know why you bothered, seeing as how your friend’s dead, but I’ve got stuff to do,” she said, starting to close the door. “Goodbye.”

Joanna stepped halfway inside, stretching her hand out to stop the door from closing. “Can I at least use your bathroom? I drove an hour to get here.”

“There’s literally a gas station, it probably takes five minutes to drive there, that you would’ve had to pass to get here,” Mariah pointed out.

Joanna shrugged.

With a sigh, Mariah let her in. “Fine. Use the bathroom. But your friend’s dead, so you’ll have wasted two hours’ worth of gas by the time you get home. You know where the bathroom’s at.”

Joanna froze on the threshold. Her eyes roved over the peeling wallpaper, the heaps of unwashed clothes on the floor, and the stained couch that was missing a cushion. Then, with a glance at Mariah, she hurried off to the bathroom.

Mariah started picking up the dirty clothes off the floor and consolidating them into a single pile of dirty laundry on the couch so that when Joanna got out of, she wouldn’t get any ideas about sitting down and staying awhile. The trailer was pretty cramped: the kitchen, dining area, and living room were all one room, separated by a grimy old counter that stuck out five feet, doubling as a bar, although its surface was buried underneath all the junk mail and other crap that Mariah had let pile up. Dirty dishes were stacked so high in the sink that Mariah could barely squeeze a cup under the faucet to get water. The trash can was overflowing, with small mountains of trash on the ground next to it.

She hated this trailer. It reeked of sweat and old food and memories, and if she’d had any money, she’d have burned the whole place down and moved out the day that Aspen died.

Mariah glanced over at the pictures hanging on the wall. They’d been up there for ages, but it had been a long time since Mariah really looked at them. Most were Aspen’s school portraits. A younger, less gaunt version of Mariah appeared in a few of the others, but there was no other family on the wall. When Mariah was pregnant with Aspen, at just seventeen, she’d fled from home, with nothing left of her family but a collection of bruises that took weeks to fade. Aspen had never met them.

Joanna returned. “It’s really good to see you again, Ms. Prewett.”

“Yeah.” Mariah stuffed her hands in her pockets. With Aspen gone, Joanna’s presence felt all wrong. A twisted sense of nostalgia. The last time Mariah had seen her, Aspen was still alive.

“So,” Joanna said. “What have you been up to all these years?”

Mariah shrugged. “Just work, mostly.” She hoped it wasn’t too apparent that she’d wasted away the years since Aspen’s death standing on her feet at that dingy old gas station, sleeping, and numbly watching television. “You?”

Joanna dove into a spiel about everything that had happened in her life since the last time Mariah had seen her, years ago, when the girls had been juniors in high school: she’d gone away to college, gotten a job as a high school math teacher, and so on.

Aspen hadn’t even lived to see her high school graduation.

“Well…congrats,” Mariah said when Joanna finished. There was a long, uncomfortable pause. Mariah felt compelled to say something more, so she forced a smile and added, “That’s really great to hear. I’m glad you’re doing so well.”

The words sounded artificial and hollow, even to her. She knew she was supposed to be proud of Joanna’s success. But she couldn’t help but wish, sordidly, that the whole thing had been reversed, that Aspen and Joanna could have traded places.

“Thanks,” Joanna said, seemingly unaware of Mariah’s thoughts. “I also came because I wanted to thank you for letting me stay over so much, and for all the meals you cooked and everything. I know I was here a lot.” She took a shuddering breath. “Things at home were pretty rough back then. My parents were fighting all the time, my mother would pick on all of us for the littlest things, and my dad was losing it. I hated being home. Coming here was a literal breath of fresh air. And you…you were like a second mom to me.”

Mariah’s chest constricted. She shook her head. “I’m not your mom.”

“I didn’t mean you were literally my mom.”

“Then don’t say that.”

“Aspen and I were like sisters, and you…” Joanna shrugged. “I don’t know. You were cool. I looked up to you.”

“I didn’t do anything,” Mariah said. “I microwaved cheap Walmart pizza and let you guys hog the TV for your Harry Potter marathons.” And even though she’d let Aspen have her friend over whenever she felt like it, Mariah had always secretly hated Joanna. Mariah used to be Aspen’s best friend—until she met Joanna. And then hanging out with her own mother suddenly wasn’t cool anymore.

“That’s more than a lot of parents do,” Joanna said.

“Glad to know I’ve got your stamp of approval.” Mariah rolled her eyes. “Is that all you came for? Because if it was, then you can go now.”

Joanna dropped Mariah’s gaze, readjusting her coat and shifting her purse from one arm to another. “I was kind of hoping we could spend some time together. Maybe talk about Aspen.”

“What’s there to talk about?”

“I don’t know.” Joanna sighed, giving a defeated shrug. She glanced at the pictures hanging on the wall. “I figured you could at least tell me what happened. How she died.”

“She got hit by a truck doing fifty in a thirty.”

“Was it a drunk driver?”

