Every year since college graduation, the five of us had an unbroken tradition: on the first Saturday of October, we drove up to Blue Ridge Summit, hiked to the crest where we once promised to stay in one another’s lives forever, and tied red prayer ribbons to the old oak trees. This year, just a few hundred yards past the trailhead, the trail narrowed, crowded with weekend hikers. A sudden jostle from a passerby made Chloe stumble. Before she could even gasp, Theo—my boyfriend of three years—caught her by the waist. My brother, Clay, reached out instantly to slap aside a low-hanging pine branch before it brushed her face. Beside them, Drew, my childhood best friend, smoothly unhitched the heavy daypack from her shoulders and swung it over his own. They formed a tight, instinctive circle around her. In the crush, my foot slipped off the gravel shoulder. Pain shot white-hot through my right ankle as it rolled. A sharp cry caught in my throat, but by the time I steadied myself against the rough bark of a pine, the four of them were already a dozen yards ahead, their backs blending seamlessly into the dappled sunlight. They didn’t look back. I told myself this was our tradition. I couldn’t be the one who failed to show up. Biting down on my lower lip, dragging my swelling foot over rocks and roots, I pushed myself all the way to the lookout. When I finally crested the ridge, the first thing I saw was Theo taking off his fleece jacket and gently draping it over Chloe’s shoulders. Clay was tucking a sprig of wild red berries behind her ear, laughing at something she said. Drew was holding her wrist steady, guiding her hand as she looped a crimson ribbon around a high branch. Four branches decorated. Four sprigs tucked into hair and collars. None for me. A gust of autumn wind cut straight through my thin long-sleeve tee. I shivered, standing frozen on the edge of the clearing. Last October, the trail had been washed out near the peak, and there was only one remaining pass for the mountain tram. Theo had pressed the ticket into Chloe’s palm without a second thought. Clay and Drew had shielded her through the turnstile, and just before the metal doors slid shut, Clay turned and called out to me over the noise: “You’ve got great stamina, Winnie! Hike up the fire road—it’ll take you no time. See you at the top!” By the time I dragged myself to the summit that day, they had already taken their golden-hour selfies around Chloe and were heading down to beat the chill. And the year before that? We were supposed to meet at the old ranger station. Chloe had gotten lost taking a scenic detour. The three boys immediately turned back along the trail to search for her. They found her, took an alternate route down, and went out for hot cider. I waited at the ranger station until dusk bled into total darkness. Not a single text. My pocket vibrated. I pulled out my phone. A photo popped up in our group chat of five. A smiling, sunlit selfie of the four of them, cheeks flushed, heads leaning together. Beneath it, Chloe’s message flashed: [Four ribbons. Perfect fit.] A hollow ache bloomed in my chest, strangely quiet. It wasn’t that they kept forgetting me. It was that they had never needed me there in the first place. Which was fine. Because when you were never truly counted, nobody would stand in the doorway when you walked away. … I wiped the cold moisture from my cheeks, turned around, and began the slow, agonizing hobble back down the mountain. Whatever stubborn fire had driven me up the trail was completely gone, leaving only the dull throb in my ankle and the empty ache in my joints. By the time I reached the gravel parking lot at the base, twilight had swallowed the horizon. I collapsed onto the wooden steps of the visitor center, pried off my boot, and stared at my ankle. It was purple and swollen to the size of a grapefruit. My phone rang. The screen lit up with Theo’s name. It seemed he had finally remembered my existence. “Winnie? Did you slack off halfway up again? What’s taking you so long?” His voice was casual, backgrounded by the rustle of nylon and wind. “We just rented the gear. We’re setting up camp on the ridge tonight to catch the Orionid meteor shower.” A gruff voice cut in over the line—the park attendant: “Hey son, that four-person tent isn’t going to fit five adults comfortably.” Clay’s voice drifted through, easy and dismissive. “No worries, man. Winnie’s tough as nails. Used to freezing her tail off on winter track. Just throw in an extra sleeping pad; she’ll be fine.” Drew chimed in with a chuckle. “Yeah, she can sleep by the flap. Keep watch for the raccoons.” Another joke. Another laugh that swept every slight under the rug, as if humor could erase the sting. I said nothing. Theo got to the point. “Hey, swing by the ranger station before they close and grab some antiseptic wipes and band-aids, will you? Chloe scratched her