There is a room at the end of my hallway. Its door is always shut. Shut, but not locked. Inside the room there is a girl. Fifteen, dirty-blond hair, thin. Most of the time she lies on the bed, headphones on, listening to something with lyrics, mouthing vaguely along. She holds a pen against the pages of a spiral-bound notebook, college-ruled, though its light blue lines are irrelevant as the girl uses the paper for drawing, not writing. What does she draw? It’s hard to see from the doorway. She never leaves the room. 

*

My apartment in the city is not large but it is lovely and was well worth the down payment. Its hardwood floors are pristine, and the molding around the doorways is elaborate yet tasteful. It is a relic of an earlier, better time, though maintaining the illusion of a bygone age has not come cheaply. I’ve made significant adjustments to the apartment’s design and floorplan in order to make it functional in today’s world while still retaining its original Greek Revival charm. The heavy cornices and double-hung windows are a perpetual reminder that the present cannot help but be rooted in the distant past.

This aesthetic is one that my clients frequently aspire to, but few of them have the funds to realize it. They find themselves settling for the clean, relentlessly-modern look: a look that is less beautiful, but more affordable. As a result, many of my projects have a sameness to them. In early adulthood I’d imagined that becoming an architect would offer more opportunity for variation; however, many of the beliefs we have when we are young prove to be misguided. 

But understanding the misconceptions of youth is one of the benefits of getting older. It’s an unexpected satisfaction—like the sense of self-worth I earn from my professional successes, or the feeling of peace that comes over me when I run. I run in the park early in the morning, often before day has even broken. The park is at its quietest then: I rarely see another runner, let alone another woman. It’s a habit I’ve maintained for years, barring the occasional break for illness or travel. While there are slight differences each day that I run—chilly one morning, prematurely stifling another; tree branches bare and sparkling with ice in the winter, the summer turning them matte and green—my jogs usually coalesce into one amorphous entity of recollection, like water molecules gathering in the upper atmosphere to form a cloud. 

*

I’m running down a gentle, muddy hill, not far from the botanical garden, enjoying the way gravity makes speed effortless, when another, slower runner fails to move sufficiently to the side of the path. Her left shoulder collides with mine as I pass her, and at the same time her feet skid on the slippery, wet dirt. There’s an oh!, then a thud, and then a more strained vocalization. Glancing back, I see the other runner on the ground. 

I bring myself to a halt and turn around, retreating to the place where she has fallen. 

She’s about my age, and she isn’t crying, not with any gusto, at least, but a few tears fall down her face, presumably from pain. She hunches over, holding her right ankle in both hands, as if she wants to make sure it does not escape her.

“Are you okay?” I ask, a question with an answer so obvious it shouldn’t need to be asked, but in this sort of situation it must be posed nonetheless. 

“I’m okay, but I don’t think my ankle is,” she says. 

“Is it broken?” 

“I don’t know. No, I don’t think so. But how would I be able to tell?”

“You probably need an X-ray,” I say. 

“Yeah,” she agrees, wincing.

“Can you walk?” 

She shakes her head. “It hurts. It really hurts.” 

“Do you have a phone, so we can call for help?” 

She shakes her head again. “I don’t bring it when I run. I don’t want the distraction.” 

“Oh,” I say, my voice judgmental, even though I don’t bring my phone when I run either, for the exact same reason. 

I look around. It is one of those typical early mornings in which there are no other runners in the vicinity. In fact, there are no people at all. There’s a narrow pink line on the horizon from the sun waiting below it, but otherwise the sky is dark. 

“Here’s what we’ll do,” I say. “There’s a coffee shop outside the park, about half a mile from here. It opens at 6:00 a.m., and it has to be near that now. They must have a phone. Or someone who works there must have a phone. I’ll run there and call 911. Someone will come here to help you soon.” 

For the first time since I saw her fall, the woman looks frightened. 

“You’re going to leave?” she asks. 

“Just to get help,” I reassure her. “It won’t take long.” 

“No, please don’t! Can you just stay with me? Someone else will show up soon. Another runner. Someone who has a phone.” But as she speaks, a few more droplets appear on her face. Not tears; rain. 

