Grace knew even before she got through the front door that dinner wasn’t happening tonight. 

Past the dark hallway, the blue flickering of the television painted the walls, the volume too low to hear. The air smelled like stale cigarettes and bad air freshener. 

Grace dropped her backpack in the hall and listened. When there was no response, she shut the door behind her and walked inside. 

In the living room, the TV murmured, some soap opera illuminating the piles of unfinished laundry and unopened mail that littered the coffee table. On the couch, her mother  passed out, her head at an angle that looked uncomfortable. Behind her on the side table was an empty glass. 

For a moment, Grace just stood there. 

The digital clock above the television read 7:09. The library was only open so long after school hours—eventually, she had to come back home. 

There was no sign of her dad. Maybe he’d work late tonight. Maybe he’d go to the bar. Maybe he’d do both and avoid coming home, just like her. 

The kitchen smelled musty, the sink full of dishes, and the refrigerator, empty. The worst part of it all was that none of this was out of the ordinary. Every single day was like this now, with memories of a time before fading like they’d never existed at all. 

Sometimes, she remembered family dinners around the table, now full of magazines and junk,  collecting dust. It felt like another life, someone else’s memories. She couldn’t even remember the last time they’d all been in the same room, let alone sharing a meal. Now, the routine had shifted. 

School. Library. Home. The television. The dishes. The waiting. 

Grace wondered if this was what forever actually looked like—not adventure or endless possibilities, but the same Tuesday stretched forever across the rest of her life. 

She sighed, closing the fridge door just as her cell phone buzzed in her pocket. 

You coming? 

Miles. The tightness in her chest decompressed a little. 

Yeah, about to leave now, she typed back. The three dots were dancing on the phone screen right away, and she smiled so broadly that her cheeks ached. 

Take your time. Hill’s not going anywhere. 

She investigated the living room one more time—her mother hadn’t moved. Grace eased open the side door and slipped out. Only then did she feel like she could breathe again. 

The hill behind the old high school wasn’t much, just a gentle slope that poured from the tree line of the woods surrounding the property. The mowers didn’t venture outside of the gnarled chain-link fence of the baseball fields, so the grass was long and dry at this time of year. At night, when the town slowed down and the streetlights hummed low, it was a quiet piece of privacy—a lookout onto a life they could leave behind for just a little while. 

She’d never approached Miles at school—a year older and labeled as a problem, but here on the hill, none of that had ever mattered. He was already there tonight, his silhouette raising a hand to lazily wave in the dusk shadows. 

Grace lay down on the grass beside him, her arms folded behind her head. Above her, the stars twinkled to life in the darkening sky, mirroring the lights in the buildings below. The air tasted like dust. A dog barked somewhere far off. Next to her, Miles was half-sitting, elbow on one knee, the cigarette dangling from his fingertips. The ember flared each time he inhaled, brief and bright and gone again. 

“You’re going to set the whole hill on fire one of these days and us on it,” she said while looking out at the field. 

Miles huffed a half-laugh. “Yeah, well, then we wouldn’t have to come up with an excuse for not going home.” 

Grace didn’t argue—she never did. He took another drag and she rolled to look at him.  

“You’re gonna die before you’re twenty,” Grace said, nudging his ankle with her shoe. 

He smirked down at her, raising a brow. “It’s one cigarette.” 

“It’s not one cigarette.” 

“Okay,” he said, shrugging. “It’s many cigarettes. It’s a glorious and impressive portfolio of cigarettes.” 

Grace rolled her eyes but kept looking at him. His face was soft in the glow of the town lights. The sharp edges she saw during the day smoothed out, his eyes gentler, like they’d stopped bracing for impact. 

A breeze pushed the grass against her legs, restless but soft. 

“So,” he said, turning toward her, “what existential crisis do you wanna talk about today? The meaninglessness of time? How school is a scam?” 

She scrunched her nose at him. “You’re in a mood.” 

He shrugged, raising the cigarette again instead of answering. 

They stayed silent for a moment, the light wind rustling the grass around them. It sounded like the ocean did in movies. Grace wondered if she’d ever seen the real thing. It seemed like something that belonged to people with drivers’ licenses and summer plans and stable parents. 

