On the eve of graduation, the custom puzzle my brother had ordered for our group of five finally arrived.

Owen called Caleb, my childhood friend, Mason, my boyfriend, and Claire over so we could open it together.

Once we’d finished the puzzle, Claire pointed at the four lifelike figures in the picture. She covered her mouth in exaggerated surprise and gave me a timid look.

“Oh. Why are there only four of us? Did the shop mess up and forget to include Nat…?”

The living room went silent.

Owen froze for a second, then scratched his head casually.

“The draft was based on that beach photo from last month. You were off to the side tying your shoe, Nat, so you weren’t in the picture. The seller just drew the four people they saw.”

Mason patted my shoulder, gently trying to smooth things over.

“It’s fine. It’s only a puzzle. Nat’s never cared about sentimental stuff like this anyway, right?”

I stared at the tightly interlocking puzzle. There wasn’t even space for a fifth person. Inside, I felt nothing.

Right. I didn’t care.

I didn’t care that whenever we went to an escape room, the four of them piled into the car and drove off without me.

I didn’t care that every group-chat conversation died the second I joined in.

I didn’t care that on group trips, they gave the only room with a window to Claire and left me in the basement.

If their world had already locked perfectly into place around four people, then it was time for the extra piece to quietly disappear.

“Nat, you’re not upset, are you?”

Claire tilted her head at me. Her fingers still rested on the edge of the puzzle, one fingertip covering the hem of the dress she wore in the picture.

I shook my head.

“No.”

Claire let out a relieved breath and turned to smile at Mason.

It was a faint smile, as though it meant nothing, but her eyes lingered on him half a second too long.

Mason didn’t look at her. He lowered his head, straightened the puzzle’s edges, and pushed it to the center of the coffee table.

“Which wall should we put it on?” Owen asked.

“The living room,” Claire said. She rose onto her toes and gestured. “Right above the couch, where everyone can see it the second they walk in.”

Owen glanced at me.

“What do you think, Nat?”

“Whatever you guys want.”

“Living room it is.”

He answered quickly, as though asking me had only been a formality.

Caleb came out of the kitchen carrying four iced coffees and handed them out one by one.

Claire. Owen. Mason.

He lifted the fourth to his own mouth, took a sip, and sat down.

Four coffees.

I didn’t wait, and I didn’t ask.

This had happened too many times before.

The first was sophomore year, during a pizza night on campus. Caleb ordered four lemonades and said he’d forgotten mine.

The second time was New Year’s Eve. He bought four sparklers. There wasn’t an extra one.

Then came the third time, the fourth, the fifth.

Eventually, I learned to bring my own water.

“Nat, aren’t you thirsty?” Mason finally noticed that my hands were empty.

“No.”

“I’ll get you some water.”

He got up, walked to the water dispenser, and handed me half a cup of lukewarm water.

Half a cup.

The iced coffee he’d brought Claire had been filled to the top.

I took it, had a sip, and said nothing.

Claire suddenly leaned over and caught my wrist, her voice dripping with affection.

“Don’t be upset, Nat. Next time we take a picture, I’ll remind you to get in it.”

“I’m not upset.”

“Good.” She squeezed my hand. “I knew you’d understand. You always do.”

Understand.

The month before, I’d ordered Owen’s birthday cake a week in advance and spent hours making his favorite barbecue ribs.

That afternoon, the four of them changed their plans at the last minute and went to the waterfront seafood restaurant Claire recommended.

I stood in the kitchen holding the ribs when Owen’s text arrived. “Nat, Claire got us a table. Eat without us. We’ll bring you something back.”

Bring me something back.

They never did.

“Nat.”

Mason’s voice pulled me back.

“Yeah?”

“Did you find that dress for Saturday’s showcase?”

“I did.”

“What color is it?”

“Navy.”

Claire cut in. “Isn’t navy a little dark? The lighting at the showcase won’t be very bright. It might not photograph well.”

She scrolled through her phone, found a picture, and held it out to Mason.

“Mason, look. Wouldn’t a soft champagne color be much more flattering?”

Mason glanced at it.

“It looks nice.”

“Then I’ll wear champagne and Nat can wear navy. One light, one dark. It’ll look perfect when we take pictures together.”

She was already planning our group photo.

Assuming no one left me behind tying my shoe again.

“Oh, right.” Claire pulled up another screenshot. “The seating chart is out. I’m next to Mason, and Nat’s in the third row.”

I looked at Mason.

He didn’t react.

“Why are you two sitting together?”

“Claire helped the event committee rearrange the seats,” Owen answered. “She wanted to sit with us. Your row isn’t far away.”

The third row.

The four of them were in the first row. I was in the third.

Not far.

Owen always thought it wasn’t far.