“Look, the weather’s getting bad,” I say, pointing upwards. “People are going to stay indoors. Who knows how long it will be until someone else appears? And I don’t think it’s good for you to sit in the rain while you’re injured. I can get to the coffee shop in five minutes. It’s the fastest way to get you help.” 

The woman tries to stop me. “No, no,” she pleads. “I don’t want to be left here alone.”

But I’ve already started to jog away. “I promise I’ll come back. As soon as I’ve called, I’ll come back.” 

*

I don’t come back. 

I do run to the coffee shop, just as I said I would. It is 6:02 a.m. when I arrive, and the barista nods understandingly and points me towards the office in the back. I call 911 and describe the emergency to the operator. 

“A woman is injured on the jogging path,” I say. “She fell and did something to her ankle. She can’t walk, and she’s alone.” I describe her exact location, in the downhill part of the trail, just past the entrance to the botanic garden. I offer descriptive information, even though the fact that the woman is sitting injured on the ground should be enough for the EMTs to identify her. Early 40s. Curly brown hair in a ponytail. A blue and purple windbreaker. No phone. I do not mention our collision. I do not say I promised to return. 

The operator tells me she’s dispatching a team immediately. 

“Thanks,” I say. 

And then I go home. 

*

I walk to the end of the hallway and rest my hand on the doorknob of the closed door. When I twist my hand, the knob turns smoothly. I push the door open.

The girl inside looks up from her notebook. She doesn’t recognize me. 

“What?” she says. Her voice hovers between bored and annoyed.

“Nothing,” I say.

She stares at me and I stare back. She isn’t alarmed by the situation. It’s as if she expected it all along: to be in this room, drawing, indefinitely.

I slowly shut the door. I assume she turns her attention back to her pen and her paper when I am out of sight. 

*

I work on the twenty-fourth floor of a twenty-five-floor building downtown. I step into the elevator and rise up with other professionals in well-tailored clothes. Some are my colleagues; others are attorneys, accountants, actuaries. High-rises like mine are notable for the diversity of industries that can be found within.

 My office is small but has one well-placed window, next to my desk and parallel to my right shoulder, which allows me to sense the outside world without needing to look directly at it. I slide my mouse back and forth on its mousepad to awaken my computer. The monitor flickers to life and I sit down in my ergonomic chair to embark upon the day’s tasks. Architecture is not traditionally recognized as a hard science, but it undoubtedly requires a scientific mind. My job requires diligence, attention, and an organized method. There are emails to write, blueprints to lay out, presentations to outline and then draft and then re-draft. It necessitates complete focus, a kind of concentration that disallows any interruption, no matter how minor. I excel at this kind of thought. I am well-versed in building walls of all kinds.

There is much to do—there always is—but today I’m on an especially tight deadline, as we are courting a big client, a successful advertising agency looking for a new space for their expanding team. I’m tasked with creating an elaborate deck that allows the founders to understand how the right design choices will directly lead to huge gains in revenue. I amass images of vaulted ceilings, arched doorways, impressive pilasters, and arrange them into a compelling architectural story. I don’t think about the injured runner until I am packing up to leave my office. Then, as I pull on my jacket, the morning’s incident reappears in my memory. 

Perhaps I hurt her—but only briefly. Only insignificantly. She will be fine without me. 

*

I ask the girl in the room if I can see what she’s drawing. 

She doesn’t say anything, but she holds up her notebook, its inner pages facing me. 

She’s not an especially skilled artist, and her blue ballpoint pen isn’t the most nuanced medium, but all the same I recognize what she has drawn. Who she has drawn. 

Without question, it’s me. Not me today, the adult, but me as I looked thirty years ago, when I was her age. That dark, messy hair. Those wild eyebrows, those pre-Invisalign teeth that made my lower lip stick out further on the right side than the left. Refinements to small details of a house’s architecture can change the identity of the entire property, and the same is true of people. If I did not know this used to be my face, I could not have guessed it.

“I know her,” I tell the girl. 

“Uh huh,” she says, either disinterested or disbelieving.

“No, I’m serious. I do.”

“Okay. How do you know her?” the girl says, pulling her notebook back. 

Explaining that I am the girl in the picture, just older, seems too complicated, and possibly unnecessary. “Well, I heard a story about her,” I say instead.

“So you don’t really know her.” 

“I guess not,” I say, and maybe it’s true. 

She flips the page idly and starts drawing on a new sheet of paper. “What’s the story?” she asks. 

“It’s from a long time ago. It’s kind of sad.” 

“Sad how?” 

“Sad in the way that you don’t really recognize at the time. More of a retrospective sadness.” 

“What happened?”

“The girl you drew, she grew up in this small town, right? And she had a friend she was very close with. They were best friends, I guess. And they had a lot in common. A lot of similar interests. The same likes and dislikes. So it wasn’t that surprising when they liked the same guy.” 

“And you said they lived in a small town. There probably weren’t that many guys around to begin with.”

“No, there weren’t. I heard there weren’t,” I agree. “So, the girl in your picture and her friend, they fell for the same guy. And it shouldn’t have been a big deal, because they were so young, and there were sure to be many other guys. But it was also because they were so young that it seemed like such a big deal. At that age, the stakes of everything are very high. Or at least they seem to be when you’re sixteen. And then when you’re older, you get more perspective, you know?”

“No. I don’t.”  

That’s fair; she can’t know these kinds of things, the things that only become knowable after years and years.

“So these friends liked the same guy,” she prompts me. 

“Yes, they both thought they were desperately in love. With Adam.” 

She doesn’t react to the name, but why should she? She hasn’t met him yet.

I continue the story. “And he was a nice guy. And so were the girl and her friend—they were nice people, too. But even nice people can end up in hurtful situations.” 

“What situations?” 

“You know. Normal situations, the situations that happen to everybody in high school. Crushes and confusion and heartbreak situations.” 

“But what happened? Whose heart was broken?” she asks. A ray of soft sunset light pushes through the crown glass windowpane and sneaks across her cheek. 

I’d like to think it was both of us, but I am not sure that it was.

*

We’re hanging out at the mall after school, like we always do. We walk back and forth down its sprawling length, going into the same stores and looking at the same merchandise over and over, as if the slouchy boucle sweaters and alternative rock CDs and dangly bauble earrings aren’t the same sweaters and CDs and earrings we looked at yesterday and the day before and probably the day before that, too.

When we are tired of walking, we go to the food court. She gets egg rolls from her favorite fast-food place and I get fried zucchini from my favorite fast-food place, and we sit on the plastic stools that are bolted into the floor, leaning on the dingy tables that are also bolted into the floor.

“You know who I wish was here right now?” she asks. 

“Adam,” I say. I wish the same thing. 

“Yeah,” she sighs. 

We dip our fried finger foods into dipping sauces. She has sweet and sour and I have marinara. 

“Maybe he’ll ask you to prom,” she suggests. 

“Or maybe he’ll ask you.” 

Adam is a junior while we are only sophomores, and therefore not allowed to go to prom unless an upperclassman asks us. But we think it’s a possibility, at least for one of us. We are both advanced in science and were placed in an eleventh-grade chemistry class, which is how we met him. Sometimes I will end up paired with him for a lab, or sometimes she will, and on those days, we cannot wait to put on oversized white coats and safety goggles and measure various liquids into pipets and heat solutions up over Bunsen burners and hope it turns out to be the day our most romantic dream will come true. 

She and I have the same dream. 

It’s not so far-fetched; neither of us are quiet or retiring in his presence. We don’t merely admire him from afar. We talk and joke around with him, and, in what we hope is a unique benefit of knowing us, his lab grades whenever he partners with either of us are significantly higher than when he is partnered with anyone else, which we can deduce because our chemistry teacher always hands our reports back in order from the best score to the worst. We feel certain Adam enjoys our company; or, if he hasn’t quite gotten to the point of enjoying it, he must, at minimum, appreciate it.

We’re still eating our egg rolls and fried zucchini when something amazing happens. As if the power of our desire is great enough to manifest physically, Adam walks through the mall’s automated doors and into the food court. 

We gasp with joy. Such a coincidence cannot possibly be just a coincidence. It’s too unbelievable, that we would be talking about Adam (though these days we are almost always talking about Adam) and then he would appear, as if we’d summoned him (though he works at the mall, at a sporting goods store, and so is admittedly here regularly, which is one of the reasons we are also here so frequently). But still, the timing seems auspicious. This coincidence must be more meaningful than most. 

He sees us and waves, then meanders over to our table. Our hearts spasm.

“Hey,” he says. 

“Hey,” she says. 

“Hey,” I say.

“Want one?” my friend says, holding out her container of egg rolls.

“Sure,” he says, choosing one and biting it in half. 

She was quicker than I was, and now, if I offer Adam some of my fried zucchini, it will seem that I’m unoriginal. If I don’t, it will seem that I’m ungenerous. It’s a miserable conundrum.

“Do you have to work today?” I say, desperate to keep the momentum of the conversation going, bypassing any talk of zucchini. He nods, then glances at the big clock that dominates the center of the food court. 

“Shit, I’m late,” he says to both of us. “Thanks for the egg roll,” he says to my friend only. 

We wave at his back as he heads in the direction of the sporting goods store. When we look at each other, we are ebullient, but she alone is triumphant. She alone has managed to give him a gift. 

*

There is joyous news at work: we’ve landed the big client, the advertising agency we’d been chasing for months. I’m assigned to the account, and introduced to their team as one of the brightest minds in the industry.

“Not to mention,” a corner-office executive adds proudly, “one of the most dedicated. No kids, no husband. She doesn’t even go on dates. Nobody else will be there for you the way she will.” 

I suppose I could consider the irony of the statement: that I am a person who is known for her commitment to corporate entities, but unable to offer the same reliability to individuals. But for now, I simply shake the hands of everyone from the client’s team, telling them I’m thrilled to be collaborating with them, that I see big things in the agency’s future. The atmosphere in the conference room is one of optimism and excitement. 

An assistant pulls a bottle of bubbly from a refrigerator; it is stocked with an impressive supply of identical bottles in preparation for events such as this one. With delight, he pops the cork. The champagne is doled out into plastic flutes and the group of us, our team and their team, mingles as if the conference room is a high-end cocktail lounge. 

“We’re very excited to work with you,” a woman from the client’s team tells me. Her pale pink blouse matches her manicure exactly: either she pays incredible attention to minute details, or she loves pale pink.  “We’re looking to create something truly special with our new building. Everyone else in our industry is creating these bare-bones, contemporary spaces that are so antiseptic and alien…but we really want to distinguish ourselves, we really want to set ourselves apart with a different character. We’d love something more classic. That has more of those old-fashioned details that add texture and personality.” 

“I love hearing that,” I say, and I do. My heart swells at the possibility that maybe this time—this time—the client will actually be able to follow through with their vision for a contemporary space that still pays homage to the past. 

Then the client transitions into a more personal mode. “So, where are you from? Or did you grow up in the city?”

I shake my head and tell her the name of my town, and a soft film of recognition descends over her face. 

“Really? That’s so interesting,” she says. “My college roommate was from that town. In fact, maybe you knew her! It’s a small town, isn’t it?” 

“What’s her name?” I ask, though I am having one of those eerie moments of premonition that hits some of us upon occasion, in which we already sense the events that are to come before they have a chance to unfold.

The woman says the name of my friend, the sound of those syllables electric, even after all this time. If I didn’t know such things were impossible, I might think I had invoked this woman into existence.

“No, I didn’t know her,” I say. 

*

A few days later, Adam asks my friend to prom. I know, intellectually, it is not because of the egg roll, but I cannot stop replaying that moment at the mall in my mind, as if everything about our futures hinged on those seconds in the food court. Something had transpired, even if I couldn’t define it, that had shifted the balance of the world, or at least my world: when my friend and I seated ourselves on those bolted-down chairs we were equal, but by the time we stood up this was no longer the case. Somehow, she had gained an advantage. 

“You’re not mad, are you?” She looks at me, worried, as I pull my Algebra II textbook from my locker.

“No.” 

“Because I didn’t do anything.” 

“I know.” 

“So you’re okay with it, then?” 

“Okay with what?” I say, although I already know what she means. 

“If I go to prom with Adam.” 

I close my locker door in an effort to delay my answer.

“Because if the situation were reversed,” my friend continues in an uncharacteristically tinny, high pitch, “and he’d asked you, I would want you to go. I would be happy for you.” 

The thing is that she can’t know that. She can’t know how she would feel in those circumstances; she can only know how she would hope to feel. 

I know what the right answer is. I know what I need to say.

I say it. 

“I want you to be happy,” I tell her. “You definitely have to go. Go to prom and have a great time.” 

“You’re sure it’s okay?” 

“I’m sure.” My throat is getting smaller and smaller; words are trapping themselves inside it and I can’t say any more.

“I’m so relieved,” my friend says, her voice dropping back into its normal register, “and you are the best.” I can tell she means it, but she seems not to notice that I can’t look at her.

In Algebra I stare at the board, where the teacher is writing lines of equations, but that’s just the direction my eyes are looking and has no bearing on what’s happening inside my mind, which is a twisting procession of questions that have no answers, or at least no good ones, like Is my friend more fun than me? Is my friend smarter than me? Is my friend prettier than me, is she more attractive, is she sexier?

At home, I stare at my naked body in the full-length mirror in my bedroom. It doesn’t look the way naked or nearly-naked women’s bodies are supposed to look, according to feature films and lingerie ads. My stomach is not flat. My hips are far wider than my shoulders, the lines that define my body between my rib cage and my thighs lumpy.  Inside, my emotions slam together, trying to break through to the outside. It’s no wonder Adam did not ask me to prom.

If I am ever to be someone Adam could love, I must be better. 

*

The interesting thing about running is that it moves one, physically, through external space, while internally, everything settles into stillness. The forces counter one another; they create equilibrium and balance. 

The sensation is not so different from that achieved when one walks into a well-designed building: tranquility, serenity, and possibly even forgiveness. 

*

The woman in the conference room does not have a sense for being deceived. 

“That’s strange. I would have thought that in a town like yours, everyone would’ve known everybody else,” she says, guilelessly. “But I suppose some paths just never cross.” 

“That’s true,” I say. 

An awkward pause threatens our conversation. In the interest of maintaining an easy professional relationship, I say, “So, what was your roommate like? The one from my town?” 

“Oh, she was lovely. Very kind and very smart. Though I’ll admit that I didn’t get to know her that well. We only lived together that first year of college, and she went back home most weekends to visit her boyfriend. It was one of those old-fashioned high school sweetheart situations.”

“I’ve never really believed in those,” I say, smiling. 

The woman laughs. “They’re not like unicorns. They really exist! My roommate was proof of that. She left school after—oh, it was right around when everyone was starting to worry about Y2K, so it must have been our junior year—to marry that boyfriend.” 

“She married Adam?”

The woman frowns slightly. “I didn’t say his name.” 

“You did,” I insist. “You said his name was Adam.” 

“But I couldn’t have. I don’t even remember what this guy’s name was.” 

I shrug, casual and non-committal. “You must have remembered is subconsciously, because you said it. You said Adam.” 

“I’m not sure,” she says, dubious. 

“It’s too bad your roommate didn’t finish college,” I say, re-directing the conversation. “If she was as smart as you say.” 

Now it’s the woman’s turn to shrug. “I don’t know. I’m sure she had her reasons. You have to do whatever makes you happy, you know.” 

The conference room suddenly seems very dark, everyone in it more like shadows of people than people themselves. I feel like I’m going to fall down. 

“So, she’s happy?” I say.

“What? I didn’t quite hear that.” 

“So, she’s happy?” I say again, more loudly. “Your roommate?” 

The woman starts a bit at the increased volume of my voice. “Oh, I haven’t talked to her in years, but sure, as far as I know.” 