wrist on a branch when she was hanging her ribbon.” “Of course.” That was why he called. “I’m hurt, too,” I said, my voice thin against the wind. Drew’s voice came through on speaker, laced with impatience rather than concern. “Come on, Winnie, you probably just rolled it a tiny bit. You’ve always been like this—one little bump and the whole world has to stop turning for you.” Chloe’s gentle, hesitant voice floated near the receiver. “If Winnie doesn’t want to, it’s really fine, guys. Don’t push her. I can just wait it out.” Clay’s tone hardened instantly. “Don’t defend her, Chloe. Mr. Albright spent half his weekends tutoring us in high school for free. The least Winnie can do for his daughter is grab a couple of band-aids after you got hurt.” Chloe’s father had been their high school homeroom teacher. He had helped the three of them get through AP calculus, helped keep Drew from getting suspended, helped Theo through his college essays. But I hadn’t gone to their school. I had never spoken a full sentence to Mr. Albright. Yet over the last four years, I had treated Chloe like a sister. They always told me: “That’s what real friends do. They make room for each other.” They told me: “Her dad did so much for us; you should be extra kind to her, Winnie.” So when she mentioned being cold on our first winter trip, I took off the cashmere scarf Theo had given me and wrapped it around her neck. When she said she got carsick in the backseat, I slid quietly into the back of Theo’s sedan, leaving the passenger seat to her. When she admired the limited-edition headphones I had saved two months of tutoring money to buy, I hesitated, then handed them over with a polite smile. Piece by piece, I had yielded my things, my time, and my rightful place. I closed my eyes. The exhaustion went bone-deep. “I’m already down at the base,” I said softly. Theo’s voice dropped, edged with irritation. “You’re down at the base? Then just hike back up. Is it really that hard?” I didn’t answer. I hung up. I opened a rideshare app and hailed a car back toward the city. While the screen showed the driver approaching, I navigated to my school district portal and pulled up the pending transfer form: a three-year public school teaching placement in remote, rural Montana. Theo had begged me not to consider it when the opportunity first came up. “Your family is here, Winnie. Your friends. I’m here. How could you just leave all of us?” Back then, the thought of leaving had terrified me. Now, my thumb didn’t tremble. I tapped “Accept Assignment”. Report date: Monday morning. The headlights of a beat-up sedan swept over the curb. The driver stepped out, saw me struggling on one foot, and hurried over to support my arm. “Good lord, sweetheart,” he muttered, glancing down at my foot. “That thing looks like a bruised melon. You walked down the fire trail like that?” “Just took it slow,” I whispered, sliding into the backseat. “Thank you.” My phone buzzed in my lap. A flurry of notifications from the group chat. Theo: [How’s the foot?] Before I could type, Clay followed: [Didn’t look that bad when you were standing there. Always finding a way to make it about yourself.] Drew: [Chloe has her dance audition on Monday. Winnie, you promised to pick up her rehearsal tape and portfolio tomorrow. Don’t let your ankle mess up her career.] I didn’t reply. I pressed “Leave Group”. … The urgent care waiting room smelled of rubbing alcohol and cheap lemon floor cleaner. The X-ray revealed a severe grade-two sprain with a partial ligament tear. The physician had to forcefully set the joint back into alignment. At the billing desk, the nurse noticed my pale face and white-knuckled grip on the counter. She glanced at my phone screen. “That reduction is rough,” she said gently. “Do you want to call someone to drive you home? A boyfriend? A friend?” I looked down. “No. There’s no one.” My lock screen flickered to life. It was our graduation photo from three years ago. The only picture that purported to have all five of us in it. Except my image was an awkward, cropped headshot clumsily photoshopped onto the far-right edge, the lighting slightly mismatched, hovering like a ghost beside Clay’s shoulder. I remembered that sun-drenched afternoon on the quad. They took dozens of shots with Clay’s DSLR, but none satisfied them. Theo said the angle made Chloe look short. Clay said the backlight washed her out. Drew kept fiddling with the lens and the staging, still unhappy. Finally, Drew looked over at me, standing off to the side holding their water bottles. “Winnie, you take it. You’ve got the best eye anyway.” Theo shoved the heavy camera into my hands. For two hours, I lived behind the viewfinder. I watched them cluster around Chloe, making ridiculous faces, fixing her hair, shielding her eyes from the sun. The frame was filled to the brim with their laughter. There was no space left for a fifth