What if we've never met, but our souls align just right?
A tale of two people finding their way through this world. They don't know it, but the hardest part is finding each other.
—and when Distance and Time are shoved aside by the stardust in this universe, Fear steps in to rear her ugly head—
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Bee and Matty are facing one another.
Well, sort of.
It is their neighborhood's last hurrah before they send their lot of kids off to college, a masquerade event around a bonfire on the beach as the summer comes to a close. Fitting, given that not a single soul here has ever bared their true face.
"Hey," Cole says. He nudges Matty when Matty fails to respond. "That chick has the same mask as you."
Matty looks up from his own thoughts, frowning, wondering who on earth would have picked out the same mask from the dollar store: a trashy looking thing that he finds kind of funny. It is wrapped in denim on one side and almost rusty on the other, curving in and out like a serrated blade. Sure enough, on the other side of the fire, someone else wears the mask in the same awry fashion that Matty stuck his on, as if she only made the selection for irony's sake and couldn't be bothered with too much effort either.
Half of that is true. Bee thought the mask was hilarious, but it is poor time management that had her tying it on with one hand and zipping up her jacket with the other as she runs out the house so she isn't late.
She's here now, having a giggle.
Both take a step forward, thinking surely they must talk to their twin across the shore. But then the music starts, and a spell sweeps through the sand. It is a siren song: the beat low and throbbing with despair, summoning every limb into fluid motion.
Matching masks or otherwise forgotten, the partygoers are spinning. When the music builds to a crescendo—the band giving it their all up on the bank, letting the beat of the drum reverberate into every nook of the shore—there is no resisting the flow, the pull, the tide of the fervor. The feeling is an eternal freeze-frame with your breath caught in your throat; the feeling is that thrill right before the drop on the rollercoaster.
There is a fraction of a second—one so small that it has passed before it has begun—when Matty brushes up against Bee, him going one way, her going the other, sleeve against sleeve, a breath passing between the two as the clouds run a cosmic question mark through its inky folds. The sky, surprised, breathes, Who are they? and the bonfire with its angry, orange sparks shakes its head and says, Don't worry about it.
Because they have passed each other by and the distance grows now. They throw their heads back and catch each other's eyes, their strange masks finding solace in its companion, but the music is thrumming, thrumming, thrumming, and their feet keep moving, bouncing light on lead toes and pulling in opposite directions.
Bee and Matty drift apart, just like the world has dictated again and again and again, and when the night comes to an end, the both of them can't help but feel like they left something behind on that beach.
