“Gen, have you seen Taylor?” I called as I entered the apartment. I’d just spent over an hour driving around the city, looking for Taylor in all the places I knew he liked spending time in. I had even – though it was very much against my moral principles – climbed up the tree outside his old bedroom window and peeked in through the glass, but no such luck. And I was starting to get worried. Never, in all the time I’d known him, had he gone off during the day without at least telling Gen and I where he was going. Where the hell was he?

“No, not since last night,” she called back. “Forget about him for the moment and come and have a look at these.”

“What is it?”

“The photos I took last night. They turned out really well.”

I went through to Gen’s room, where she sat at her desk, her laptop open before her. She was scrolling through a screen of miniaturised photographs, her digital camera sitting next to her computer with its battery compartment open. “Look at this one,” she said. She double-clicked on one picture in particular; it expanded to reveal Taylor and I sitting on the living room couch, making faces at the camera. “At least we know one thing about him for sure,” she said as she scrolled through the rest of the photographs. “He might not have a reflection, but he doesn’t look half bad on camera.”

“You’d think that he wouldn’t show up in photographs,” I mused.

“Yeah, well…” Gen shrugged and continued going through the photographs.

I wandered back out into the apartment and over to Taylor’s room. As usual, the door was tightly closed, with the thinnest strip of sunlight streaming out through the gap between the bottom of the door and the floor. “Taylor, it’s Rosaria,” I called after I’d knocked on the door. “Are you all right?”

“He’s not in there,” Gen yelled, but I ignored her. Instead, I turned the doorknob and pushed the door open. And sure enough, Gen was right.

The room was empty. There were a few signs that the room looked lived-in – the bed was unmade, a halffilled glass of water, his iPod and a book of Greek myths that he had borrowed from me sat on the small table that served as a nightstand, and the clothes he usually wore to bed were draped over the end frame of the bed. That at least was a sign that he hadn’t left until this morning. The window was wide open, the curtains fluttering in the spring breeze.

And then it clicked. The window in this room looked out toward the cemetery. In that instant, I knew where he had gone. It was the one place that I had neglected to look in my city-wide search.

I bolted into my room and found my jacket, yanking socks and my black Docs onto my feet before racing into Gen’s room. “I know where he is,” I told her. “It’s the one place I never looked this morning. How could I be so stupid?”

“Where is he?”

“The cemetery.”

“What would he have gone there for?” Gen asked, sounding genuinely confused.

“I don’t know. But he’s there, and he’s going to do something.”

Gen shut her computer off and pulled on socks and sneakers, grabbing her jacket off of the hook on the back of her bedroom door. I didn’t know how long we had to get there, but one thing was for sure – we were going to have to drive there, else it’d take us all day.

When we arrived, I jumped out of the car before Gen had even shut off the engine. “Ria, wait!” she yelled as I tore off through the cemetery, my hair flying out behind me like a long, dark banner.

“I can’t!” I yelled back. “Come on, hurry up!”

He was standing before the headstone that I knew to be his own, hands shoved in his pockets and head bowed. “Taylor!” I called as I came pelting up the path, Gen following behind me. He spun around to face me as I came to a halt. “Whatever you’re going to do, don’t you fucking dare do it.”

“I have to, Ria,” he said. “I know now why I was trapped here for so long – I needed to say goodbye to everyone. And you helped me do that. I can’t thank you enough for that.” He looked up toward the blue sky. “And now…it’s my time to go.”

“You can’t,” Gen said, and he looked at her. “Tay, please, you can’t go…” She sounded as if she was pleading with him.

“Zo…” He shook his head. “I have to, sis. I don’t have a choice. I’ve done what I needed to do. There’s no reason for me to stay here any longer.”

“Please don’t,” Gen whispered. She was crying now. “I don’t want to lose you again.”

“You’re not losing me, Zoë,” he told her. “I’ll still be here. You just won’t be able to see me anymore.” This didn’t seem to make any sort of impact, and he sighed. “Come here,” he said to her, and pulled her into his arms. “God I am so proud of you,” he whispered. “You’ve become everything I hoped you would.”

“I don’t want you to go,” Gen whispered. “Please don’t go Tay…”

“Shh,” he whispered. “Zoë, I need you to listen to me very carefully. In your room and Rosaria’s, I’ve left some letters. Check all your books. There’s also a whole stack of them inside your hollow book – I need you to send them to Zac, Jess, Avery and Mom. Don’t read them, because they’re pretty damn personal. Okay?” Gen nodded. “Look at me, Zoë.” She shook her head. “Zo, please. I want to see your face.”

