An hour later, we're sitting cross-legged on her bed in front of her laptop—our TV broke a year ago and became another thing we don't talk about fixing. Containers of lo mein and sesame chicken create a small feast between us. This is our ritual, the only religion we brought with us from our old home: dinner and a show, every night, no matter what.

Our conversations tend to be more observational than introspective, skating across the surface like stones on water. I tell her about going out with Lin tonight, and she nods sagely, telling me to "behave myself and bring honor to the Sparrow name" in a mock-serious voice that makes me snort.

Then she tells me about Maya from her school who was caught smoking pot in the bathroom—thank god Molly's not into that. I'm more than content with her unique flavor of teenage rebellion. Honestly, it's very PG-13. I'll take "skipping school to sit in a library" over teenage pregnancy or meth any day.

"Apparently, she told Principal Chen it wasn't even pot—it was an 'herbal organic cigarette,'" Molly says, doing air quotes with her chopsticks. "Like that makes it better?"

"Kids these days," I say, shaking my head in mock disapproval.

"Wow. First signs of dementia, saying these things. You’re turning old, man."

"Ancient. Practically dust."

She steals a piece of my chicken and we fall into comfortable silence, watching some British mystery show where a murder unravels a small coastal town.

"Today is the day, you know."

She says it casually, like mentioning the weather, while I'm in the midst of excavating through my rice in search of the last piece of pork.

"What day?" I ask, chopsticks paused mid-air. I'm sure I didn't miss anything important—her birthday is in February, mine's in September. Did we have a dentist appointment?

"Are you fucking kidding me?" she says with that particular tone of sarcastic aloofness—the one that says she's not mad yet, just thinks I'm an idiot. But that can change rapidly depending on how I respond.

"Are we playing guessing games, or are you going to say what you mean?" I answer, food still half-chewed in my mouth.

She pauses the show. The laptop screen freezes on a detective's shocked face. Not a good sign. Game over for tonight's peace.

"Nine years ago, Ethan. Today is that day."

The food turns to ash in my mouth.

Shit. December 21st. Of course. How could I forget? Except I did forget, completely and utterly, the way you forget a night terror by flooding your mind with daylight.

We stopped doing makeshift memorials years ago. What was the point? There was no grave to visit, no monument to what we lost. No bodies to bury. Only memories of a place that didn't exist, of parents who had no death certificates, of a catastrophe no one else remembered.

The first two years, we went to random cemeteries, just to have somewhere to pour our grief. We'd stand before strangers' headstones, pretending they belonged to Mom and Dad, leaving flowers for the wrong dead. It felt like lying even to ourselves.

I moved on quickly. I had to. But Molly never did. Never stopped believing. Her childhood memories calcified into something mythological and sacred. New Babylon became her Zion, her Atlantis—the impossible city stretching along endless shores, surrounded by mists, somewhere in nowhere.

I can relate. I spent those first years searching desperately. The moment our "Aunt" dumped us at that homeless shelter with fake IDs and an envelope of cash, I started looking. Libraries, internet cafes, even called some embassies. "Have you heard of Da'edge? No, not the Edge. Maybe New Babylon?"

Nothing. Blank stares. Concerned looks. A few suggestions for psychiatric help.

The city that existed in our memories—that burned one night in a shower of blazing lights—did not exist anywhere in recorded history.

What was left to mourn? Our memories. But how can you mourn what never existed?

"I'm sorry, Molls." I say, hoping to douse this fire before it catches. She's right to be upset. I did forget, and even if I've decided not to mark this day anymore, she hasn't. She's never stopped marking it.

She just stares at dead space in the room—not the wall, not the floor, just the empty air where something should be but isn't. I recognize that thousand-yard stare. It's what happens when her feelings become too much to bear and she has to step outside herself, leaving her body behind like an empty apartment, enveloped in a detached crust of numbness.

"Do you want to talk about it?" I say, hoping to call her back. To chip away the ice.

She sighs, and her soul slides back into her vessel. "I want to search for them. For it. For all of it." Her voice is steady now, resolved. "I don't want to go to fucking art school, Ethan."

