Running Out of Time

Chapter Twelve

After the final performance, everyone lingered around, staying up long past curfew to chat with their friends before the teachers and parents sent us all off to bed. The next morning, we would pack up and all leave, and within two weeks, I'd be back again, although in a different dorm, in a different world altogether.

I didn't see Lia that night. I surmised that her parents had kept her away, suspected that we would try to find each other, to speak once more, to even make plans to elope and run far away. But I wasn't that foolish. And I knew Lia definitely wasn't so. I stumbled back to my dorm feeling unfulfilled and miserable, and Aubrey patted me in the back before changing into nightclothes and climbing into bed. I stayed awake even longer, watching the last dredges of the moonlight shine down on the floor. Only when the sun began to peek over the horizon did I slip into bed and sleep for a few hours.

My sleep was riddled with hazy dreams, and when I awoke, I felt even less rested than I had the night before, and I blinked my eyes open to see Aubrey already packing her minimal belongings.

She smiled at me sadly. "You'll keep in touch?"

"Are you coming back for the school year?" I asked instead.

She shook her head. "It's expensive. My parents can't afford it. I'll still be dancing, though. If I get lucky, I'll win a scholarship."

"Nice." I smiled. "Yeah, I'll keep in touch."

My gaze drifted out the window to the sun, already high in the sky. Our moonlight had already been squandered away and wasted, and there was nothing left to do about it. Nothing would ever be the same anymore.

I swallowed and slowly climbed out of bed, changing into a set of street clothes and packing the rest into my luggage. I also took down some of the decorations I had collected, and I packed them neatly inside. I slid on my sneakers as Aubrey zipped her luggage up and looked at me.

"I hope I'll see you again someday." I offered a weak smile. There was an awkward silence. Throughout the months at Victoria Bergen School of Dance, she and I had formed a sort of friendship. It hadn't been the best or the closest, but she'd been there when I'd needed her, and what more could a friend do than that?

"Yeah, definitely." She answered. We stared at each other in the dorm room.

"Bye, Willow." Aubrey said softly.

"Bye, Aubrey."

She engulfed me in a hug. "I'll miss you."

"You too."

Then, she was out the door, leaving me alone in the dorm room, which now felt bigger than ever, and myself?—I felt more insignificant than ever.

I paused in my packing and tramped upstairs to Lia's dorm room. I needed to see her one last time. I knocked on the door and waited for an answer, but there was none. When I pushed at the door, I was surprised to find it opened easily.

She'd already left. Of course, that was how she would've done it: cut the ties clean, with no lingering strings to tug at her heart once she left. There was no space for goodbyes in this horrid and cruel world.

There was nothing in her room to remind me that she'd ever existed here at all. Her existence had simply been wiped out from this room.

I turned in a circle in the center of the room, taking in the closet, the bed, the small desk and mirror. Suddenly, a flash of color caught my eye, and I paused. Moving back the door, on the back of it, hung a sleeveless black tunic made of sheer fabric, something that I'd remembered she'd worn the first time I saw her.

There was a note on the hanger. It read, "halfway will never be enough".

Lia must've realized. She must've known that I would've come up to her dorm and look for her, so she left this for me. I gently took it in my hands, then folded it, placing the note in the center, and hugged it to my chest as I rushed back downstairs.