Wait for the End! I'm sorry, Momo, it reads on the back of the faded postcard he holds. It's not safe here. Go home. I'll catch you later. There's no signature, not that Momo needs one. Not when he can find that familiar lopsided scrawl etched onto the left side of his soul. Not when he already knows he's late. I'm sorry, Momo. It isn't the first time he's been left behind to deal with the aftermath of those words. They replay over and over in his mind, like a song that's stuck in his head, one that he accidentally learned all the lyrics to. It's not safe here. He wants to unlearn these words. In a moment of flickering frustration, Momo rips up the postcard into quarters and lets them go into the clutches of the wind. He watches as the pieces of ‘Greetings from Kil-where!' flutter away until they become only dark spots against the red sky. He wishes the Drift could let go of Colin that easily. (“There's no sun in Kil-where,” Colin had once told him. They had been lying on the back deck at their house in Anchorage, watching as the day slowly faded into night. It'd been the summer before high school before Colin's already-sharp edges pierced the sky. “No moon there, either. Completely uninhibited.” “Must be pretty lonely there,” Momo had muttered sleepily, barely keeping his eyes open. “It is. It really is, Momo.”) Go home. The purple sands of Kil-where shift beneath Momo. He crumples to the desert ground and does another count of the number of times he's let himself get caught in this moment between two trapezes. Catch you later. Six times. That's how many times Colin's promised to catch Momo, and how many times he's pulled his hand away from him at the very last moment. Six different worlds. Six different skies. Six different failures. He's never seen a sky this red before; at least that's new to him. Momo lies down in the surprisingly cool sand and lets his own tears of anger fall. He stares up at the empty red sky of Kil-where and waits for this world to end, too. ☉ “I'm sorry, Momo.” It's not the first time Colin's speaking these words, and it won't be the last. It's the night before Colin leaves for those six different skies. They're both eighteen-years-old, and Colin's leaned up against the kitchen sink, looking like the kind of boy people write tragedies about. His shaved head matches the light of the moon peeking through the windows, and his nose is broken in three places now instead of two. It's the first time Momo's seen him all day, and the rumor of the fight at school finally comes full circle. “Just...don't go. Please.” These words mark Momo as another character in a tragedy, too. Just a different kind. Colin smiles sadly, but he doesn't take Momo's hand. “I'll catch you later, Momo.” The Drift reaches for him and doesn't let go. Momo reaches for him, too, and misses. ☉ Question: What is the Drift? a) a dance move that originated from the 1980s. You know, the one with the leg and the hip thrust. Yeah, that one. b) a secret plane of existence in the universe that selects people without rhyme or reason, thus giving them the ability to travel between worlds and different dimensions. c) a horrible, horrible thing that needs to learn how to let go. d) all of the above. ☉ The first time Momo meets Colin, he tries to evict him from their house. “He shouldn't be wearing my clothes,” he's trying to explain to his mothers, Rosalie and Manon. Colin sits out of earshot at the kitchen table, scarfing down lasagna like he hasn't eaten in three months, which, knowing the Drift, is probably true. “I don't care if he's from the Drift. He should get his own clothes.” It's basic ten-year-old logic. He should have known better; Rosalie's from the Drift, too, and Manon has a soft spot for wandering souls. Colin doesn't know anymore better than Momo. His mothers think he's ten-years-old, too, like Momo, but unlike Momo, he smiles too much and he looks as if he's made out of the sharp pieces of glass you find in an alleyway that you could cut yourself with if you aren't careful. He's too easily impressed by the microwave; he doesn't even know who Spider-Man is, which, to Momo, is more than enough of a reason to not trust him. He doesn't know about the Drift, either, even though it's the closest thing he's ever had to a home. Then again, not a lot of people do. (He later learns the reason behind Colin's sharpness; the Drift hadn't been kind to him, and in turn, he'd somehow misplaced the coordinates that would have shown him how to be a normal boy, a boy who hadn't been chosen by the Drift. He lost that part of himself among the stars and the moons, and the Drift never gave it back to him). “The Drift.” The words fall from Colin's lips like yellow ribbons as he sits at their kitchen table, wearing a dazed expression and Momo's clothes that don't fit him right; Momo's wearing his pajamas and a seething glare sent towards the direction of Colin.