Lenore sat on the edge of her childhood bed. Her old desk chair no longer fitting her spindly overgrown limbs. After she had moved out for university, Lenore assured her mother that she felt no sentimentality towards the room she grew up in.

"Turn it into a guest room! Or make it your office. It'll be better than storing your fabrics under the bed," she remembered telling her.

Yet here she was, nearly 3 years later, and the room looked like it had been frozen in time on the day she left it. Metal Gear Solid posters taped haphazardly to the boyish royal blue walls, somehow still holding strong even as the images of super soldiers and giant robots had begun to fade. Long overdue books on poetry scattered around the floor ensuring Lenore could never step foot in a library again, lest she be saddled with a fine greater than her tuition. Even the duvet cover she was currently perched on bore the same constellation pattern it had the last night she slept on it. Knowing her mother there was a possibility it hadn't been washed since then either.

The room was an exhibit to a long gone civilization, and Lenore had stepped over the scarlet barriers and tried to make herself comfortable among the artifacts. She missed her dorm, the comfortable chaos of it called to her all the way from Toronto. Lenore couldn't wait to crawl into bed next to her textbooks and loose chords to finally get a good night of sleep. She knew her mother was hoping she'd stick around a little longer, but she planned to flee right after Erica's funeral ended. She'd load up her car beforehand so she wouldn't have to stop at her parents house first, then she'd just hit the gas and run.

But until then, Lenore was trapped. She let her head drop to her hands and groaned into her palms. A little maggot of guilt nibbled at her head causing her to compulsively scratch at her scalp. Erica is dead and she can't stop thinking about her shitty room. Lenore paused, nails still caught in damaged bleached blonde hair.

"Erica is dead," She said to the room. No answer.

Even now it hadn't set in. Lenore had yet to shed a single tear for her best friend. When her mother called her at eight in the morning to deliver the news, Lenore cut her off so she could make it to her software design class. When one of her professors had broken a semester-long mask of professionality to offer her a hug, Lenore only accepted it so she could ask for an extension afterwards. The grief hadn't found her yet, and she was starting to wonder if it ever would. Maybe it had gotten lost along the way and decided to call it quits. Perhaps it had mistook someone else for her and now some poor fucker was wondering why they felt so miserable on a random Tuesday. Or maybe it wasn't the kind of beast that chases, and was simply waiting. Waiting for when she is at her lowest, her most vulnerable, and then it would strike.

Lenore could only bide her time until then. She released her hair from her grasp so she could turn around and reach for her laptop instead. It currently occupied half of the double bed, curled up on the duvet like a cat that was taking up too much space but who's owner didn't have the heart to move it. For the past couple nights the computer had been her sleeping partner, though it didn't provide the same warmth she'd imagine a body would.

Hands clutched around the cool metal Lenore carefully pried open the device, and basked in the blue glow that greeted her. She tapped in her password, the movements second nature to her. If she had lost her vision tomorrow, Lenore would struggle to find her way around her room, but she was confident she'd still be able to unlock her computer easily. Ignoring her usual time wasters of coding projects and Lisa replays, Lenore instead dove into Firefox, a single destination locked in her mind.

"ERICA'S ROOM." The shiny pink letters danced before her eyes. Gifs of cats, bunnies, and hearts cluttered the screen, sitting on unfinished textboxes, and bumping teeny pixelated faces into each other, fighting for space on the baby pink page. Lenore felt her fingers reflexively twitch, aching to clean up the webpage or fix those broken links, or to properly align the mismatched text, but her mouth couldn't help but twist into a smile. Erica's blog was so perfectly her. She could see her in her mind's eye, excitedly adding whatever cute new icon she found to her site, while abandoning the current feature she was working on to never return to it again.

Despite knowing of Erica's online blog since she started working on it, this was the first time Lenore had actually glimpsed it herself. When she was younger it felt far too personal for her eyes to see. It would be like sneaking into Erica's room and rifling through her diary. So even though Erica was more than fine with displaying her innermost thoughts for random internet strangers to see, it made Lenore deeply uncomfortable. She told herself if Erica needed to tell her something, she could say it to her face.