person. Afterward, Chloe leaned over my shoulder, squealing. “Winnie, you’re an artist! These are stunning!” I was naive enough back then to feel a tiny surge of pride. I thought I was being included. That night at the pub, I asked Theo for the raw files. “I want to keep a copy of our class photo.” He sent me a zip file. I scrolled through all ninety-eight images. Chloe in the center. Theo, Clay, Drew surrounding her. Not a single photo with me in it. “Where are the ones with all five of us?” I asked across the table. Clay was busy sliding the best cuts of steak onto Chloe’s plate. He didn’t even look up. “Oh, those were blurry. Deleted them to save SD card space.” Drew laughed. “We’ll just drop your headshot onto the edge later. You hate being in photos anyway, Winnie. You’re not the photogenic type. A composite gets the point across.” Theo had sensed my sudden quiet. Under the sticky wooden table, his hand slid into mine, squeezing my fingers. “Don’t pout,” he had whispered against my ear. “We’ve got the rest of our lives to take pictures together.” Three years. And that single, badly edited digital cutout was the only promise he had ever kept. I tapped the screen, selected the wallpaper, and pressed “Delete”. … Limping out of the clinic with a heavy support boot strapped to my leg, my phone started vibrating furiously. Chloe had added me back to the group chat. Chloe: [Winnie didn’t do anything wrong, you guys. Stop picking on her.] Instantly, three apologetic stickers flooded the thread. Then came a private voice memo from Theo. I held the speaker to my ear. “Look, if you don’t want to hike back up, fine,” his voice carried a sigh of manufactured patience. “The keys are hidden in the magnetic box under the driver-side wheel well of my car. Just sleep in the back of the SUV tonight so you don’t freeze.” In the background, Chloe’s teasing voice chirped: “If you three don’t apologize properly to Winnie, I’m not speaking to you all night!” A cold, bitter laugh escaped my lips. A gracious concession, tossed to me like scraps from a dinner table. He didn’t care that the SUV’s spare key wasn’t in the magnetic box—he had taken it out two weeks ago and forgotten to replace it. He didn’t care whether I was safe. He only cared about putting on a show of magnanimity so Chloe would stop withholding her smiles. Clay and Drew’s texts popped up in quick succession. Clay: [Chloe’s sticking up for you. Have some grace and apologize in the chat.] Drew: [Since you’re crashing at the bottom, hit the diner by the highway at six A.M. Pick up breakfast for the four of us. Usual orders.] I blocked all four numbers. The phone went blissfully dead. A moment later, an Instagram notification slipped through. Chloe had posted a story. A photo of four red ribbons fluttering against the dusk sky. [Wishes made beneath falling stars always come true.] The handwriting on the silk ribbons was visible in the high-res shot: “May Chloe never know sorrow.” “May Chloe be safe and joyful.” “May Chloe’s path be smooth.” “May we never part.” A comment from a mutual acquaintance sat near the top: “Wait, only four? Did Winnie skip out again? She’s always such an odd one out.” Theo had replied within minutes: “She’s an educator. A hardcore pragmatist. She thinks wishing on ribbons is childish nonsense anyway.” A tidy little box. A convenient narrative that turned their deliberate exclusion into my personal disdain. I didn’t feel angry anymore. Just profoundly, miraculously numb. I switched over to the airline app, booked a one-way ticket to Bozeman for tomorrow afternoon, and turned off the screen. … The next morning, I arrived early at my landlady’s office to break my lease. Mrs. Pearson was a cheerful woman in her sixties. When I explained that I was moving out of state for a teaching post, she clicked her tongue sympathetically. “Well, good for you, Winnie, but honestly, it’s about time. It never made a lick of sense to me why you and Theo kept paying two separate rents in this town. Young folks should be saving every penny.” I froze, the pen hovering over the termination form. “What do you mean, two separate rents?” Mrs. Pearson, oblivious, shuffled through a manila folder on her desk and tapped a carbon-copy lease. “You didn’t know? He co-signed on a big place over on Oakridge—just a couple of blocks from your school, actually. Four bedrooms, top floor.” The room seemed to drop ten degrees. The hum of the fluorescent light overhead turned into a deafening roar. I stared at the lease agreement. “Oakridge Apartments, Building 5, Unit 402.” Near my middle school. And less than a five-minute walk from Chloe’s contemporary dance studio. The lease commencement date was dated exactly three years ago. The week we graduated. Fragments of the past years rushed back, aligning with sickening clarity. The casual Instagram photos Chloe posted of late-night takeout in a spacious, sunny