UNRANKED BEFORE THE END: Everyone had a rank except me

Second Place

VANESSA — DAY THREE

---

The key is warm from my own hand.

He gave it to me this morning, in the doorway of the lecture hall, with a grin like a boy handing over something he stole. "Spare," he said. "In case you need to get in before me. Don't lose it."

I said I wouldn't.

I've been holding it all day. Turning it over in my pocket until the brass went soft and skin-warm, until it stopped feeling like something he gave me and started feeling like something I found.

So at four o'clock I let myself in.

The suite is quiet. His jacket is over the back of a chair and the kettle is still warm and there's music coming from the bathroom, low, half-drowned by the water. The shower's running.

I stand in his kitchen for a second and just breathe it in. This is what it smells like to have money. Clean, and warm, and like a boy who has never once had to think about whether he can afford the heating.

---

His phone is on the counter, face up, still lit.

I wasn't looking for anything. That's the truth, and I want it written down somewhere, because it matters. I only wanted to see if he'd saved my number as Van or Vanessa. That's all. That's the whole crime.

The screen is a map.

She shares her location with him. Half the campus does it's the thing couples do now, a little blue dot that means I'm here, I'm safe, come find me. She set it up months ago and forgot about it, the way you forget a thing that's supposed to keep you safe.

A small blue dot sits in the middle of it, on the second floor of the east hostels, fourth window from the left, and I know exactly whose window that is because I sleep six feet away from it.

I go very still.

Then I scroll.

Lecture times. Monday, Tuesday, Thursday. The coffee spot she likes on the corner where the tree hangs over the pavement. The shuttle she takes home when it's dark. The library desk she always sits at. Every hour of her day, laid out neat, like a timetable. Like a hunt.

At the bottom, a note in his careful rich-boy typing:

Say sorry first. Don't mention Vanessa. Notebook is in the desk drawer, left side.

I told him that. Left side. I told him because he asked nicely.

I read the last line three times.

Don't mention Vanessa.

---

Here's the thing nobody understands about being the friend.

I have known Amelia Grace since we were nine years old. I have been beside her through every single thing that has ever happened to her, and in every one of those moments, I have been slightly to the left. Not in front. Not behind. Just beside. Present. Unnecessary.

People don't come to me. They come to her. They come to the girl who fixes schedules and hands out pens and listens to your problems with her whole face. And when they're done, they look at me and say oh, and you're her friend, aren't you, the way you'd point out a lamp.

I learned to smile early. It's a good smile. Warm, practiced, the kind that makes people think I'm kind.

And then Ashley Hayes chose me.

He chose me. That's the part I need you to understand. Out of every girl on this campus, out of her, he picked me. When the snow came and the doors were closing and everyone was screaming, he grabbed my hand and pulled me through and I thought I actually thought finally. Finally something is mine.

He held my hand in the dark. When the lights went out in that bunker, and the air got thick, and the food ran down to nothing, he held my hand, and he said we'll be fine, and I believed him.

And then we died.

And then we woke up.

He remembers the bunker. He told me so on the second day, in a voice like a man reading out a bank statement, and I pretended it was a relief to hear it, and he pretended not to notice that I already knew.

And I thought: this is a reward. This is the universe saying I did my time. Second chance, second place no more, and the boy who chose me in the dark is going to choose me in the light too. That's what I tell myself, and I'm good at telling myself things.

I built every single thing on that hand.

---

The shower shuts off.

I put the phone down exactly where it was. Face up. Still glowing. I smooth my hair and I smooth my face and I make sure the smile is on properly, the real one, the one that took years to learn.

When he comes out with a towel over his shoulders, I'm holding two cups of coffee.

"You look tired," I say softly.

"Big week." He takes one, kisses my forehead, and there's a small warm spot left on my skin when he pulls away.

"Anything you want to talk about?"

"Nothing worth boring you with."

He smiles at me. It's a perfect smile. It costs him nothing at all.

And I smile back and let him, and behind it something small and old and sharp turns over in my chest and opens one eye.

Because he told me to say sorry first.

Sorry is what you say to someone you wronged. Sorry is what you say when you're coming back.

And don't mention Vanessa that's not a plan. That's a door closing. That's a boy making sure the room stays tidy while he does something he doesn't want me to see.

He was tracking her. Her lectures and her coffee and her shuttle home. And he didn't even need to, because I gave him the drawer myself, with a smile, because he asked nicely.

He's still chasing her.

Second place again, I think.

Even at the end of the world.