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She seemed very uncomfortable as the edge of her lips formed an awkward smile. The way she crossed her arms and slightly turned away began to make him uncomfortable. He leaned down to make direct eye contact with her and asked why she had asked him to meet her. His back seemed to quiver as a set of chills ran down both sides of his spine. The hesitation in her response made it too clear that something was wrong.

Cold needles shot from his shoulder blades down into the small of his back as she explained to him she was leaving. His mouth ran dry and he tried to suppress his shock by reacting with a calm answer, but what could he say? In moments like this, he would rely on his heart to supply the words that he needed, but now it was too busy trying to squeeze blood into his veins through the vice grip the news had put on it. He could only ask why.

The girl he had spent the past few months befriending was now walking out on him. As the wind whipped around the hair on their heads, he realized why this loss meant so much to him. He cared for her in a way that would make it hard for him to go a day without being able to see her. The hand at his side began to rise toward her, but he quickly wrapped his cold fingertips inside a fist and brought it back down to rest against his hip.

He couldn’t tell her how he felt. It would be selfish to attempt to make her stay because of the way he felt. Never before had he felt awkward around her, but at this moment neither of them were speaking. His tongue remained still for fear he might let the truth slip right off the end of it if he opened his mouth.

That day was the first day the sun had shone in three days. As a passing cloud glided past the sun, light began to shine down on their faces. Her eyes glowed beneath the brilliant rays and he cursed the weather for radiating her beauty at such a time.

A week passed and she walked with him to the elevator. The semester had ended and she was ready to move on to a new college. The tiled floor of the hallway was usually filled with squeaky sneakers walking back and forth from room to room. At this moment, their silent sneakers were the only ones that walked the hallway. Only slight mutterings from inside various rooms could be heard, because for some reason the hall was quiet this particular afternoon. With a lack of surrounding distractions, he could only let his mind roll back and forth over the fact that he could no longer share his day with her. As the lonely idea overwhelmed him he felt as though he barely knew this place anymore. He had come to know it so well over the months, but at this point he felt at such a distance from everything. Even from the back of her hand that grazed the back of his every so often as they strode down the hall.

The two steel pieces of the elevator door knocked into each other as it clumsily slid open. She stepped onto the dusty square floor inside the steel walls. She blew him a kiss goodbye and he watched as the doors slowly slid back into place. He watched her eyes as he held his hand in the air waving. The door shut completely and he could hear the machinery come to life inside as it took her to the bottom floor and out of his life.

He turned to walk back to his room down the lonely, quiet hallway. The florescent lights overhead hummed as lightly as ever, but for the moment the sound seemed to echo off the inside of his mind. He fell into the chair at his desk and pulled out a piece of paper. Usually he would reach for a pen, but in this case he felt that the ink of a pen was too permanent. He picked up the yellow wood from a drawer and held it in his fingers before bringing the graphite tip down to the paper.

He began to scratch back and forth obsessively on the paper, taking a minute to finish one piece of a letter. The words he had written down on the paper didn’t seem complete until he took one last stroke across the paper to underline the five dark, thick words he had embedded on the jagged piece of paper.

Taking the paper in both hands he held it up to the light of his desk lamp and read the words aloud.

CHANGE IS THE ONLY CONSTANT.

Satisfied with the messy lettering, he found a tack and pinned it up beneath a picture of himself and the girl he had just watched walk out on his life. In the picture, their heads touched as she arched her neck to lean on him. The smiles on both of their faces exemplified the joy of that moment, but unfortunately it could only be for that moment. The smiles side by side could only last for so long before something came along to change everything.