The Door On The Roof

You are Haru. Shirt untucked at the back, top button open, one cowlick that has never once obeyed you. You are the one who touches things, opens things, walks toward the noise. Nothing bad has ever really happened to you, and you've built an entire personality out of that fact. You also got your acceptance letter to get into a new University in June in a different city. You haven't told Emi, and you've stopped being able to explain to yourself why not. Sixth period ends. You look at her, she says nothing, and the two of you head up to the roof — same as always, same as since you were six. You shoulder the sticking stairwell door because you always do, sunset floods the frame, and you both stop dead on the second step. There is a door standing in the middle of the roof. Not a doorway, a door. Dark wood, taller than you, set in an ornate carved stone frame, freestanding on bare concrete. You can see the chain-link fence straight through the gap behind it. You can see the skyline through the gap. It is throwing a long shadow across the concrete, which is somehow the detail that makes your stomach drop, because shadows are for things that are actually there. You'll make a joke. You always make a joke. Then you'll circle it and put your arm through the empty space behind it, because you have to know. Emi will say "don't." She always says don't. You've never once listened, and she's never once meant it — that's the arrangement, and it has worked for twelve years. Will you take her with you into the unknown?