I found you.

Emma grabbed her coat from its hanger and her keys from their hook. She locked everything up, and wove through the candy section of the charge station, resisting the urge to grab a handful of caramels in exchange for a few toonies.

She made her way over to the power box, switching the lights off with a static blink. A grey hood sat just barely visible in the outdoor light. She paused, car keys already pressed between her knuckles. She seemed to float over the cracked black and white tiles, pushing her way outside. The icy wind breathed on her cheeks until they felt like those of a china-doll. Gravel crunched, the concrete hissing its distaste at her feet.

She chewed her lip thoughtfully. “Do I want to die tonite?” she looked at the bench; the person on it sat perfectly still, staring into the darkness of the forest beside them. “Not really, no….” She swallowed the fear down, clenching her fist. “Hello?” she said, the figure startled, arms pin-wheeling before falling to the ground with the rest of their body. Not even a whisper from the gravel. Rude. A grunt of surprise erupted from the fallen form, she rushed to their side, cheeks aflame as she apologised. “God, I’m sorry…. Are you ok?.....I didn’t mean to….”

She caught a glimpse of their face, rounded features carved away until rolling valleys shadowed their face. So pale, they could’ve been the snow bobbing leisurely on the breeze. Eyes like buttons, so curious in their prison of skin.… So familiar…. She saw a smile flick with swift feet about their mouth, before they jumped to their feet and sped into the forest, blending with the darkness as though they’d never sat on that grimey, cigarette-scraped bench.

She was frozen.

She thawed. “What the–” A murmured string of curses followed as she hurried to her car; graphic enough to make Grandma roll over in her grave, hop out, and run screaming for the hills. She opened the car, taking a seat in its chilly interior; She shivered in her jeans and t-shirt, perhaps not the most appropriate clothing for January.

So silent. They fell off the bench, it should’ve made a sound….

She shook her head.

The engine ceased its buzzing as she parked in front of her house. She flipped off the headlights that shone circles of light onto the garage door.

Those lights were perfect for the puppet shows she and her sibling used to play. She remembered that they’d spread out a picnic blanket right where the front of her car stopped. When it was dark enough to see the billions of stars poking through the sky’s inky underbelly, she would prop the flashlight on a pile of old rubbermaids, and they’d weave their shadow hands through the light like painters on a canvas. They were artists, and suddenly they weren’t. Her sibling was gone, only three-years-old, from the same charge station she worked at now. Gone along with their car window, that lay in shards on the ground, and their, most beloved, family stability.

The next thing she knew, she was being shipped off to boarding school at eight years old; away from her friends, the parents that couldn’t take a breath from screaming at each other long enough to comfort the heart-broken creature that she had been; away from the only connection she had to her sibling; away from everything that she loved.

About twelve years into the future, you get her. A woman who worked at the charge station that held the last memories she had of her sibling, lived in the house her parents left to her in their will, and drove the car that they didn’t crash into the nearby lake; who was sent to her grandmother’s house on the holidays, because her parents weren’t sober enough to deal with their daughter, let alone care.

They didn’t even come to her official transition from neutral to gendered. She decided she was a girl when she was twelve-years-old, she didn’t even know if her parents ever found out. She often wondered what her sibling would’ve decided, if he’d gotten the chance.

At least she had Oma, she would smile away the darkness. Cook away the sadness. laugh away the loneliness. Oma gathered as many of the fractured pieces of her that she could find, and placed each piece back where it belonged with gentle hands. There were still pieces missing, though. And truthfully, without Oma, she didn’t know how she would ever find them all.

She lay awake that night, thinking about the stranger’s eyes. She could’ve sworn she’d seen them before. They screamed at her, breaking the silence she needed to sleep. She opened up her laptop, squinting at the blaring light. She flipped through the local news, wondering what had happened while she worked away at her mundane job: A murder a couple miles south. A lost dog nearby. A middle school science fair. Nothing truly exceptional yet. She paused, a title catching her eye. “Dead teen found in Walden forest.” It showed a photo of the body. She blanched, closing the computer. The faces were the same. Walden forest stood right beside the charge station. The kid who sat perfectly alive on the bench just three-hours ago was dead. Her fingers trembled, but she managed to return to the story. “Photo taken at 8:37 PM, January 17th, 2049.” She always left work at 10 PM. The kid would’ve been dead already. Her heart beat at her chest like a drum. She threw the computer to the end of her bed, running for the bathroom, where she retched for a good ten minutes. Maybe they were.

She sat, heaving against the bathroom wall, The tiles cold on her spine. Her fingers grasped at the silky strands slipping from her short ponytail.

“Hello?”

She went completely still. Then she trembled, hoping she’d imagined it.

“Help me.”

Tears streamed down her cheeks like spring melt from the mountains. No. “P-p-please, go away.” she whispered back. “You’re d-dead.”

“I found you, Em.” they whispered back. “I found you, my sibling.”

Impossible. She stood up so fast her vision dipped and swayed. “Ollie?” She whispered. “Ollie?” She said again, louder this time. “Where are you?” She sobbed, tears dripped on the floor. A puddle began to form.

“I’m outside in the snow. But it doesn’t notice me anymore.” they responded, a tinge of regret in their voice. It doesn’t notice me anymore….

Oh.

“I’m coming, Ollie.” she gasped, sprinting into the hall, down the stairs, and out the door. She didn’t bother with the slippers that sat by the door. Ollie stood below my bathroom window, not an imperfection in the snow surrounding them. Her chest cracked, she walked to them. Ignoring the icy teeth biting at her feet. She pressed a hand against their face, the same face she’d seen earlier this evening. It felt real.

She kept crying. She gathered them into her arms, feeling the sobs wracking both their bodies. “I found you.” She murmured in their ear. Ollie sighed, wrapping their arms around her tighter.

“You have to let me go soon.” they said. “For both of us….and I have to let you.”

She squeezed her eyes shut, holding them tighter. “I know, I promise I will soon.” She replied. “I love you.”

“I love you too.”

Time passed, and then she stood alone as the snow swirled in flurries around her.