It’s so easy to think you are alone. A friend ignores you, or your relative avoids you. You walk alone in the middle of the night, swigging down root beer because you are too young to drink, and you wander through fairy-light fields.

People gather, laughing and eating and you can see them smiling even through the masks. Music plays, and you cry, wondering why the sky has set without you. The days have gone by too quickly, and you don’t know why or how you haven’t failed everything yet.

You think about it for a few moments, counting your setbacks, counting the things that you have failed. You don’t even wonder why the night is cold and dark anymore—you just know it will always be like this.

You walk through crowds of people, but still you feel abandoned. Lights glimmer in the distance, and you find a firepit no one is sitting near. The flames flicker up wildly, but they are constrained by gas fuels, and you wish for them to fly free. You hope that they will soar, flickering throughout the field and devouring everything that makes you feel alone.

You hope they will rise and be released. You want them to be.

Then someone else comes and asks, “Do you mind if I sit with you?”

“Not at all,” you reply.

And then together, you watch the flames, glancing back from the fire to your screens and back again.

You glance back down at your writing—which you are doing in place of astronomy. A part of you tells you to go back to the homework, but you would rather enjoy the night.

Four of your friends come out of nowhere, smiling and laughing and squeeze in next to you on the bench, chattering about the most random things, and you find yourself laughing and smiling with them despite yourself.

They’re in pursuit of your other friend, lowkey spying on her date, and you can’t help but giggle with them as you turn around to find her.

“Oh shoot, she’s going back to the dorm!”

“Fu—”

“Lex! Is she going to invite him into her room?”

The four of them jump up again, racing towards the dorm, and surprisingly, you find that you don’t feel quite so alone anymore.