Just like he thought there was nothing wrong with giving me the basement room. Just like he thought leaving in a locked car without me meant they’d simply forgotten to wait. Just like he thought every conversation went silent because I never knew when to speak.

“Owen, can one of you switch with me?”

“Switch what?”

“Seats. I want to sit in the first row.”

Owen looked awkwardly at Claire.

Claire immediately said, “Nat, it took forever to get the event coordinator to arrange it this way. If we ask her to change it again, she’s going to be annoyed.”

“It’s fine. Forget it.”

I smiled.

Mason patted my knee.

“It’s only two rows. It won’t make a difference.”

No difference.

We had been together for three years, and to him, everything made no difference.

Claire took a photo of the puzzle and posted it in the group chat.

The chat was called “Five Points.”

Five points.

Was a five-pointed star still a star when one point was missing?

Owen liked the picture immediately.

Caleb sent an applauding GIF.

Mason reposted Claire’s photo with the caption: “Graduation memory. Locked in.”

I opened the picture and zoomed in.

Four people stood on the California coast, smiling brightly against blue sky and white surf.

The composition was perfect. There was no empty space.

I had been six feet away, crouching to tie my shoe.

It wasn’t that I hadn’t made it into the picture.

No one had waited for me.

My phone vibrated with an email.

It was from the Zurich design studio where I’d interviewed three months earlier.

I opened it.

“Dear Ms. Bennett, We are pleased to confirm your start date…”

Final confirmation.

I stared at the screen for a long time.

Across the living room, Claire was showing Owen how to frame the puzzle, Caleb was handing her the tools, and Mason was scrolling through his phone on the couch.

No one noticed what I was reading.

I marked the email as read and locked my screen.

“Mason, take me back to campus after Saturday’s showcase.”

“Sure. What time?”

“I’m not sure. I’ll tell you then.”

He nodded, his attention already drifting back to his phone.

Claire’s picture of the puzzle filled his screen. He was typing a reply.

I finished the half cup of lukewarm water and set it on the corner of the coffee table.

It sat in the puzzle’s shadow, where no one could see it.

Just like me.

“Nat, didn’t you buy too many of these?”

The day before the Senior Showcase and Farewell Gala, I spread the five gift bags I’d prepared across my desk and counted them.

Claire leaned halfway through my bedroom door and picked one up to examine it.

Handmade soap. A pressed-flower bookmark. A handwritten card.

I had written a different message in each one.

“Five is exactly right. There are five of us.”

Claire opened one of the cards and read it aloud.

“Caleb, after all these years of arguing, we finally won’t have anything left to argue about. I hope everything ahead of you is wonderful. Wow, Nat. You put so much thought into these.”

“I just wrote whatever came to mind.”

“What did you write in mine?”

I handed her the bag with her name on it.

She opened it, read the card, and smiled.

“‘Claire, take good care of yourself!’ That’s it?”

“What did you want me to write?”

“I thought you’d say something like, ‘Take care of the guys for me.’” She slipped the card back into the bag, her tone airy. “We’re all about to go our separate ways, after all.”

Go our separate ways.

She said it so easily.

“Did you get the offer from that arts nonprofit?”

“I did. It’s a ten-minute walk from Owen’s office.”

“What about Caleb?”

“His creative agency is in the building next door.”

“Mason?”

“His architecture firm is in the same neighborhood. We’ll all be so close. Isn’t that great, Nat?”

She said the word “we.”

As though that included me.

But did she know that my offer wasn’t in this city? Or even this country?

“Weren’t you applying to some design studio? Owen said you were sending out resumes.”

“Yeah.”

“Have you heard anything?”

“I’m still waiting.”

It was a lie.

The offer had been sitting in my inbox for three months already.

I was due to start the following Monday.

“Tell me as soon as you hear,” Claire said as she carried her gift bag out. “We can all have lunch together every day once we start working.”

When the door closed, I opened the offer email again.

Zurich.

An eleven-hour flight.

Far enough.

Mason came to see me that night.

He leaned against my desk and flipped through the graduation album I’d put together.

“Why did you include pictures from freshman year?”

“I wanted something to remember it by.”

He turned to a photo of the five of us on the athletic field.

Freshman outdoor orientation week. After spending all day in the sun, we were all burned red.

“You look ridiculous in this one.”

“You don’t look any better.”

He laughed.

His finger paused over the photograph, the tip landing on the person beside me.

Claire.

“She hadn’t grown her hair out yet.”

“No.”

“She looked good with short hair too.”

I didn’t answer.

He turned the page and found a picture of the two of us alone.

Christmas, outside the campus gates, our scarves wrapped around us until only our eyes showed.

“Do you still have this scarf?”

