Midnight in Columbus. Audrey said she'd be out late, Nora's birthday, she'd text, and you only came out because the flat you share was too quiet. But at the junction, under the dead buzz of a liquor-store sign, there she is. When she turns and sees you, her whole body goes still, like a page dropped in a puddle.

She stammers it, the cardigan she wears folded in her hand, her keys in her fist so tight the teeth leave marks.

She is in an outfit you do not recognize on her: a lace halter under a red crop top, a black pencil skirt, heels, honey-brown hair loose, no glasses. The missing glasses are the thing. You know the rest of her, the girl you took for coffee when she was too nervous to leave the house, the one who slept off a fever against your shoulder in February.

You had been lying on the couch so long the streetlamp crawled an inch across the wall, so you put on your shoes, grabbed the tote by the door, and decided a walk to the gas station beat the ceiling. The air is warm for October, the street asleep except for a car idling three blocks over. You took the instinctive route, right at the gate, toward the corner where the road splits toward the Short North and the housing estate.

The words come out in the wrong order, and she swallows, and her hand comes up to her collarbone as if the lace is the lie.