ଓ༉‧.⭒ֶָ֢⋆.

Iris Fox wasn't ghosting her parents.

In her opinion, ghosting people required some intent to do so, along with a certain malice and desire to make them aware that was what they were being put through.

To ghost people, she'd have to show activity elsewhere, either by mindlessly posting on social media about how vital communication was or how she was thriving, but not too busy that she couldn't reply to unanswered text messages. To ghost people, she'd have to put considerable effort into appearing happy just so the people she was avoiding would realize how much better than everyone else she was, oblivious to how curated online presences were. The grass was always greener and faker on the other side, after all, and Iris had, too, fallen for the trap carefully planted by her doomscrolling ways countless times.

She wasn't doing any of that.

She was doomscrolling, yes, but that was a personality trait by then, but at least she wasn't posting anything of value or acting all high and mighty about knowing there were people worrying about her and expecting a response. If anything, that knowledge only intensified the rotting guilt spreading across her chest.

Ghosting was intentional. Ghosting implied not feeling remorse over your actions. It didn't account for one's inability to open their inbox and reply to every single untouched message and email, including work emails, caused by an intense fear of what would happen if they were to interact with the outside world, even through a phone.

Lately, it was a miracle she managed to drag herself out of bed some mornings. Her room looked like it had been attacked by a violent tornado, clothes and books scattered all around with nowhere to store them (the designated clothes chair was buried deep under week-long layers of laundry at that point), and there was barely an inch of free space on her desk for any more cups of coffee or boxes of takeout. With ghosting, none of those things would even be considered a concern.

They wouldn't exist, period, but there were things you couldn't tell people without it sounding alarming, and apologizing for disappearing for weeks on end because you were too miserable to pick up the phone was one of them.

Misery was like a dog, Iris found. It was loyal.

With a grunt, Iris kicked away the covers and rolled out of bed, praying the floor wouldn't give out under her feet as soon as her socks brushed against the floorboards.

Gathering the heavy weight of her dark hair into a messy bun, mostly to get it out of her face and not thanks to a sudden wave of vanity (like it would even be possible to make it look good after a week of not showering), Iris made the first brave decision of the day by getting up.

To her shock, nothing bad happened as she did so; the world didn't end, she didn't collapse, and the sun still shone outside to mark yet another bright spring day. To her shock, she found the strength to remain upward on her feet and even to kick stuff away from her path, pairs of socks and shoes and the occasional paper plate. Most days, even that would be a challenge, exhausting her like she was being hunted for sport.

(It was times like those she wished she had a pet—a cat, probably, for they required far less effort than a dog—or something she could use to justify the chaos in her rented apartment. Alas, she didn't.)

She had moved back to Emelle Bay, Oregon, a month prior, and had yet to find the motivation to sort through her mess. Half-unpacked boxes were scattered all around, rummaged through as if by raccoons whenever Iris needed to find something and cursed herself for not properly writing down where everything was, even after her mom had been so careful when she helped her pack up her entire life into cardboard boxes.

Some people made messy apartments look cozy and lived-in, the kind of place people would always feel welcome in, but Iris wasn't one of those people. She hadn't had anyone over ever since she returned, even though she was certain news of her presence had spread across the coastal town, and the unsettling sense of not belonging in a place you used to call home crawled into the gaps between her ribs.

It would be okay. It was for the best, anyway; Iris had her doubts she'd be a good host. She'd never been, really, and there was no living soul who would ever refer to her as the life of the party. At her best, she was a wallflower; at her worst, she didn't even bother attending.

Her phone, set on her bedside table, buzzed with yet another notification, a harsh reminder she ought to either handle the pending conversations she'd been avoiding or switch her phone to silent mode. Airplane mode would fully remove her only connection to the outside world and, regardless of how utterly terrifying it was, she needed some stimulation.

That time, it wasn't her parents. It was an email from work, reminding her of that week's meeting, scheduled for the following day. There were many things on the planet Iris was willing to put herself through at the moment, and not a single one of them included a remote work meeting, but she still had to make ends meet. Necessary sacrifices, and all, and she was lucky her boss had been okay with her working from across the continent during the high season of publishing.

