On a Saturday, at precisely 9:37 in the morning, Alice woke abruptly to the commotion of West 45th Street. She listened to two people screaming at each other on the sidewalk below, along with the honking of cars and the occasional revving of an engine. The city may never sleep, but she sure wished that she could, at least past ten in the morning.
On the same Saturday morning, at 9:37, Lily’s eyes fluttered open, comfortably regaining consciousness at her parents’ house. She looked around her childhood bedroom, hearing faint fragments of her family’s conversation, the sun gently shining through the glass between her curtains. The slight opening of her window provided an entrance for the songs of nearby birds, their soft voices narrating Lily’s peaceful morning.
Approximately two-hundred and five miles apart, the day began for both of them.
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Trying to catch glimpses of memory from the night before, Alice audibly sighed as the sun broke through her windows, directly into her blue eyes. She shivered as the early spring air circulated throughout her Manhattan apartment.
Cursing under her breath, she walked across her apartment, rubbing her eyes and running her fingers through her knotted hair. After taking her iced coffee out of the fridge and pouring it into a mason jar, she walked over to the window and shut it, blocking out the noise that ricocheted around her head. Still, she couldn’t find silence.
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Immediately, she adjusted her sheets and pillows, restoring the bedroom’s neatness to appease her mind. She walked over to her closet, running her eyes across the muted colors that characterized it, putting outfits together in her head. After changing into a pair of jeans and a sage green tank top, adding an off-white cardigan in anticipation of the cool Massachusetts breeze, she walked downstairs to join her parents in the kitchen. As she entered, their conversation ceased immediately.
Once they all said good morning, the chirping of the birds was the only noise that remained, as Lily made pancakes for her family.
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After drinking her coffee during a failed attempt at overcoming writers’ block, Alice walked to the nearby restaurant for her weekly Saturday lunch shift. A man catcalled her on her way there, but she kept walking and forced it to the back of her mind as she opened the doors of her workplace.
She didn’t think it was possible to find an environment even more fast-paced than the city streets, but every time she walked into the restaurant, it proved her wrong. The cluttering of pots and pans didn’t help her hangover.
While she rushed between tables, she tried to remember the names of the people she went bar-hopping with last night. They probably wouldn’t invite her out again anyways. She tried to take comfort in the city’s large population, with opportunities to meet people anywhere she turned. There was one problem, though: most of them forgot about her pretty damn quickly.
Another aspiring writer with a waitressing job, she thought. Nothing new.
For the rest of her shift, she envisioned herself walking through her college town with Lily, spending their Saturdays going to coffee shops and writing their essays. Or going on drives, music blaring out the opened windows, finding nearby places to watch the sunset. Or just sitting in their apartment, sharing whatever thought entered their minds.
When she met Lily, her loneliness gradually left her, with each of their conversations pushing it further into the distance.
Whenever it started creeping back, she hid within her memories.
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Breakfast with her parents went relatively smoothly, as Lily only noticed a few passive aggressive comments passed between the two of them. She had become used to that in recent years.
For the rest of the morning, she sat on the porch reading her book as her father did his daily crossword. She asked him what he and her mother had been discussing that morning; overhearing a conversation between the two of them without her involvement had become a rare occurrence. Without giving her a clear answer, he mumbled something about how it didn’t concern her.
Later, Lily went to the store with her mother, picking out ingredients for the recipes she planned to try that week. Her mother asked her when she’d get an actual restaurant job, leaving her managerial position at the coffee shop she’d worked at since high school.
Without telling her mother that she refused to start a new job in her hometown, Lily assured her that she’d get a new job someday, pretending that the coffee shop “couldn’t run without her.” Besides, the shop provided the same sort of familiarity that her childhood home did. Frustrating, for sure, but familiar nonetheless.
Lily thought about a trip to Boston that she had taken with Alice during their sophomore year of college. As they walked around the city, they talked about moving there together after they graduated, with Lily becoming a chef and Alice pursuing her writing career. It was never a serious plan, just a dream of two twenty year olds – but at that moment, in her local grocery store, Lily wished they would have followed it.
Instead, she stayed at her parents’ house, making as much money as possible at the same place she had worked at since she was sixteen. Before moving anywhere, Lily wanted to see the world. And Alice thought there was no better place than New York for her writing career.
So they went their separate ways.
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Ten months prior, the summer after their college graduation, Alice visited Lily’s hometown for a few days. After living together since their freshman year, it was the last time they’d see each other before Alice packed up her car and moved to New York City. They coexisted like they had for the majority of their last four years, despite their attempt to ignore any reminders of the distance that would soon separate them.
Alice had stayed in Lily’s childhood home before, but this time, she looked around the room more intently, creating a mental image that a four-hour drive wouldn’t diminish. She noticed a new addition to the bedroom: pinned on one of the off-white bedroom walls was a map of the world. Lily bought it soon after moving back to her hometown.
“There’s not many yet,” Lily said, after noticing how Alice’s eyes moved to each of the map’s thumb tacks – one for every place Lily has traveled. “But I’ll add more eventually,” she added, wishing she knew her next destination, eager to escape the mundane routine she had fallen into.
Without speaking, Alice picked up a thumb tack from the desk, pressing it into New York City.
“I’ve never been there, so that feels like a bit of a lie,” Lily told her, with a slightly forced laugh, wanting to forget the city’s existence.
“Not really,” Alice quickly countered, shifting her gaze to the familiar face in front of her. “A piece of you will always be there with me. You know that?”
“Yeah,” Lily replied, quietly. “I do.”
“Good.”
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That Saturday night, after her dinner shift finally ended, Alice was greeted by the sound of footsteps from the floor above her. She opened her window to let more noise into her apartment, knowing she might regret it in the morning.
That same Saturday night, Lily had dinner with her parents, but the three of them rarely spoke. She searched through Spotify, but she couldn’t figure out what she wanted to hear.
Approximately two-hundred and five miles apart, at the exact same time, they both picked up their phones and clicked on each other’s names.
Before Alice could press the call button, her phone began to ring, and Lily’s contact photo lit up her screen.
Grace Holland, ’26