June's phone was almost out of battery.
She didn't bother plugging it in. It didn't matter. Nothing on it ever required power. Her inbox was a digital ghost town, notifications haunting her like echoes from a life that never quite started.
She picked it up anyway. Habit.
The screen blinked to life with that familiar blueish glare. No texts. No missed calls. One spam email.
"Ready to refinance your student loans? Great rates for a better future!"
She swiped it away.
The lock screen told her the time: 7:03 a.m.
The date: Thursday.
She unlocked the phone with her thumbprint and tapped into her gallery.
The photos loaded slowly, each square a frozen memory trying to mean something.
A blurry group shot from two birthdays ago, people smiling too wide, mid-drink, someone holding up a bottle like a trophy. She was in the back, almost hidden, face half-lit by someone else's camera flash. She remembered taking that picture, but not the party. She remembered the feeling of being there, though. Like trying to shout underwater.
She swiped left.
Another photo: her and her ex-best friend, Liza, sitting on a curb, holding iced coffees, both pretending not to cry.
She remembered the fight that happened afterward.
Liza had accused her of "checking out emotionally."
June had just stared at her. Not in anger. Not even in confusion. Just empty. Like she didn't understand the question.
They hadn't spoken since.
Swipe.
A picture of her mother's hands. Just the hands, thin, pale, curled around the bedsheets in the hospital.
June had taken it to remember her by. She never took a full photo. She didn't want to remember her face like that, small, gray, leaking from the corners like a dying balloon.
Just the hands. Just the outline of the woman who used to hold hers while they walked through flea markets on Saturdays.
Swipe.
Swipe.
Photos of the store. Memes she screenshotted and never shared. A picture of a stray cat from months ago, hissing at her from under a trash can.
Nothing warm. Nothing vivid. Just images. Stale and hollow. Like watching someone else's memories through scratched glass.
She closed the gallery.
Her phone buzzed once. A notification from a food delivery app she hadn't used in a year.
"Hungry? Treat yourself!"
She stared at the screen, then swiped that away too.
The battery ticked to 6%.
She lay back down on the mattress and stared at the ceiling again. The cracks hadn't moved.
Still the same. Still going nowhere.
She rolled onto her side, phone still in hand.
She tapped her contacts.
Only four remained.
Work — listed under the store name.
Liza — still saved with the old nickname: Lizard Queen.
Dr. Lemke — the therapist she stopped seeing six months ago.
MOM — all caps. Out of service.
That last one stayed at the bottom. She never deleted it. Couldn't bring herself to.
June tapped Liza's name.
The screen showed a photo: the two of them in younger days. Liza with her dyed blue hair and manic smile. June beside her, shoulders hunched, half a grin curling awkwardly on her lips. They'd gone to a local horror con that day, bought matching skull earrings, took selfies with every booth that gave out free stuff.
June pressed Call.
The ringing tone echoed into the silence.
One ring.
Two.
Three.
No answer.
She let it ring all the way.
Then the voicemail kicked in. Liza's voice, bright and hurried...
"Hey! You've reached Liza. I'm probably writing, crying, or running from my problems. Leave a message or don't. You do you!"
Beep.
June didn't say anything.
She listened to the silence for four seconds.
Then hung up.
Her thumb hovered over the screen.
It's cruel, she thought.
Calling just to see if she still won't answer. Knowing she won't. Knowing it still stings.
But it wasn't about cruelty. Not really.
It was about proof.
Proof that she still existed in someone's memory.
Even if that memory didn't call back.
She tapped Edit Contact.
Paused.
Deleted it.
The name vanished. The thread with all the old messages vanished with it.
Photos. Emojis. One stupid voice note where Liza made fart noises after a bad date.
Gone.
June closed the app and dropped the phone on her chest.
She remembered the funeral in flashes.
No one showed up.
No one but her.
It was cold that day, not freezing, just the kind of cold that got into your teeth. The church was half-closed due to renovations. They stuck her in the side room with the fake stained glass and folding chairs. The funeral director had offered her a gentle smile and two awkward words:
"Tough day."
She remembered nodding. Like she was agreeing with a weather report.
She sat alone in the front row. The casket was pine, simple. Her mother hadn't wanted anything fancy. "No use wasting money on boxes," she used to say.
There was no music. No slideshow. Just the sound of someone coughing in the hallway and a clock ticking from behind the wall.
She tried to cry.
She really did.
She squeezed her eyes shut, waited for something to break, for her chest to cave in, for a sob to rise.
But nothing came.
No tears. No rage. No anything.
Just a numbness so vast it felt like she was standing at the edge of the world.
When the priest asked if she wanted to speak, she declined.
What would she even say?
"She tried. I didn't. The end."
Grief wasn't cinematic.
It didn't come in waves or knock you to your knees. It was slow. Dull. Like watching a faucet drip when the sink is already full.
Afterward, she went home and slept for sixteen hours straight.
When she woke up, she microwaved leftover noodles and scrolled social media until her brain turned off.
No one sent flowers.
No one called.
Not even extended family.
By the next week, it was like her mother had never existed.
She picked up the phone again.
2%.
She didn't plug it in.
She went to settings. Turned off notifications for everything except alarms.
Then turned off the alarm.
Then switched on airplane mode.
June sat on the edge of the mattress and stared at the floor.
Loneliness, she thought, wasn't some thunderous collapse. It wasn't crying in bathtubs or screaming into pillows.
It was this.
A quiet, dull erosion. The slow fade of noise. The deletion of photos. The way your name stopped appearing in inboxes. The way you stopped appearing in your own memories.
Loneliness wasn't dramatic.
It was boring.
Stupid.
Silent.
A soft suffocation, the kind where you don't even realize you're not breathing until it's too late.
She stood up.
Walked to the mirror.
Looked at herself.
Just long enough to confirm she was still there.
Still June.
Still fading.
She opened the closet and saw the rope again.
It hadn't moved.
Neither had she.
"Even the ghosts have moved on."