kitchen—where Theo’s denim jacket hung over a stool, Clay’s running shoes rested by the mat, and Drew’s favorite ceramic mug sat beside the sink. Whenever I asked, Chloe had smiled and said, “Oh, the boys just crashed here after helping me fix my sound system.” And Theo had looked at me with that wounded, exasperated expression: “We’ve known each other since ninth grade, Winnie. Don’t you trust me?” We were all working sixty-hour weeks. I had spent three years believing that our rare, quarterly gatherings were precious because life had pulled us in different directions. They hadn’t been pulled apart at all. They hadn’t needed to wait for an annual mountain hike. Every single day, when the sun went down, they unlocked the same front door and lived their lives together. … After signing the papers, I took a taxi to Oakridge Apartments. My tote bag—the one with my passport, birth certificate, and teaching credentials—was still there. Theo had taken it by mistake two days ago, thinking it was his gym duffel. I used the spare key Mrs. Pearson gave me to open Unit 402. The apartment was sprawling and warm. My canvas tote was dumped unceremoniously on the edge of the hallway shoe bench, half-unzipped, a stray pen rolling across the parquet floor. I stepped inside. It wasn’t a four-bedroom apartment. The original layout was five. The fifth room—the master suite with the bay window—had been converted into a massive walk-in wardrobe and dressing room. Racks of Chloe’s leotards, sequined stage costumes, and silks lined the walls beneath warm vanity lights. “There were no five-bedroom units available,” Theo’s phantom excuse rang in my ears. No room for me. But plenty of room for her tutus. As I picked up my bag, an iPad on the glass coffee table lit up. A notification banner popped across the screen: “Group: Starlight (4)” The preview displayed messages between Theo, Clay, Drew, and Chloe. I tapped the screen. The device wasn’t locked. The latest exchange was from two days ago. Chloe: [Theo, you absolute idiot, you brought home Winnie’s work bag instead of mine!] Drew: [Wait, check it out—she has four VIP tickets to the comedy festival tonight in there. The ones that sold out in two minutes.] Clay: [Four? Perfect count. Let’s hit the 8 P.M. show.] Chloe: [Should we invite Winnie? They’re technically hers…] Theo: [She hates stand-up anyway. Too cynical for it. Waste of good seats if she sits there looking bored. Let’s just go. Don’t mention it to her; it’ll only cause drama.] Those tickets were a gift from my department head. I had spent two weeks hunting down a fifth ticket on resale forums, planning to surprise them for my birthday. Once again, they had decided my preferences for me, stripped me of my property, and shut the door. I scrolled up. Hundreds of days of shared grocery lists, inside jokes, debates over what takeout to order, plans for weekend getaways. A parallel life, vibrant and warm, from which I was entirely excised. I locked the screen. Set the iPad down. I walked out, pulled the door shut behind me, and took a taxi back to my empty apartment. My tiny studio was still scattered with Theo’s things. The matching mugs on the counter. His spare slippers by the door. And the plain silver band on my right ring finger. We had hammered it ourselves at a local silversmith workshop during our senior year. He had slipped it on my finger, his eyes bright with earnest youth: “When I propose for real, Winnie, I’m getting you something unforgettable.” I had believed him. I twisted the ring off my finger. Dropped it into a cardboard box along with the wool beanie Clay had bought me that was three sizes too small, and the rough leather bracelet Drew had given me that scratched my wrist raw. I taped the box shut, scheduled a local courier, and addressed it to “Oakridge Apartments, Unit 402.” Finally, I opened Theo’s contact. Our last text exchange was a week ago. My birthday. I had cooked a four-course dinner. Sent him a picture of the table. Asked if he was coming home. His reply: “Working late. Don’t wait up.” On that exact same evening, in the “Starlight” group chat, he had typed: “Get the extra spicy hot pot base tonight. Chloe’s been craving it all week.” I blocked him. Then Clay. Then Drew. Then Chloe. My flight to Montana departed in three hours. I rolled my single suitcase toward the elevator. The notification chime sounded one last time on an unblocked email alert, forwarding a message from the old five-person thread. Theo: “Pack your things tonight. We talked it over. You can have the guest room once we clear out Chloe’s seasonal boxes. You got what you wanted, Winnie. Stop being so difficult.” I looked down at the boarding pass on my screen. “Yes,” I thought. “I finally got what I wanted.” I deleted the thread, powered off the phone, and stepped out into the October chill.
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