At my best friend’s birthday party, I cannot find my best friend anywhere. I check the kitchen, the living room, the bathroom, her parents’ bedroom—her bedroom is out of order. When I ask the other guests about my friend’s whereabouts, they stuff their mouths with confetti. I walk away looking at their backs to see if my best friend is hiding there. Last, I try the storeroom. The door has a sign on it that says Dusk. When I open the door, I see her winter shoes, the high school photo album, the (now dead) dog’s leather leash, an unused camera, an empty black pack of the cigarettes we used to smoke in her backyard, a washed-out T-shirt with the words Friends Forever. The objects look at me wearily. Some appear miffed, some sad, some simply asleep. I take them with me, hoping they can tell me where my best friend is. We cross the house like Hermes with Heracles and Virgil with Dante. No one notices us. In the backyard, I lay the objects on the grass and thank them for their service. The objects lift on their legs and begin to dance. They dance so beautifully under the sky. At midnight, they vanish, leaving only puffs of white breath lingering in the air.

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Gessica Sakamoto Martini is a writer from Italy. Her work has appeared in HAD, Red Ogre Review, Gone Lawn, FlashFlood (National Flash Fiction Day), Shoreline of Infinity, Crow & Cross Keys, Seize the Press Magazine, and others. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from Durham University (UK), and is a fiction first reader at Orion’s Belt magazine. She can be found on X at @GJMartini.