TWILIGHT TOWN

Olette sits on the couch quietly, using her entire concentration to keep still. Pence and Hayner are both out working: Hayner had shown great aptitude for the grandstanding job (he'd always loved to put on a show), and Pence had opted for helping move stuff into the garage. She herself likes to deliver mail, because she likes the interaction with people, likes the way they smile at her when she hands them their letters. But the job goes quickly, and she's always done before the day is even halfway over.

She's come to like it; it's her only selfish habit. She finishes her job before her two (and her mind balks, slightly, and the number three struggles below the surface) friends and she comes back to the usual spot and sits on her couch, quietly, and stares at the pictures they've all taken together: Hayner, Pence, her, and—

Who?

She wonders, quietly, because if she wonders too loudly it's over for the day because it's only now, when things are perfectly still, and perfectly quiet, that things hover warily at the edge of her memory. Half-forgotten things come back to her, half-formed images, half-said words…. Like, earlier that day someone had told Hayner that he was his "all-time favorite customer," and she had felt a funny sort of tug, right behind her navel, and she thought to herself: "No. That's not right."

And these days there's always kind of an inky sort of wrongness that permeates things, and she can't figure it out. She knows that it hasn't always felt like this. Something changed, but what?

Sitting here, still and quiet, she can't really say.

If she sort of half-closes her eyes and doesn't focus on anything in particular—no, that's not it. If she focuses on not focusing, if she pretends to be doing something else besides trying to remember, it comes back to her, a little bit.

This is when she sees him. She can't look at him, exactly; she can only sort of study him out of the corner of her eye, so it's blurry and she can't quite remember his name, but she can tell it's there in her memory, somewhere between her heart and the tip of her tongue.

All she knows is that he's got blue eyes and blonde hair and that somehow, inexplicably, she misses him.