“I lost it.”

“How?”

“I left it behind when I switched dorms. By the time I went back, maintenance had cleared everything out.”

He said, “Oh,” and didn’t ask anything else.

That scarf had been the first gift he ever gave me.

The day I lost it, I dug through every trash bin in the old residence hall and still couldn’t find it.

I cried the whole way back.

I never told him.

There was no point. He would have said he could buy me another one.

“Mason.”

“Yeah?”

“Have you and Claire been spending a lot of time together lately?”

His hand stopped on the album.

“What do you mean, a lot of time?”

“You have lunch together every day. She brings you coffee at the studio in the afternoon. Last week, you spent three days helping with her capstone.”

“She didn’t know how to use the modeling software. I was just teaching her.”

“For three days.”

“She was shaky on the basics.”

“You’ve never taught me.”

He looked up at me.

“You don’t need me to teach you. You’re much better than she is.”

I was better than she was.

That meant she deserved to be cared for, and I didn’t need anything.

“Mason, Claire has a faculty adviser for her capstone. She doesn’t need you doing it for her.”

“What’s gotten into you today?”

“I just think… you’re too invested in her.”

He closed the album, impatience creeping into his voice.

“Natalie Bennett, what exactly are you trying to say?”

He used my full name.

In three years together, he only did that when he was angry.

“I’m saying you’ve never had that kind of patience with me.”

“What patience? I spend every day with you. Isn’t that enough?”

“Every day? You were with Claire three days in a row last week. I texted you and waited two hours for an answer. You call that spending every day with me?”

He stood up.

“I was helping her. Her capstone deadline is coming up. Can you please not make a scene right now?”

A scene.

My feelings were a scene.

Claire’s needs were serious.

“Fine. I won’t make a scene.”

“Don’t use that tone.”

“What tone?”

“That passive-aggressive tone.”

I took a deep breath.

“Mason, I’m going to ask you something. Answer me honestly.”

“Go ahead.”

“If I suddenly disappeared one day, would you look for me?”

He stared at me for a second, then laughed.

“Where would you disappear to?”

“It’s hypothetical.”

“Of course I’d look for you. You’re my girlfriend.”

He said it as if the answer required no thought at all.

But he didn’t know that my suitcase was already under my bed.

A twenty-inch carry-on containing everything I considered worth taking.

It wasn’t much.

About as little as I’d received from this relationship.

“Stop thinking about weird stuff.” He ruffled my hair. “Did you steam your dress for the showcase?”

“Yes.”

“Claire said the zipper broke on her champagne dress. Can you take a look at it tomorrow? You’re much better at sewing than she is.”

He was asking me to repair Claire’s dress.

He saw nothing wrong with that.

“Sure.”

“Get some sleep.”

He left.

After the door closed, I crouched down and pulled the suitcase from under my bed.

I unzipped it. Clothes and documents were arranged neatly inside.

My passport was on top.

My Swiss national visa and work-permit approval sat perfectly straight inside it.

I pulled the Christmas picture of Mason and me out of the album and studied it for a moment.

Then I returned it to the drawer instead of putting it in my suitcase.

Some things weren’t worth taking.

“Nat, take that cake to the side room for Claire.”

Backstage at the graduation showcase, Owen pushed a three-tier fondant cake toward me.

“What’s this?”

“Claire’s graduation surprise. The three of us chipped in. I covered your share, so just send it to me later.”

I stared at the words written across the cake in frosting: “CONGRATS, CLAIRE!”

“When did you order it?”

“Last week. We talked about it in the group chat. Didn’t you see?”

I opened the chat and scrolled back.

Thursday night at eleven.

Owen had posted a link to the cake designs.

Caleb said the second one looked best.

Mason replied with an OK emoji.

Claire wasn’t in that chat. They had another one without me.

At eleven that same night, I had sent a message: “Does anyone want to pick up our graduation packets together tomorrow?”

Owen’s cake link came immediately after it.

They had skipped right over my message.

No one answered me. No one tagged me to ask if I wanted to contribute. No one asked for my opinion.

“How much?”

“Your share is sixty dollars.”

Sixty dollars.

My graduation surprise was a puzzle that didn’t include me.

Claire’s was a two-hundred-and-forty-dollar fondant cake.

“Sent.”

I opened Venmo and transferred the money.

Owen accepted it and patted my shoulder.

“Take the cake to the side room. Claire will come down that way after her performance.”

“Why am I carrying it?”

“You’re closest to that hall. I still have to fix the lighting.”

“Where’s Caleb?”

“He went to meet Claire’s parents. They’re coming tonight too.”

“Mason?”

“He’s helping Claire rehearse her lines.”

The three of them each had a job, and every job revolved around Claire.

