Why was I cleaning out the creepy little closet in the bathroom at 3 A.M.? I don’t know. I guess I wanted something to do with myself so I wouldn’t be sitting at my desk anymore. I had been sitting there for about twelve hours doing hardly anything at all except feeling like a garbage bag full of dead earthworms.

In a box near the back I found a little notebook. I flipped through it and groaned. Inside were a bunch of dumb drawings and to-do lists and half-formed notes I had written a year or so after high school. Then I found this sketch of me that someone had done long ago. I thought for a minute and decided that this person is the only thing, inanimate or otherwise, that I miss anymore. I don’t miss anything else.

She was a good one. If I thought about her long enough I might crack.

Hey, lady. Are you alive? I’ll tell you what, I miss you a lot. Thanks for being so nice to me.