“No.” Mariah went to the sink, rummaged through the cabinets for a glass, and filled it with water from the tap, just to have something to do with her trembling hands. “He wasn’t drunk. It was a Saturday afternoon, we were out getting ice cream, Aspen ran to get something out of the car and she didn’t look before she ran across the street and that’s how she got herself killed.”

She took a swig of water, staring at the counter that was overflowing with dirty dishes, faded newspapers, and piles of old junk mail, so she wouldn’t have to look at Joanna’s face.

“There was blood all over,” she went on. “It was some boy, probably just got his license, that hit her. Course, he was perfectly fine.” She felt sick to her stomach. “Aspen was just about dead the moment she hit the ground. I remember I ran up to her, and she looked at me, and—”

The words got caught in her throat.

Mariah took a swig of water. Forced herself to swallow. She grabbed a stack of junk mail off the counter and sifted through it, trying to look nonchalant. She clenched her teeth, trying to block out the memories that were rushing at her, dragging her back to that horrific day.

She would not cry.

Joanna took her coat off, dropping it on the coffee table with her purse, and came over to where Mariah stood. “I’m so sorry. I don’t even know what to say.”

Mariah shrugged. She glanced at the cabinet, remembering the bottle of pills stashed in the back. The thought gave her a strange twinge of comfort. She tossed the junk mail back on the counter, then crossed over to the wall with Aspen’s pictures.

“I’ve got pictures of her over here, I don’t know if you noticed,” Mariah said. “You can take one with you if you want. Hell, take all of them.” She grabbed one of the pictures from the wall and tried to hand it to Joanna, but Joanna backed away, shaking her head.

“No, that’s okay,” she said, her voice trembling. “I shouldn’t…you should keep those.”

“Your call.” Mariah stuck the picture back on the wall. “But you’d better get going, so you don’t have to drive in the dark.”

Joanna hesitated. “Ms. Prewett?”

“What?”

“Is Aspen buried nearby?”

Mariah sighed.

“Is she?”

Mariah crossed to the window and pulled back the curtains. The sky was a muddled gray mass of clouds, the late afternoon light pale. Snow flurries fell and landed on the thin, dead grass. “It’s ten fucking degrees out there. I ain’t going out in that.”

“Please?”

“No,” Mariah said. “Although if you’re gonna be so sentimental about it, then you might as well take some of Aspen’s crap with you.” She passed Joanna, went down the hall, and opened the door to Aspen’s old room.

The lights flickered as they came on. Everything of Aspen’s was long gone. The floor was buried underneath mountains of Mariah’s old junk, dumped haphazardly in plastic tubs or cardboard boxes or just on the floor. Near the door were the things that Mariah used on a fairly regular basis: toilet paper, light bulbs, spare towels, and whatnot. A musty smell hung in the air. Everything but space by the door was shrouded in a thick layer of dust.

Mariah started forging her way through the room, staking out a path to the closet, which was barricaded behind a particularly tall stack of plastic tubs and a mountain of old holiday junk half as tall as herself.

“Oh my goodness,” Joanna said. She’d trailed after Mariah, stopping in the doorway. Her eyes widened. “What did you do? Where’s all of Aspen’s stuff?”

“Most of it’s gone,” Mariah said, grabbing an armful of old Christmas lights and hefting them across the room. “I dumped it all at Goodwill. Figured someone might as well get some use out of it.”

“So you don’t have anything left that’s hers?”

“I told you, I’m pretty sure I’ve got a few of her things left, somewhere around here.” Mariah hoped it seemed as though she had Aspen’s things tucked away somewhere safe and had simply forgotten where she put them. She couldn’t bring herself to tell Joanna the truth: that the same afternoon that Aspen was buried, Mariah had torn through her room, yanking the posters off the walls, cramming her clothes into garbage bags, and hauling everything off to Goodwill.

“It looks as if Aspen were never even here,” Joanna said.

“What do you expect? She’s dead.”

“I know, but…I mean, she was your daughter. I would think you’d want to remember her.”

Mariah didn’t even try to answer. Joanna could never understand the pain. Mariah couldn’t even put it into words.

She’d done a Google search once, to find out if there was even a word to describe it. Vilomah, she’d found. A Sanskrit word that meant against a natural order, against how things were supposed to be. A word used to describe a parent that had lost a child. But there was no word in any language, English or Sanskrit or whatever, that could truly capture the pain.

Mariah finally cleared the way to Aspen’s closet. She wrenched the door open and dug through the stuff that she’d piled in there until she found a small, simple gray purse with round handles, squashed underneath a pile of blankets.

Mariah yanked it out, her breath catching in her throat. It felt surreal, to hold something of Aspen’s in her hands after so many years. Mariah brought the purse over to where Joanna could see it, opening the different pockets as she went. Inside, it was stuffed with all sorts of little things: makeup, glitter pens, a charm bracelet, and a whistle that Mariah used to make her carry around. There was even a stick of gum in there.