Miles blew smoke into the air, watching it twist. “What are you thinking about? Your face is doing the thing.” 

“What thing?” 

“That thing where you’re thinking hard.” 

Grace paused. She was thinking about the book they’d been assigned for English class—Dracula by Bram Stoker. Everyone had groaned at the new assignment, including her, but once she’d started it, she hadn’t been able to stop.  

“What do you think you’d do if you were a vampire? Like…do you think you’d want to live forever?” She finished somewhat lamely, pulling her hands from beside her head and resting them at her sides. 

Miles blinked. “…What?” 

“Like, just—” She waved vaguely at the sky. “I don’t know if it’s all it’s cracked up to be. Never dying, but also never really living? If time never runs out, what do you even worry about?” 

Miles stared. “What are you even talking about?” He asked, half-laughing. 

She tried to hold in her own laugh, but it slipped through anyway. The confusion on his face softened. 

“No, seriously,” she continued. “Think about it. If the future’s endless, what stakes would there be? There’s no risk. No reward.” The thought had been rolling around in her head for days. 

Miles flicked ash off the end of the cigarette. “And you wouldn’t want that?” 

“Not really?” She hadn’t meant it to be a question. “Sometimes it would be nice to not feel so much, though. About everything.” 

“You and me, both,” he answered. 

They let the quiet settle again. Grace listened to him breathe, slow and steady, louder than everything else in the world. 

Below, a car wound through the street, headlights gleaming like a slowly falling star. 

“You think you’re going to leave here?” The question had been weighing on her for months. 

Miles glanced over. “What? Like leave town?” 

She shrugged, trying to maintain nonchalance.  

Graduation was sneaking closer, carrying him with it.  

She pulled blades of grass from the ground. “Yeah. Once you turn eighteen.”  

He picked at the label of his cigarette box. “Not my decision, historically.” She could hear the joke forced into his words, the tone just wrong. 

He sighed, and the collar of his shirt shifted, too big the way most of his clothes were. She wasn’t sure she’d actually ever seen him wear anything that fit quite right.  

For a second she thought about asking where he'd end up next year. Whether he even knew. She wasn’t sure which answer scared her more. 

Instead, she leaned closer, bumping her wrist against his ankle. “That sucks.” 

His laugh slipped between his teeth despite himself. “Yeah, it does.” 

Across the grassy hill, the singing cicadas sprang to life. Crickets chirped in harmony as the last of the sun dipped beneath the horizon. 

Finally, Miles spoke again. “I don’t think I’d want to be a vampire.” 

She turned her head. “No?” 

“I don’t know.” He scratched his jaw like he was trying to buy time with the gesture. He tapped the cigarette out and tucked the butt in his pocket. She liked that he didn’t litter even though no one was watching, but her. “It sounds lonely. You can’t grow up. You can’t get better. You can’t…value anything, I guess. Because it’s all just there forever.” He paused. “Things matter more because we don’t get to keep them.” 

Her chest tightened. 

Miles scooted down the hill, lying back on the grass beside her. Their shoulders were touching now instead of just hovering, the space between them gradually closing. 

Grace focused on the stars, not how close Miles’ hand was to her own. She always felt like the massive night sky and all its stars were too dramatic for their tiny town, too beautiful for the grocery store parking lot or the sky over the soccer field or the rusted playground or the dull houses with windows that hid disasters inside. 

When she couldn’t stand it anymore, she let her eyes fall back to him, closer now. His hair scattered messily across his forehead, just touching the freckle above his left eyebrow. He smelled like smoke and the spearmint gum he chewed to hide it. He felt real and warm and airy—like he was here, but he might float away at any minute just like the smoke from his cigarette. 

“Hey,” she said. 

“Yeah?” 

“I’m glad we’re not vampires.” 

Miles let out a breathy laugh. “Yeah. Me too.” 

Something settled in her—something warm that felt more like home than a brick house where she didn’t want to be. 

The stars grew brighter. The field hummed with crickets. The world felt, for once, like it wasn’t rushing her along as Miles’ finger brushed Grace’s, then fit their hands together. Scars littered his knuckles, and she touched each with care. 

They stayed until the lights clicked off in the windows, and they risked being too late getting home. Light by light, the town faded into darkness, leaving only the stars.