Time seemed to bend around the glowing screen of my phone. The world had just been ripped open by Sera's visit, and now this—a single, unread email, a name I didn't know from a place that represented a desperate, whispered hope. My mind, still reeling from the casual cruelty of being treated like a human storage unit, couldn't process the new input.
h.chapman@blackwoodpress.com
My first thought was that it was a rejection. A polite, automated message thanking me for my time but informing me that they'd gone with a "more qualified candidate." It had to be. The universe wasn't kind enough to kick you down and offer you a hand up in the same hour. That wasn't how my story worked. My story was about being the one left behind in the rain.
My thumb trembled as I moved it towards the screen. For a moment, I wanted to throw the phone across the room, to shatter the screen and the message with it, to retreat back into the familiar, predictable pain of my grief. It was safer there. But the ghost of Sera's new, expensive perfume still lingered in the air, a testament to a life that was moving on, accelerating away from me. Staying still was no longer an option. Staying still was a slow death.
I tapped the screen. The email opened.
My eyes scanned the text, my brain refusing to parse the words at first. I read it again, slower this time, my lips moving silently.
Subject: Your Application for the Junior Designer Position
Dear Ms. Finch,
Thank you for your interest in Blackwood Press. We were impressed with your portfolio, particularly the Community Library project. We would like to invite you for an interview.
Please let us know your availability for next week.
Sincerely,Helen ChapmanHead of Design, Blackwood Press
The words hung there in the digital space, stark and unbelievable. Impressed with your portfolio. The phrase seemed to vibrate with a strange energy. It was a direct contradiction to everything I was feeling. How could I be an impressive candidate when, ten minutes ago, I had been a trembling, invisible ghost in my own home?
A dry, choked sound escaped my lips. It might have been a laugh. It might have been a sob. The emotional whiplash was dizzying. I had been bracing for impact, for the final confirmation of my own inadequacy, but the crash never came. Instead, this. A hand reaching out from the void.
Helen Chapman of Blackwood Press had not seen the girl who stood mute at her own front door. She hadn't seen the "beta" who was a moon to someone else's sun. She had seen the architect. She had seen the woman who designed the library.
My first instinct, a deeply ingrained reflex, was to think, I have to tell Sera! The thought was a phantom limb, a twitch from a part of me that had been amputated. The joy of the news was immediately and inextricably tangled with the profound loneliness of having no one to share it with. This incredible, impossible moment felt hollow because the one person I would have immediately called was the reason I needed this job in the first place.
But then, a second thought followed, quieter and more revolutionary.
Sera's name wasn't on that application. Her influence wasn't in that portfolio. She hadn't charmed Helen Chapman over cocktails. I had done this. From the solitude of this apartment, with nothing but a half-dead laptop and a desperate hope, I had done this.
This was the first significant thing to happen in my life in years that was entirely, unequivocally mine.
The realization was not a lightning strike but a slow, dawning light. It didn't erase the pain, but it illuminated a path through it. The grief was still there, a heavy cloak on my shoulders, but this email was a hand slipping under it, reminding me that I could stand up straight.
I had to reply. The thought sent a new wave of panic, but this one was different. It was the nervous energy of opportunity, not the dread of failure. I sat down, my hands still shaking, and began to type. I channeled the person who wrote the proposal for that library—the one who was clear, concise, and professional. I thanked Ms. Chapman for the opportunity. I expressed my enthusiasm. I confirmed my availability.
Each word I typed was an act of defiance against the ghost of Sera, against the girl I had been. Each sentence was a brick being laid for a new foundation.
I hit send.
I stood up and walked to the window. The drizzle had stopped. The sky was a deep, bruised purple, but below, the city was a constellation of steady, golden lights. They no longer looked like a blurry, sorrowful watercolor. They looked like individual points of existence, thousands of separate lives, each with their own story. For the first time, I felt like I might be one of them again.
The scent of Sera's perfume was still in the air, a faint, floral taunt. But it was weaker now. It was competing with the clean, sharp scent of possibility, of a future that I had, against all odds, just claimed for myself. I had an interview. I had a chance. And it was mine alone.