Working at a publishing house as an editor had never been the dream, not exactly, but Iris had worked like hell back in the day to land that internship in hopes of learning more about the industry before kick starting her own writing career. It was one of the few things she'd accomplished in life—she'd been the only intern from the round of new hires three years ago to secure a job at Mango Press—and she couldn't afford to lose it, quite literally. Hadn't she lost enough already?

With a quick swipe of her thumb across the screen of her phone, she dismissed the notification. Out of sight, out of mind, but she still held on to the safety net of her settings; even while neglecting the written reminders of her responsibilities, she knew she could rely on both the automatic sync of her calendar and her memory.

That was what she was known for—the one who was always left behind, the one fated to always remember everything.

When she was younger, it was endearing, the way she held onto the smallest, most obscure details about people. When she was a student, her ability to memorize information always came in handy when it came to academic success, though it left her lacking in the social department; people either thought she was weird and creepy, overanalyzing their deepest secrets and vague aspects of their personalities mentioned once in passing conversation, or that she was stuck up for not letting anyone cheat off of her.

Lately, all she ever did was that. Remembering. Being left behind. That was the whole reason she was back to Emelle Bay; she'd only been back for the funeral, desperate to put the past and everything Lyra Sinclair behind her, and had failed miserably. Even in an apartment Lyra had never stepped foot into, even when Iris was all skin and bones Lyra had never touched, she was everywhere.

She was in the wind, in the alleyways, on the cobblestone paths, in the foam of the ocean that clung to the ends of Iris' hair. Lyra Sinclair was in the whispers that followed Iris around town on the rare occasions she stepped outside, the one person Iris could never escape. She was in her coffee order (and no, she couldn't change it; she'd have to sweeten her coffee, and that would be a crime, so she'd switched to mango smoothies—for now, at least), in her favorite meals, in her usual spots around town. She was on the radio, in the library, sitting in the corner of her bedroom.

It was a two-edged sword, Iris found.

Lyra's lingering memory made her unforgettable and she wouldn't want to completely ignore she'd ever existed, but there would have to be a point in time when she'd allow herself to move on—right?

Letting out a deep exhale, pressing a hand against the side of her ribcage to try and ease the dull, pulsating ache (thump thump thump) brought by Lyra's haunting presence in her life, Iris wished she could stop remembering. It was horrible, but it was true, and it was eating her alive.

It ate her alive how she could still feel Lyra all around her, how she saw her face everywhere she went—even in New York, so far away from Emelle Bay, even in her mom's house in Providence—and how seeing her everywhere was a devastating memento of how Iris had gone and fucked it all up. Even with Mrs. Sinclair's insistence that there was nothing Iris could have done and there was no way of changing history, Iris couldn't shake off the belief there must have been a way out. There had to have been.

She would have found a way of fixing it. She would have found a way of saving Lyra, no matter what it took, no matter if it harmed her, no matter if Lyra would have gone on hating her for eternity.

It was wishful thinking now. Iris knew that.

And yet. And yet.

Falling back to her mattress in pathetic defeat, with Lyra's simultaneous presence and absence weighing down in the air around her to the point it became almost suffocating, Iris pressed the heels of her hands against her closed eyelids.

And she begged. She desperately begged and wished for a way to make it all go away, for a way to somehow trigger a miracle and change the undeniable reality where all time did was pass and all the world did was move on without Lyra. Iris, too, was moving on without Lyra, except she wasn't, except she'd stagnated.

Like Lyra, she haunted coastal towns.

The pit in her stomach widened, stretching down to the floor and the ground below, enveloping her in the same tornado that had run rampant around the apartment, and something shifted—something almost imperceptible, as subtle as the flapping of a butterfly's wings. The immutability of Iris' world was no longer that.

ଓ༉‧.⭒ֶָ֢⋆.

Then, she awoke.

Her phone buzzed. A reminder of the meeting scheduled for the following day brightened up her screen. Her hair was twisted into a bun.

Lyra was still gone. Somehow, something was different—Iris just couldn't tell what.

Not yet, anyway.

ଓ༉‧.⭒ֶָ֢⋆.

wc: 1802 (docs) // 1764 (wattpad)

total wc: 1802 (docs) // 1764 (wattpad)

these word counts don't include this author's note.

hope you enjoyed this first chapter. we're doing it for real this time.