spilled milk, chanel.

Fall comes. It gets cold again, melting ice in the morning filling the gutters along the streets. Morning mist obscures the view of Hollow Grove outside my window, a storm cloud staining the light piss-yellow. Thirty feels like twenty-nine did, only worse, because my sun patch is empty, and the coffee maker has molding residue in the pot.

Emi comes around at some unholy hour of the morning, isn’t even gracious enough to wake me or drag me off the couch before she begins collecting the empty glass bottles into a plastic bag she could have only pulled from god knows where. Waking to the sound of shattering glass sets the rest of the morning on edge, but there’s a silver lining somewhere. As an example, the whiskey dumped in the to-go cup Emi abandoned on the kitchen table works wonders to make the whole thing seem at least partially worth witnessing. Less so when Emi comes prowling in from the living room, plastic gloves on and trash bag knotted before going to drop it in the wastebasket. Already near overflowing, but the thought to care is lost anyway as she watches me neatly screw shut the lid to the bottle of whiskey. Not a habit, but Emi calls for extra precautions.

“What are we drinking?” she asks conspiratorially, half-shoving the bag into the bin, half-abandoning the project, leaving it hanging partially over the side.

“We are not.”

“Boo, that’s boring, Nel! C’mon,” she slips the gloves off and they make an ugly snapping sound where they rip. “It’s your birthday. Let me celebrate you.”

I remember standing in the doorway, dragging my heels and refusing. I’m good, I’m fine, I’m not going out with you. None made the difference, and I have to applaud Ren Tanaka this: she taught Emi how to stand her goddamned ground when she feels like it. I let her deliver me around, and pretend I don’t notice when she takes covert slugs from the coffee cup when I’m not paying attention at breakfast. She’s on her ridiculous little portable phone half the morning, feverishly checking for messages or tapping violently against the glass with her nails. She showed me off to a few of her friends later, and dragged me through a park near the church on our way to meet them. My hand hurts still from the way she’d been gripping it as we walked past an area cordoned off by police tape.

My journalist senses tensed in reaction, feeling the urge to ask questions start bubbling in the pit of my stomach, but then I got a glimpse of Emi from the corner of my vision, looking on while trying to pretend she wasn’t. The light of autumn turns on her, revealing the all too curious glint in them before she keeps trailing on.

She waits to say something at least until we get to the opposite gate in the park and make our way over the crosswalk.

“Did you see the girl? What do you think happened to her?”

“Something she didn’t deserve.”

Somehow, she’d seemed put out by this response, her mouth twisting before she turned away from me as if to hide her face. She smiles again when she finds her friends, her hand still holding my own with a death grip until she frees it to fling her arms around her friends shoulders. As with every time I’ve ever met them, she makes a point somehow to never tell me their names, but that’s okay. I never want to know anyway. We spent some time wandering down side streets, seemingly aimlessly, before she abruptly bid them a goodbye (see you later!) and dragged me, surprisingly, back home to my mother’s.

The roses in the front yard have begun to die back, the garden littered with their petals, withered and browning. Something about that makes me smile, my mothers precious roses, reduced to rotting with the worms. I’m glad when Emi cuts across the mulch, and we squish some of them beneath our shoes, but I’m surprised when it’s my old bedroom she slips into when we hit the top of the staircase, pulling the door closed behind her. For no good reason, I held my breath crossing the threshold. It only comes out with a shudder when Emi pushes me down onto the bed, pulling the tray off my old vanity table before crawling up beside me onto the comforter.

Her hair is getting longer again. I’m running a boar bristle brush through it, just watching the way the light makes it shine, when we hear a cry from downstairs.

The blood hits my face first, my arms and legs going slack at the recognition. Bitter or weary, it’s hard to say what holds me back, but it’s Emi who makes me move, who makes me witness. She opens the bedroom door with practiced care, leaps across the floorboards to avoid the ones that creak and applies enough counter pressure to avoid the rust on the hinges. Together, we peer through the dark wooden banister posts, watch as Ren puts both her hands on the man's white uniformed arms. The man was white all over, stark white hair over a pair of ghostly gray eyes.

Emi convinces me to stay after that, then gives me up to Ren a few hours into the sleepover. I roll my eyes and abandon her for awhile, but I find I can't summon the courage to fully leave. The sound of Ren crying out keeps ringing, a struck chord echoing into itself. I used to have a nightmare about her feeding me cherries, pre-pitted but still pernicious, somehow, someway, so when she comes to sit beside me on the porch later that night, bowl of cherries in hand, it feels a lot like dying. Slow and sweet.

I pop one between my lips, then another, until the bowl is empty. The dark red juice stains the bottom of it, pooling like blood.

"Come," she says, gentle and a command. "Lets tuck you in."