She saw his friend request but didn’t accept it, they hadn’t talked since their senior year of high school. That was nine years ago; there was no point in unearthing the past, she had already grown so far from him. She didn’t dismiss him completely but decided to approve his request after she had taken care of the problems at hand. After battling two hours of traffic to get home, she needed rest. There was no time for rest in her life though; whether it was the work she took home or the endless emails she hadn’t gotten around to responding, there was no time for recreation. The idea of a social life became a distant dream forgotten in a pile of papers on her desk.

The amount of work she had accomplished that night was satisfactory enough to put her mind at a relative ease. She poured herself a glass of white wine, accidently leaving her phone on the kitchen counter by the laptop. Without her phone she was finally cut off from the world, safe from the stress that it bred. This was a blessing and a curse.

She woke up startled; she had fallen asleep while watching television. Out of habit she immediately reached for her purse to check for the phone. When she realized it wasn’t there, her stomach dropped. It was the type of feeling which occurred while ascending the peak of a roller coaster while looking down at the impending and inevitable drop below. She frantically began searching the house for her phone while panicking that she had missed an important call or text while sleeping. When she found it on the kitchen counter, it was silent, an event that rarely occurred. She noticed that she had left her laptop open next to the phone and went to close it. The page was still open to the news feed and for one last time she clicked refresh, the final glimpse into the outside world before bed.

A horrific story was written on the walls. Her vision was obstructed by the tears that welled up in her eyes as the page scrolled down to reveal a message she had forgotten long ago: rest in peace. The boy who had requested her friendship earlier that day had taken his life. For a moment she saw the message spelled out for her in white: find peace before you rest, there was only one chance at life. Abandoning everything to work, she had forgotten what was important in the end. While she still had time to redeem herself, it was too late to accept his invitation to reconnect; it was too late to fulfill his request for her friendship.