Well, there goes the night. There goes the careful balance we've maintained. There goes everything.

"Molly—"

"No." She closes the laptop with a decisive click. "I'm eighteen. I'm done pretending. I want to go home."

"You're not fucking eighteen yet. And where would you go, exactly?"

The words come out sharper than I intended, but I can't help it, and so I must watch her armor slide back into place before I'm even done speaking, her face closing like a door with too many locks.

But her silence is also an answer—she has no clue where to start. How could she? It's the particular cruelty of our situation: she's homesick for a place that doesn't exist on any map, grieving parents who have no graves, missing a world that left no trace it was ever real. It's the worst feeling in existence: knowing exactly what you want and knowing it's as unreachable as her painted constellations. 

There are no roads to New Babylon.

"I think I'm done for today," she says, and my heart does a guilty skip. I know that tone—the door slamming shut without moving. She wants to be alone with her thoughts, to sink into them like dark water.

"Let's talk about this tomorrow, alright?" I say, already gathering the takeout containers, needing something to do with my hands. She helps mechanically, her movements automatic.

"I'm sorry, Molls." The words feel inadequate, like trying to bandage a severed limb with tissue paper.

She nods. Just nods. She doesn't blame me—that would be easier. But she’s wiser than that—she's just sad. And it’s so much worse.

I want nothing more than to crawl into bed, to pull the covers over my head and sink into the still quietness of unconsciousness. But my phone buzzes with Lin's warning text—she'll be here in thirty minutes, probably twenty knowing her—and so I just pull Molly into a hug. She stands rigid for a moment, then reluctantly softens, her arms coming up to return it briefly before pulling away.

"Go shower," she says. "You smell like trees."

It's ten by the time Lin's aggressive knocking rattles our front door. Molly gets there first—I'm still trying to figure out what the hell to wear to wherever Lin's dragging me. I smile despite everything as I hear them talking. Lin has always had a gift for making Molly crack open, finding the soft spots in her armor with surgical precision. She does the same thing to me. Guess she just speaks fluent Sparrow. 

My bedroom door flies open while I'm standing there in boxers and an inside-out shirt.

"Oh my god, BOUNDARIES!" I yell, frantically pulling on jeans while trying to maintain some dignity.

Lin leans against the doorframe, utterly unbothered by my state of undress. She's wearing her usual Friday night uniform: pink jacket open over a low-cut black top, her cleavage dusted with what looks like an entire craft store's worth of body glitter. Her makeup is somehow both dark and neon, her hair half-shaven into an asymmetrical undercut while its other side falls in jagged layers. 

"Wow. A man wearing a boxer. Scandalous, truly," she says, examining her nails.

Molly wanders past with a bowl of ice cream, taking in the scene. "Please don't molest my brother," she says between spoonfuls.

"Even if I wanted to, I have no idea how to operate what he has downstairs," Lin fires back, still focusing on her nails. 

"Ew." Molly's face scrunches in disgust as she shuffles back down the hallway toward her room. The music starts up again—something harder, angrier. The walls vibrate with bass.

Before we leave (and after I've changed my entire outfit twice under Lin's critical but unhelpful commentary), I stop at Molly's door one final time. She's at her desk, hunched over her sketchbook, completely absorbed.

"I'm going out," I say, hovering in the doorway. The words want to be more, to manifest into a full declaration: I'm sorry. I love you. I want you to be happy. I wish I could give you the home you're looking for. But they don’t. The broken sentence just stops midway like a stillborn. 

"Goodnight," she says without looking up, her hand moving in quick, sure strokes across the paper. I can see what she's drawing from here—a figure in flowing robes, standing at the edge of something. Maybe a shore. Maybe an abyss.

"Don't get pregnant," she concludes, still focused on her work.

I close the door gently, leaving her to her art, her anger, and her impossible homesickness. Lin's already by the front door, texting furiously.

"Ready to make poor decisions?" she asks, grinning.

"No," I say as I follow her out into the December night.