As if Aspen had been alive only yesterday.

Joanna poked through the purse. She suddenly grinned, pulling out a pack of stickers of cutesy little animal characters on it. “Oh, I remember these!”

“What are they?”

“We used to trade stickers,” Joanna said. “We’d put them on our water bottles, or on the insides of our lockers, or on our homework we turned in, just to mess with our teachers—” She glanced at Mariah, then put the stickers back in the purse. “It sounds stupid, I know. We had so much fun.”

Mariah forced a smile. “Isn’t that nice?”

In the months before Aspen died, Mariah was lucky if she got to talk to her for five, ten minutes a day. She spent all her time with Joanna. The day that Aspen died, Mariah had practically dragged her out of the house to go get some ice cream, just so she’d get a chance to talk to her once.

Screw you, Joanna. Screw you and your stupid games.

“I really miss her,” Joanna said quietly.

“Yeah.” Mariah should have thrown that purse away with the rest of Aspen’s things. It was a time capsule from the past, and all she wanted was to forget. “I’ve got to get this crap cleaned up,” she added, putting her hands on her hips and making a show of looking around at all the clutter, so Joanna wouldn’t see the tears stinging her eyes.

“Here. You can have this back.”

“Keep it,” Mariah said. “You might be able to get some use out of it. Or throw it away. I don’t care what you do with it.”

Joanna still tried to hand the purse back to Mariah, and when Mariah wouldn’t take it, she set it down on one of the plastic tubs near her. “I can’t take that. It belonged to Aspen. You should keep it.”

“Whatever. I’m not gonna argue with you.” Mariah thought again of the bottle of pills, tucked away in the back of the kitchen cabinet. She shut the lights off and ushered Joanna back into the main room. “You want a bottle of water for the road?” She plastered on a polite smile, narrowing her eyes. Take the hint and get out of my house.

“No, that’s okay,” Joanna said. “I know it’s cold out, but I’d still really appreciate it if you’d take me to see Aspen’s grave.”

Mariah glared at her.

“Please? Or could you at least write out the directions to the cemetery and tell me how to find where she’s buried?”

Mariah sighed. “If it’s that important to you, Joanna, I’ll take you there.” She couldn’t remember actual street names to save her life. Anyway, it would be a short trip out in the cold, and then maybe Joanna would finally leave her alone. Mariah grabbed a few extra sweatshirts off of the mountain of clothes on the couch and threw them on. “I don’t have a car, though, so you’ll have to drive me.” Her car had broken down a year after Aspen’s death, and she never bought a new one. She’d been trying to save up to move out of this trailer. Get away from the memories.

They went outside.

The neighborhood had deteriorated in the years since Aspen’s death: the gravel road was ridden with potholes, the grass was dry and half dead, and people’s yards were overflowing with old furniture and vehicles in varying stages of disrepair. Mariah’s yard was mostly bare, except for the gravel driveway, the outdoor trash can, her bicycle chained to the rusty old mailbox, and the white SPEED LIMIT 15 sign that happened to be staked in her yard.

They piled into Joanna’s car. The drive only took a few minutes, and it was mostly silent, except for Mariah giving directions: out of the trailer park, through a series of neighborhoods with trailers and ramshackle houses and broken beer bottles in the front yards, over the railroad tracks, past the tavern, and past the graffitied gas station where Mariah worked.

The cemetery was just a few blocks past the gas station. It was massive, probably three or four blocks long and almost as deep. Joanna parked, and they got out of the car. Mariah’s face and hands tingled in the cold. She pulled the hoods of her multiple layers of sweatshirts over her head and tugged at her sleeves so that they’d cover her hands. Joanna locked the car. They both stood there awkwardly for a moment, until Joanna motioned to Mariah as if to say, go on, I’m following you.

Mariah set off among the graves. Joanna trailed behind her. Mariah crossed her arms, trying to ward off the cold as she wandered around, searching for Aspen’s headstone. It had to be around here somewhere. All around, there were slabs of stone so old that their inscriptions had faded away, massive tombstones half as tall as Mariah, and plain grave markers that a person couldn’t read unless they were standing directly over them.

Aspen’s grave was one of the plain ones. That had been the cheapest option. Mariah never made much money. She’d never been able to do much for Aspen during her life, and no different in death.

Minutes passed.

“Do you know where it’s at?” Joanna asked.

“What a stupid question.” Mariah felt her face flush. “Do you see how big this place is? It’s gonna take me a minute to find it.”

It didn’t help that she hadn’t been here since Aspen’s burial. Even though it was so close to the gas station where she work, Mariah had never been able to bring herself to come back here.

Joanna didn’t say anything. But she started branching away from Mariah, broadening the search until finally, she called out that she’d found the grave.

Mariah trudged over to where Joanna was standing. She stuffed her hands in her sweatshirt pocket, staring down at Aspen’s headstone. The grass around the edges was sticking up, and the stone was covered in crusty splotches of bird poop, but the inscription, at least, was still visible: