Chapter 1: The Unanswered Call
The lilacs were too sweet. They hung heavy over the path to the Student Union, their scent mixing with the bitter tang of spilled coffee from cardboard cups abandoned on benches. I weaved through the late-spring chaos, my backpack strap digging into my shoulder, my phone burning a hole in my palm. The concert was in three days. The marquee for the venue, visible just past the gates, flickered in my peripheral vision like a neon accusation.
I’d already checked every resale site. Sold out, or priced for hedge fund babies. Which left one horrible, awkward, desperate option.
Celena Wang.
Katy’s Celena. Which made her, by default, not my Celena. Not anymore.
I found a patch of weak sunlight on the half-empty quad and sat on the grass, my legs jittering. My thumbs hovered over the screen. This was a transaction. A simple, civil exchange between two adults. One of whom was a sophomore with a recently broken heart, and the other a senior who probably thought I was emotionally unstable. I opened our old messages. The last one was from eight months ago, a screenshot of a meme about macroeconomics. I hit the call button before I could think about it.
It rang. And rang. The lilac scent was cloying, suffocating.
“Hello?”
Her voice was flat, cautious. I could picture her perfect eyebrow, arched.
“Celena. Hey. It’s Vy. Vy Le.”
A beat of silence. I could hear chatter in the background, the clatter of dishes. She was probably at the cafe.
“I know,” she said. Not What’s up? Just I know.
“Right. Okay. So.” I took a breath that felt like swallowing glass. “I heard you might have an extra ticket. For the show on Friday. The Rose Hall show.”
Another silence, longer this time. She was deciding. Deciding if I was worthy, or if this was a betrayal. I pictured her glancing around, maybe looking for Katy, who was undoubtedly nearby, poring over a book with a serene, untouchable expression.
“I might,” Celena said slowly. “It’s face value plus fees. A hundred twenty.”
“I’ll take it.” The words tumbled out too fast, too eager. “I can Venmo you right now. Or meet you. Whatever’s easiest.”
“Katy’s not going,” she said, as if that was the most important piece of information. “She has a thing.”
“That’s… fine. It’s fine. I’m going with people from my poli-sci seminar.” The lie was automatic, a defense mechanism. I was going alone, to stand in a crowd and feel the bass in my chest and try to remember what it felt like to be a person who didn’t map every song back to a memory of Katy’s laugh.
“Okay.” She sounded resigned. “I’m at the library plaza. By the stone bench. I can do it now.”
“I’ll be right there.”
I ended the call and shoved myself up, my heart doing a weird, stuttering tap-dance against my ribs. This was fine. This was adult. We would exchange money, I’d get the digital ticket, we’d nod, and that would be that. A clean, surgical interaction.
The library plaza was a broad expanse of brick, dotted with clusters of seniors taking photos in their caps and gowns. My eyes scanned, searching for Celena’s sharp bob, her practical cross-body bag.
I saw Katy first.
Of course I did. She was a magnet for my gaze, even now. She was sitting on the low stone wall, a textbook open but ignored on her lap, laughing at something on Celena’s phone. The sun caught the highlights in her dark hair. She looked effortless. She looked gone.
Celena sat beside her, shoulder-to-shoulder. They were a unit. A fortress.
My feet kept moving, a traitorous autopilot carrying me forward. I had to abort. This was a miscalculation of epic proportions. But Celena looked up, and her eyes locked onto mine. There was no escape.
I lifted a hand in a pathetic half-wave. Katy followed Celena’s gaze. Her smile didn’t vanish, but it changed. It cooled, solidified into something polite and distant. It was the smile she gave to department administrators.
“Vy,” Celena said, her voice carefully neutral.
“Hey.” I stopped a few feet away, a respectful war-zone distance. “Thanks for doing this.”
“No problem.” Celena was already pulling out her phone. “Just send it to the Venmo on my profile. I’ll transfer the ticket as soon as it clears.”
I fumbled with my own phone, my fingers suddenly thick and clumsy. The app took forever to load. The silence between the three of us was a physical thing, thick and hot. I could smell Katy’s shampoo from here. Something with jasmine.
“How’s your semester?” Katy asked. Her tone was light, the kind you use on an acquaintance you see at the post office.
“Busy. Good. You know. Thesis stuff.” I was babbling. The Venmo screen finally appeared. “Almost done.”
“That’s great.”
Send $120 to Celena Wang, the screen prompted. I hit confirm. My thumbprint authorized the death of my dignity.
“Sent,” I croaked.
Celena nodded, tapping on her screen. “And… transferring now. You should get an email in a second.”
My phone buzzed in my hand. A confirmation email from the ticketing service. One General Admission Ticket to Rose Hall. I had it. I’d done it.
“Got it. Thanks, Celena. Really.”
“Sure.”
There was nothing left to say. I should have just turned and walked away. A clean exit. But my body didn’t move. I looked at Katy, at the textbook on her lap—Post-Colonial Theory—and some stupid, impulsive part of me wanted to prove I was fine, I was interesting, I’d moved on.
“How’s the job search?” I asked. “Any leads in the city?”
Her eyes flickered, surprised. “A few interviews. It’s a process.”
“I bet. Well, good luck.”
“You too.”
Another silence. Deeper, more hollow. My phone buzzed again, a violent shudder in my quiet palm.
In my panic to end the call earlier, I must have pocket-dialed Celena. The screen flashed with her contact photo, the call connecting. From my pocket, her ringtone—a generic digital trill—cut through the air.
Time stopped.
Celena’s eyes dropped to her own jacket pocket, where her phone was now lighting up, buzzing. Her face went perfectly, horribly blank. She didn’t move to answer it. She just stared at the source of the sound, then slowly, so slowly, lifted her gaze back to me.
Katy looked from Celena’s buzzing pocket to the phone in my hand, its screen still glowing. A tiny, almost imperceptible breath hissed between her teeth. It was a sound of recognition, of connecting two terrible dots.
She knew. She knew the call was from me, now, in this moment of excruciating silence. She knew I’d been the one to just call Celena. The entire clumsy, desperate transaction was laid bare, not as a simple ticket purchase, but as a calculated, pathetic reach into her world.
My thumb stabbed at the screen to end the call. The ringing stopped.
The quiet that followed was absolute. The laughter from the graduating seniors seemed to come from another planet.
Celena slowly pulled the now-silent phone from her pocket. She looked at the missed call notification. My name. She didn’t say a word. She just put it away, her expression unreadable.
Katy closed her textbook with a soft, definitive snap. She stood up, smoothing her skirt. She didn’t look angry. She looked… weary. As if I was a problem she’d already solved and I’d somehow reformulated on her.
She shouldered her bag, glanced at Celena, and then her eyes finally landed on me fully. They were dark, calm, and utterly impenetrable.
“Vy,” she said. Just my name. It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t an invitation. It was a period at the end of a sentence I hadn’t meant to write.
Then she turned and walked away, across the sun-drenched bricks, without another word. Celena gave me one last, inscrutable look, then followed her, falling into step beside her fortress wall.
I stood there, the digital ticket heavy in my inbox, the ghost of the ringtone echoing in my ears, completely alone in the crowded plaza. The lilacs smelled like decay.