 Photo by Mahdi Mahmoodi on Unsplash “You can’t go through there,” Jason shouts across the rooftop pool. The girl, who’d been blissfully unaware of the rule she was breaking, quickly removes her hands from the door, revealing the words “Emergency Exit. Alarm Will Sound.” The door snaps shut with a metallic click. “Oh, I am so sorry! I thought this was the way back inside.” Jason nods his head, flashing her his charming grin. “Other set of doors, sweetie. That one’s the emergency staircase.” She blushes and nods back shyly before maneuvering around the pool. I lift my glass to my lips. “There wasn’t an alarm.” Jason turns his head towards me but doesn’t take his eyes off the girl. “What?” “The alarm. It didn’t go off.” He finally blinks out of his flirtatious stupor and glares at me. “Anika, what the hell are you talking about?” I take another sip, this one burning down my throat. “Nothing.” “Yeah, you’re always doing that. Talking about nothing.” I look away from him. My vision blurs, and the dozen or so people in the pool become nothing more than colorful blobs. Girls’ giggles sound shrill in my ears, men’s voices too deep and grating. I notice another couple, like us, is standing by the railing. The man leans in close to the woman. She smiles like she means it. “You want a beer?” Jason asks. “No.” “What, so you’re only gonna have water?” I swirl the liquid in my glass. “I don’t like beer.” He knows this. “Well, you could at least try something else.” “I told you I didn’t want to come here.” I start to walk away. “Oh right, Anika, because everything’s about you, huh? You can’t do a single—” Jason grips my arm tight and pulls me back to him as one of his friends approaches us. He leans in close, lips grazing my ear. “Act right for once. Can you do that?” he says through gritted teeth. I do not hear anything Jason or the friend say. I do not look at Jason’s blindingly white smile, pay no mind to the fingers tightening around my bicep. Whenever a fingernail digs into my skin, I know to smile, know to laugh, know to nod. I am here but I am not. I am looking past the friend’s head, at how beautiful the sky looks at this time of day. The sun is low and dyes the clouds pink, purple, orange. Orange is my favorite color. I am wearing green, Jason’s favorite. “Anika,” Jason snaps, and I come back. The friend smiles apologetically. “I was just asking if you’re enjoying the party.” I smile. I will have a bruise on my arm when I get home tonight. “Of course.” “‘Of course?’” Jason hisses when the friend has walked away. “Not even an idiot would’ve believed that.” I lean back against the railing. The metal is cool against the skin of my back. I look over my shoulder at a bird perched on the railing further down from us. “Are you even listening to me?” The bird dives for the street below. “Do you ever wish—” “Wish what? Wish my girlfriend wasn’t such a buzzkill?” He laughs, loud, but he makes it sound so genuine. He throws his head back, smiling so wide, anyone would think I’d just told him the funniest joke. “Yeah, all the time, Anika. All the damn time.” I close my eyes. The sun is warm on my face. “Jason, I want to leave.” “Of course you do. You always want to leave. And what if you did? If you just got up and left my best friend’s party? How would that look?” I hardly notice the rest of what he says. All I can hear is What if you did? What if you did? A gong clanging in my head. Jason leans against the railing beside me. He jerks his chin out at a girl in the water, the same one who’d opened the wrong door. She smiles and waves to him. He grins back, and he says to me, “I give you everything, Anika. I do everything for you. What more could you want?” The metal no longer feels cold against my back. I lean into it, looking up into the sky. The clouds are all orange, all orange, all mine. There are no sirens, no alarms going off in my head, when I make the decision: I am going to leave him. “Anika!” he screams when I am already falling.
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 Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash Dear Dr. Lorenzo, (former) Dean of the School of Lifelong Learning, I want you to know I did it with tenderness, that when the order came down, I considered your impressive legacy and tireless commitment to the School before allowing my finger to hover over the Delete key. I could have highlighted your entire name and title and disappeared you with one keystroke. But I was gentle, killing off the letters one by one, and even having a moment of reflection before hitting Save. I want you to know you’re not the first person I’ve erased. In my years working in both academia and the private sector, I’ve removed many people. Some have gone on to bigger and better, been promoted or transferred or taken on a new role in a different department, happily blossoming to life on a different website. But when the deletion means you’re just gone—in the event of suicide, fatal car accident, or, as with you, being unceremoniously canned—it’s always sad. You’re there one minute—2x3 color headshot, full name, and official title—and gone the next. For a day or two, you’ll still come up in search results, but anyone clicking the link will find the space you occupied empty. And then after the spiders’ next crawl, even those phantom results will disappear. Maybe someone will have cached the page on the Wayback Machine, but few people even know about that dusty museum hiding in the far reaches of the Internet. I want you to know that I wonder how you’re feeling. What you’re thinking as you stare out the window of your huge house bought with public funds, at that expansive green lawn kept trimmed by underpaid gardeners. Letting it all sink in, I imagine. Nonexistence takes some getting used to. When the President called a hasty meeting at 3 o’clock on a Friday, the younger staff went into a frenzy. But experienced with this sort of thing, I was already digging out my executioner’s hood. All-Staff meetings on Friday afternoons only mean one thing. You weren’t even allowed to gather your belongings before the Associate Vice President of Human Resources marched you off campus and held out her hand for your keys. You must have really crossed the line to have not been given the option to retire and spend more time with your family. I will not dignify the rumors by asking which of them are true. I want you to know I waited until Monday morning. After your decade of service to the School, a two-day grace period seemed only fair. I wanted you to be reassured of your existence a little longer by the ten-year-old headshot you insisted I use in place of the more recent one where your hair is gray and your eyes look tired. But maybe you’re not the type to visit a website for proof of your existence. You probably have old-school ways of validation: some crumbling monument of yellowed paper at home in your desk drawer. A commendation from the mayor with the city seal, or the governor’s invitation to join an ad-hoc committee. A wife who can hide the alarm in her eyes and tell you it will be okay. For people like you, it will always be okay. Whether you’re on the website or not, we know who you were. You may not have seen us, but we saw you. We’ll miss you rushing through the hallways in your Armani suits trailed by the exotic scent of sandalwood. Smiling and nodding at your constituents like you were the Pope or a Mafia Don. Whatever you plan to do next, please don’t worry about us. I want you to know we’ll continue to do our jobs—so well we’ll never be noticed. And when your replacement is named, we’ll serve at their pleasure just as we served at yours. Carrying out our tasks. Performing our duties. Doing the things us invisible people do.
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