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The semester had ended and she was ready to move on to a new college. She threw her last bag over her right shoulder. He held out his hand to take it from her, but she shook her head and began walking down the hall. He took a couple of quick steps to fall in stride with her. Anxiety worked feverishly to tie quick, tight knots in his stomach. The feeling seemed to siphon out the air in his lungs. The air was becoming increasingly difficult to recover. By holding his lips together in a thin, straight line, he contained the emotional explosion he could feel in his gut.

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. None of this was right. He couldn’t just turn his back on all of this and pretend it was for the best. No!

A chirp split the air as he quickly turned his sneakers against the tile and began at a sprint for the steel door at the end of the hall. He gripped and twisted the cool, metal doorknob and laid his shoulder into the hard surface. The door swung open and slammed against the wall inside the staircase. The sound of the rattling metal echoed down the stairwell until the his pounding footsteps leaping down each step became all that he could hear. He bounded down each landing until he met the ground floor door and it met the same fate as the door several floors up.

The front door was just ahead of him now, but she wasn’t there. She had already made it outside. His sneakers splashed through the puddle that had formed just inside the main entrance from people dragging their feet every time they entered the building. The drops of water landed on the on the tops of his feet and soaked into his socks. Pressing through the main door, he met with the bitter whip of the wind that caused him to falter. He paused and looked down the sidewalk. A long figure paced slowly away with a backpack over her shoulder. He jogged toward her then finally came to a stop just behind her.

His feet rested on the layers of dead leaves that were plastered to the ground by the cold rain that had lasted for days. The girl’s back was to him as he approached. The sound of his footsteps against the wet ground touched her ears and she turned her blue eyes around to look at his cheeks that were turning red against the bitter feel of the wind. When he saw the reflection of the sun glistening in the moisture in her eyes he began to wonder whether her emotions were driving those tears there or if the sting of the cool wind had summoned them.

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?” 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 this wasn’t going to work.

Cold needles shot from his shoulder blades down into the small of his back as she explained, “I have to do this.” 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 only managed to spit out, “But . . .”

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. Her words had struck him down like a swift blow to the back of the neck that caused his mind to drift from the confines of his skull. He dared not do the same to her.

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.

She reached into her backpack and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper and a pen. She examined the pen for a few seconds then reached back into the bag. This time she brought out a yellow pencil. He watched as she opened up the paper and then carefully brought the graphite tip of the pencil down onto it. He watched the eraser swing through the air in tight little circles as she wrote something down. She then squeezed the paper back into a ball and extended her fist out to him. “This is for you,” she whispered.

He laid out his hand underneath and let the ball drop into his palm. She smiled and he returned it. She then once again turned her back and continued off down the street. He used both hands to flatten the paper back out. Small sporadic drops of rain carried down with the wind fell upon the paper and formed tiny rings of moisture randomly about the page. He ran his index finger across the neat lettering she had managed in the palm of her hand. The statement he read to himself:

Change is the only constant.