an instant photo of a tarot cards [https://i1.wp.com/theendandtheinstant.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Instant-28-min.jpg?w=1500&ssl=1]

“Careful what you wish for, right?” Oli says.

“Yeah,” Lark agrees. “But maybe I’m just not the best at foresight. Near-sighted third eye.”

Oli smiles at this, but Lark does regret his poor predictive abilities. He didn’t think of himself as an impulsive person; he was generally fearful, risk-averse. It took him, if anything, too long to make decisions. The truth, though, was that he made up his mind in bursts of decisiveness after long periods of unresolved, anxious ambivalence. He weighed up choices and made plans, but usually with too much information and no sense of what they would feel like.

Before he moved to Portland, he looked at rainfall tables and gas prices, apartments to rent, lists of the nicest parks, day trips to take, and venues he could visit. He promptly forgot these facts and statistics. Portland, for him, was a sensory smudge of gray skies, the chipboard walls of practice studios, good coffee, shivering in his damp room, the sun filling up Quinn’s kitchen. Liminal. It never became his home.

If he’d been honest with himself, he would have expected that, could have known he would always be trying to leave. Maybe he could have told Max, too, and they both could have made better decisions about their futures.

Lark is almost relieved that he didn’t have to choose between two conservatories. He doubts he would have made the decision based on anything other than rank tables, but only after months of fretful waffling about the different styles of the piano tutors.

“It’s hard to predict anything,” Oli says. “We do a lot of guesswork.”

Lark knows this is true, but he also appreciates that his poor sense of what the important facts are only make his guesses worse.

When he extricated himself from his friends in Portland, he didn’t quite realize the effect it would have on him. He still thinks of Dana becoming fretful after he announced his departure, holds the guilt and worry close. She told him that she did not want to be alone with Max, burnt sage in their living room to dispel the negative energy left behind by their arguments.

She was better off putting her faith in rituals than in Lark. He didn’t know what to do to help her. Even his own hopes were obscure to him; he could not see what was best for anyone else.

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a tarot card spread: The Hanged Man, Five of Cups, The Tower, Nine of Swords [https://i0.wp.com/theendandtheinstant.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/Magick-Circle.jpg?w=1500&ssl=1]

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I kept my plans from Max and Dana as long as I could. Jules reprimanded me for hiding the news from my bandmate. Trying to soothe my anxiety, they said I shouldn’t feel guilty for getting, finally, this opportunity I had worked for. Then they said what I knew was really true: every day you wait, the worse it will be.

I still waited.

Spring forced its way through the icy rains, and the changing season warned me. More change ahead. I spent evenings in my room, fretting over sky-high San Francisco rent prices, making a list of places I could apply to teach piano in the evenings. I closed my laptop if Max or Dana came to my door.

When Max went out, I sat on the floor with Dana, our backs against her bed, heads together over her laptop. She was submitting work for group shows, trying to whittle down dozens of image folders to ten photos she mockingly referred to as representative images.

What do they represent? I asked, trying to understand the criteria Dana was using to build her portfolio. She repeatedly reprimanded me for suggesting gig photography or nature photos, images with lush contrasts and light.

Her selections were obscure, sad choices to my eye: a nighttime photograph of me through the window of the Salvation Army, a trapped specimen in the fluorescent lightbox of the store; our shoes on the concrete stairwell that lead into our apartment.

Some were less familiar, too.Two girls, in black lace and nose rings, twisted together while one shaved the wedge of an undercut into the side of the other’s head. Max with a bloody nose, his shoulders gripped by someone I didn’t know. His eyes were closed like he was in pain, but he was smiling, blood on his white teeth.

I didn’t ask Dana where those photos were from, when.

What’s wrong? she asked.

I told her nothing was wrong. Then amended that, said, sometimes, her photography made me feel sad. Or not sad. Not in a bad way. Melancholy.

She closed the laptop, and I covered my eyes, flustered by my own reaction to these images of the past year. In them, I could see who we had become, the three of us. Whatever spell we’d woven around each other back on the east coast had broken. We were different now, and I was lonely even among my friends. There was no one else traveling on my path.

I could hear the clattering of bangles as Dana lifted her hand to tuck her hair behind her ear. Her hoops had been replaced by crescent moon studs.

I told her then: I got enough money. To go to conservatory.

Dana’s instinct was to hug me, to congratulate me. You did it, she murmured against my ear. You did it. I am so happy for you.

I’ll be moving to California. In September, probably. Or earlier, if you guys want to move.

Dana shook her head, let the idea settle over her. Wow. So it will just be me and Max?

You have your friends, I said. You’re always doing something here.

I had thought that they would move in together without me. Combine rooms. I had felt like an intruder, sometimes, but maybe I was something else to Dana. A neutral zone. A safety net.

It will be different when you go. It’s always been the three of us. Dana looked up at me through blunt-cut bangs. Does Max know?

Not yet.