But Erica was dead now, and her blog was the only piece of her left on this Earth. If Lenore wanted to talk to her friend again, this was her only option. She sucked in some air wondering if she could suck up some of Erica's courage through the screen as well, and moused over to icon labeled "THOUGHTS 0_0"

Up popped open a list of dates ranging from 2002 all the way back to 1999. With a flick of her finger Lenore sent the days flying, and then clicked down rapidly to pluck one out of the swarm.

July 15, 2000. That was the summer Lenore started learning how to code. Most would balk at spending sunny days cooped up in front of a screen, but she relished them. She always felt most herself when she was alone in front of the computer. Lenore almost let herself slip into the hazy memories until her eyes lazily glided over the first sentence of the blog post.

My best friend is pissing me off.

That snapped her right out of any nostalgia she had been feeling. Erica could only be talking about her. Unless she considered someone else to be her best friend, but the thought of that was equally horrifying. Lenore pushed her face as close to screen as she could without her vision going out of focus and began reading.

My best friend is pissing me off.

I mean, I love her I do but fuuuuuck. Shes so damn clingy - _- shes literally suffocating me. Like I genuinely feel like I cant BREATHE around her without her freaking out about it. Like the other day when we were out at the Nightowl cafe (I got my usual. Will post pics in a separate page) Bryan (the one from school) came over and we chatted for a bit and the WHOLE TIME she was just staring at the table not saying a word. She was acting like I had completely ditched her when me and Bryan only talked for like 5 minutes MAX. And then she pouted the rest of the day about it. Its so hard being her everything, I feel like I dont have enough space to be myself.

But I cant just blow her off either cause she wouldnt leave the house if I didnt drag her out of her room. What kinda friend would I be if I let her become a shut-in yknow? Argghhh I dont know what to doooo. If anyone has dealt with something like this before PLEASE give me some advice I literally am going to JUMP OFF A BRIDGE.

Lenore's eyes flickered to the comments section of the page before she could stop herself. Three people had left their opinions on Erica's rant. Lenore escaped back to the website's main page before she had the chance to read any further. A dark ember of anger burned in her stomach for those three strangers. How dare they give their thoughts on her and Erica's relationship when they could never begin to understand it. They didn't know about all the nights of sleep she'd ignored to talk to her on her laptop, or the classes she'd skipped to go on one of her impulsive 'adventures'. Yet Erica trusted these people with her feelings, when she clearly hadn't felt the same with Lenore. Once again her traitorous eyes drifted back to the tab where Erica's thoughts lay. What else was in there that she felt she couldn't tell her?

Lenore resisted the siren's pull by escaping into a subpage titled "PICS ^ ^" instead. What greeted her was unsurprisingly, a barrage of photos all taken by (and mostly starring) Erica. The images that weren't selfies contained strangely shaped clouds, ugly t-shirts found in the one tiny Walmart they had, and a dozen amateurish attempts at latte art. All marked with a name and a date.

With breath slightly too shaky for Lenore's liking, she scrolled down to search for any photos taken on July 15 of 2000. There was just one. It was called "coffee date w/ bff" She gave the trackpad a quick tap and it grew to engulf the screen. She saw Erica's long delicate fingers adorned with pink and yellow press-ons, resting on a dark wooden surface. To the left of her posed hand was her favourite mid morning order. A caramel macchiato and a chocolate croissant, both displayed in the Night Owl's signature teal porcelain.

But it was a blurry distortion hiding at the top edge of the image that caught her attention. The thing that was attempting to claw its way into Erica's perfect setup could only be her own hand. Feeling a green-eyed monster crawling up her throat Lenore slammed her laptop shut before the beast could escape. How unfair. That these shitty compressed nail-bitten fingers got to rest beside Erica eternally, while she would never see her again.