With what I guessed to be a great deal of reluctance, Gen finally looked up at her brother, and he smiled at her. “I know you don’t want me to go, Zo,” he told her. “I don’t particularly want to go either. But it’s just the way things have to be.”

“If you see Dad, can you tell him that I love him?” Gen asked.

“He already knows, Zoë. But I’ll tell him for you anyway.”

Gen nodded, and Taylor released her, before turning to me. “Zoë is lucky to have you as a friend,” he said. “You’re a wonderful person, Ria – you could have refused to help me, but you didn’t. I know you probably thought I was crazy, but as far as I can tell that didn’t matter to you.”

“I did, actually,” I admitted; I gave him a sheepish smile. “Sorry.”

“Don’t apologise. You had every right to think I was nuts.” We embraced for the last time. “Look after yourself, okay?”

“I will,” I promised. I stepped back next to Gen and waited.

Taylor looked at the headstone one final time, before kneeling on the grass with his head bowed. “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life,” he said quietly, before looking up at the sky. “I’m coming home,” he added, before letting out an unearthly cry that was terror and pain rolled into one.

“Why is he doing this if it hurts so much?” Gen asked me in a whisper.

“I don’t know,” I replied just as quietly. And as we watched, our arms around each other, a golden light appeared around Taylor. I couldn’t tell if it was his aura, or if it was something else. But one thing was for sure – he was going where he truly belonged, where he should have gone all those years ago.

He looked back at us one final time and smiled. “I’ll always be with you,” he promised, before the light surrounding him intensified, and I had to look away.

When the light faded, he was gone.

---

It took me more than two weeks before I could bring myself to read the letter he had left for me. The apartment was so empty with him gone – now it was Gen and I once more, the way it had been since we had moved in together, and it was the most unnerving feeling in the world. I had grown so accustomed to his general presence that not having him around anymore actually hurt. Part of me was glad that he was gone, however – it meant that he’d found peace at long last. He was where he belonged.

I was going through my journal when I found it. It marked the entry I had made the week before my twenty-fifth birthday, which I found ironic. At first, I didn’t want to read it – reading it would have cemented the fact that he was truly gone and would never be coming back, at least not in a physical capacity. It sat on my desk for a further week, propped up against an empty glass jam jar that I had filled with pens and pencils, my name written in flowing cursive on the front.

At the end of March, well and truly fed up with having it stare me in the face, I took the letter in hand and opened it, pulling from the envelope and unfolding a single sheet of lined notebook paper.

March 14th 2026

Dear Rosaria,

Thank you.

Words can’t express how thankful I am to have met you when I did. And I’ve been kicking myself for months now, because if I had managed to get up the nerve to talk to you earlier, maybe we’d have had a lot more time to get to know one another.

I have a confession to make. When I told you I had been following you around for six weeks before I asked you to help me, I lied. I’d actually been keeping an eye on you for most of your life. And I have never told anyone this – mostly because there’s been nobody to tell – but before it happened, all those years ago, I looked at your mother, and I knew that we were connected somehow. And I was right. You showed me the way home.

I also want to thank you for being such a wonderful friend to Zoë. She’s had a lot of friends in her life, but none who are like you. You’ve been there when she’s needed you the most, and I know how thankful she is for that. She’s going to need you more than ever now – I know that I don’t have to ask this of you, but please be there for her.

I don’t know if we will ever meet again, but I hope that we do. Until that time comes – if it ever does – look after yourself, and stay safe. Don’t ever change.

Always,

Taylor Hanson

As I went to slip the refolded letter back into the envelope, a necklace fell out, landing on my desk. I set the letter and envelope aside and picked the necklace up. It was a silver Celtic cross threaded onto a length of black leather cord – the same necklace that I’d given to him for Christmas three months earlier, that he had worn every day until he had left us forever. A folded slip of paper had fallen out with it. Written there was something that my grandmother had taught me when I was much younger.

May the road rise up to meet you
May the wind always be at your back
May the sun shine warm upon your face
And rains fall soft upon your fields
And until we meet again
May God hold you in the palm of His hand

I smiled for maybe the first time in weeks, before slipping the necklace over my head. No matter what, even if we never saw each other again, I would always have a small piece of Taylor with me.

I opened my laptop and scrolled through iTunes, looking for my favourite Goo Goo Dolls song, hitting the play button when I had found it. And as I listened, I could almost hear Taylor singing along.

Right at that moment, I knew something. True, he was no longer present in a physical sense. That was obvious. But he was keeping his promise nevertheless – he was still here. And that was really all that mattered to me.

And I don’t want the world to see me
‘Cause I don’t think that they’d understand
When everything’s made to be broken
I just want you to know who I am

Iris - The Goo Goo Dolls

~ fin ~