Looking around, I see that the plastic flutes are empty and people are starting to pick up their coats and bags. The corporate celebration is coming to an end. I gather myself; how strange that I had that momentary faintness. Perhaps it was the champagne. 

“That’s wonderful,” I tell the woman. “And what a small world it is, that you knew someone from my hometown.” 

“It’s definitely an unexpected coincidence,” she says, glancing towards the door. Most of her colleagues are beginning to trickle out. 

“It makes me think it was meant to be, that we would end up working together on this project,” I say quickly, before she can leave. It’s important to reinforce the sense that our companies’ future collaboration is destined to be a success. “And it was wonderful to meet you,” I add, shaking her hand with its perfectly polished nails and releasing her from our conversation. 

I think of the injured woman from the park. It’s been several days since she fell, and I wonder if she has forgotten that I broke my promise to her. 

*

The girl is still drawing. I ask her if I can see her notebook, and she holds it up. It’s the same picture of the same face. My younger face.  

“I know her,” I tell the girl. 

“Uh huh,” she says.

“No, I’m serious. I do.”

“Okay. How do you know her?”

I still don’t know how to explain. 

“How do you know her?” I say instead of answering the question. 

“She’s my friend,” she says.  

*

My friend wants me to go prom dress shopping with her. She asks if I want to meet up at the mall. 

“Sure,” I say, feigning joy. “That will be so fun!” 

“I’m thinking something long and green,” she says, which is unsurprising. Green is our favorite color, and if I were going to prom, I would also want a long, green dress. 

We agree to get together at noon on Saturday—we’ll get lunch first, so we have the energy needed to sustain a long day of shopping—but when noon rolls around, I don’t go to the mall. I stay home, and when the phone rings, I don’t answer it. I don’t need to. I can already sense who’s on the other end of it: my friend, standing at the payphone in the food court, looking up at the big clock, her face worried, wondering why I am not there as I said I would be. 

I don’t return the message she leaves on the answering machine, and when I see her in the hall on Monday, I keep walking as if I don’t see her, even when she calls my name. I do the same on Tuesday, and Wednesday, and so on. 

After a while, so does she.

Prom comes and goes but now, in Chemistry, my friend and Adam are always lab partners. They amble through our school, smiling, fingers intertwined, and whenever I see them, my insides gnash together and I wonder what will happen to me if the tumult never stops. I am miserable without my friend, but my friend is happy without me. 

I take up running.

*

I walk out of the room and shut the door behind me. Then I turn back, re-enter. The girl looks up. 

“She’s my friend,” she says again, holding up the drawing, showing me myself.

She was your friend, I think.

She was your friend until Adam liked you more, and then she was not strong enough to be loyal to you. She said it wouldn’t affect your friendship—but that was a lie. She lied to you, and then she ran away. 

*

The client is happy with our designs. To be more precise, they are happy with my designs, for I have done the brunt of the work, both conceptually and physically, that comprises the presentations we share with them.

“We love these details,” the pink-nailed woman says. “The placements and shapes of the windows, the arches of the doorways—they’re gorgeous. They’re reminiscent of an earlier time—a better time, I’d venture to say. The only thing is”—and here she flinches—“as we look at the estimates, we fear the project is a little more costly than we’re prepared for.”

My heart breaks as it understands that the design I have conjured for them is yet another beautiful dream edifice that will never be a reality. But my heart is harder than it used to be, so it only breaks a little. 

“Of course we can come up with some more economical solutions,” I say reassuringly. “I’m certain we can design a space that will suit all your needs.” And I am certain. Designing spaces that suit all needs, all purposes, is what I do best. 

*

The door at the end of the hallway is closed. I could walk down it, turn the doorknob, and see what the girl inside is drawing now, but I think it is better if I do not. 

She will never get older, she will never age. She will never stop thinking the girl she draws is her friend. 

Tomorrow, the park will be gloriously empty as I run, and as the sun threatens to make itself known just behind the city skyscape, the peace of my pounding feet will fill me, and the specifics of the jog will fade into every other jog, and I will not remember it at all.