My job was carrying the cake.

“Fine. I’ll take it.”

The lights were off in the side hall.

I carried the three-tier cake alone down a long corridor.

It was heavy. My wrists trembled.

As I passed the restroom, I heard Claire’s voice through the door.

I stopped.

“…Mason slipped me something a minute ago. Guess what it was?”

Another girl asked, “What?”

“A silver bracelet. It has a tiny star engraved on it.”

“Wow. Doesn’t he have a girlfriend?”

“He said it was a graduation gift. He got something for everyone.”

“Did he get one for Natalie Bennett?”

There was a second of silence.

Claire laughed softly.

“He probably did. They’ve been together for three years.”

“Why did you say it like that?”

“Like what?”

“I’m telling you, the vibe between you and Mason is seriously flirty. Last time I saw you two alone in the studio, the way he held your easel for you…”

“Don’t say that!” Claire lowered her voice, laughter woven through it. “He has a girlfriend.”

“So? He has a girlfriend and still got a star engraved for you.”

They dissolved into laughter.

I stood in the corridor holding the cake, my knuckles white.

Mason had bought Claire a bracelet engraved with a star.

What about me?

I thought for a long time.

I couldn’t remember the last thing he’d given me.

On my birthday the previous month, he’d sent one text. “Happy birthday. Things are crazy right now. I’ll make it up to you.”

Later.

He still hadn’t made it up to me.

I left the cake on a table in the side room and returned backstage.

Mason was leaning against the wall, looking at his phone.

“Did you buy Claire a bracelet?”

He looked up.

“Who told you?”

“I just heard about it.”

“It’s a graduation gift. I got something for everyone.”

“Where’s mine?”

He smacked a hand against his forehead.

“I haven’t had time to buy yours yet. There’s been too much going on.”

“You had time to get hers, but not mine?”

“I happened to see hers online, so I ordered it early.”

“You engraved a star on it.”

His expression shifted.

“It was just a design. I picked it at random.”

“A random design still had to be customized. Customization takes time, which means you planned it well in advance.”

“Natalie Bennett, can you stop twisting everything into something it isn’t?”

My full name again.

“Mason, this is our graduation showcase. Could you look at me just once? Since we got here, you’ve helped Claire rehearse, adjusted her microphone, and followed her everywhere. How many times have you even looked at me?”

“You don’t need my help.”

I had heard that sentence for three years.

I didn’t need anything.

Claire did.

Claire always did.

“Fine. I don’t need you.”

The showcase began.

I sat in the third row.

The four of them were in the first row, their profiles bright beneath the stage lights.

When Claire went onstage to sing, Mason held up his phone and recorded her.

Caleb helped angle a light toward her.

Owen stood in the wings, ready to hand her water.

The three of them were satellites orbiting the same sun.

Claire finished the final note and bowed.

The room erupted in applause.

Mason was the first person on his feet.

I clapped too.

Then the lights went down, the side door opened, and the cake rolled out.

The same cake I had carried in.

When the candles lit up, Claire covered her mouth, her eyes filling with tears.

“Oh my God… When did you guys do this?”

Owen grinned. “Guess whose idea it was.”

Claire looked around.

“Mason’s?”

Mason shook his head and pointed at Owen.

“Owen planned it. Caleb and I just helped.”

Claire threw herself into Owen’s arms.

“Owen! You’re the best!”

Caleb laughed beside them. “I went to three bakeries before I found someone who could make that cake. Don’t I get a thank-you?”

“Thank you, Caleb!”

She hugged them one after another.

Owen. Caleb. Mason.

Then she turned toward me.

“Nat helped too, right?”

“She carried the cake in,” Owen said. “You should thank her.”

Carried the cake.

Owen had planned it. Caleb had done the running around. Mason had helped.

My contribution was carrying the cake.

Claire walked over and gave me a quick hug.

“Thanks, Nat.”

Her arms barely touched me before she let go.

When she hugged Owen, she had practically hung off him.

When she hugged me, she treated me like porcelain, afraid I might break.

No.

Afraid I might stain her.

After the showcase, the night wind swept through the corridor.

I walked alone at the back.

The four of them moved side by side ahead of me, Claire’s arm linked through Owen’s, with Mason and Caleb on either side.

They were laughing and talking. The wind blurred their words.

I was about sixteen feet behind them.

Sixteen feet.

Not far. Not close.

Exactly the right distance for someone to be forgotten.

My phone vibrated.

It was a message from the airline.

“Your June 18 flight from San Francisco to Zurich has been ticketed. Please arrive at SFO three hours before departure.”

June 18.

The day after tomorrow.

I put my phone back in my pocket. I didn’t hurry to catch up.

I didn’t turn around either.