Farley Corrigan wasn’t the type of guy who deviated from his plans. He was meticulous, efficient, and above all, he was prepared for anything that the near future might bring. Even the distant possibilities were not a mystery to his perfectly laid out map of life.

After completing his senior year at John Adams High, he would leave the docile town of Sunchoke and go on to the University of California in Berkeley, major in astrophysics with a minor in mathematics, land a job with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, and eventually settle down with his long time girlfriend Madison Langley to raise two beautiful and well-behaved children.

If nothing else, Farley was going places, and he knew exactly where.

But in the local coffee shop at the edge of Landport Lane on the outskirts of Eugene, Oregon, "This isn’t working, Farles" were the words that escaped Madison’s lips.

Most people would question what went wrong in a seemingly perfect relationship, but all Farley heard was a crack in the sylphosphere, the first defect that would inevitably chip away not only his impeccable plan but also the very fabric of quantum goo that made up his life.

It was for this reason that he had to ask, "What?" and stare incredulously at the equally tense girl sitting in front of him.

"This needs to happen. We aren’t going to be together forever, so what’s the point of dragging it out?" she explained between exaggerated nonchalance and awkward silence.

The scent of pumpkin spice hung in the air like a taunt that mocked Farley’s crumbling plan. It was an aroma of fall, which in his mind symbolized falling in love, something he thought he’d never have to worry about with the girl he’d dated for nearly five years. In reality, it was the herald of demise, a different kind of fall from which he was already telling himself he could not again rise.

Farley had adjusted his personal map before entering high school, and while he knew some aspects of it were bound to change, he never expected the major points he’d graphed to implode so extravagantly. He’d planned on taking Madison to prom in a few months, thus fulfilling his family’s tradition of pre-marriage photography, and afterwards she would attend the same university he did.

It was perfectly sensible and by all means a roadmap to a successful and fulfilling life, but what it offered young Farley was not as palatable to his new ex-girlfriend. And so she slipped out of her chair and disappeared through the doors, leaving Farley to puzzle over the numb haze encroaching his mind.

Whether seconds, minutes, or hours, he could not be sure, but Farley remained seated. He exchanged unfocused stare with reading the menu of holiday themed drinks that were much too early to be considered real holiday specials before returning to a daze in which he reminisced his study session with Madison not two days earlier and the way her hair smelled like honey that afternoon.

She’d said something about her plan for the future, but he had been too busy calculating the velocities of roller coasters at different points on their tracks. He assumed she had been talking about her applications to college and how they matched up with his, but it was dawning on him now that the reason she had seemed so distant and aloof following the study session was more likely a failed attempt at the conversation she’d just had with him.

It was over, he told himself. Everything he’d set up and hoped for was gone in an instant for no apparent reason at all.

Dazed out of his mind, he dashed across the shop, and darted through the double doors without so much as a glance to spare for anyone else. And in his haste, he stumbled headlong into a tiny, old woman on her way in. He tried to catch her, but she collapsed onto the floor with a yelp as the contents of her purse spilled out.

“I’m so sorry. I’m sorry!” Farley repeated while frantically gathering up the makeup and cell phone that seemed better suited to a girl his own age than the white-haired woman he hoped he hadn’t injured.

Only after handing the refilled bag back to the lady did he realize she was not an old lady at all. Under the elaborate and convincing costume was a petite blonde girl with a cute turn-up nose and the wide eyes of someone still trying out figure out what had just happened.

Farley, however, did not linger until her senses had fully returned, but he did help her up before rushing away towards the parking lot of John Adams High School a couple blocks down the road. It wasn’t yet half past three, so his two best friends would still be sitting on the hood of Eric’s car, and it was just the distraction he needed to process what the point of dragging it out actually was.

Eric and Stacy were seated on the hood of Eric’s hand-me-down Camry when Farley turned the corner into the shaded part of the mostly empty parking area. Eric waved him over as soon as they saw each other, and Stacy gave him a nod when he joined them on the slightly-dented green car that Mr. Shin had given Eric for his seventeenth birthday.

Before Farley could get comfortable on the warm aluminum, Eric broke into usual conversation, “I thought you left already.”

Farley shrugged - an action so outside character that the others were bound to comment - and explained, “I was at Spacemoose.”

Stacy eyed him with an etched expression and asked,“With Maddie?” while Eric hopped off the hood and stood in front of them - a look of mild alarm on his face.

Farley regretted the shrug immediately, but the effect he wanted it to take had worked too well. Being the pragmatic thinker that he was, he wasn’t particularly fond of expressing his emotions especially when they dealt with such a catastrophic obliteration of his life’s plan, but the opportunity to keep his troubles to himself had already passed.

“She broke up with me,” he spoke to the rusted edge of the Toyota logo between his legs, “And she didn’t really explain why.”

“Oh” was the only reaction he heard. Farley was sure his friends held shocked expressions, but he lacked the energy to look up and brace himself from the tumult of emotions that would surely arise. Except, Stacy said, “Well, I can’t say I didn’t see it coming,” and he jerked up to look at her half-pursed lips.

“She’s been avoiding you for weeks, and every time she hangs out with us it’s like she doesn’t want to be there,” she added with a shrug, ignoring any possibility that her words were evaporating any hopes that Farley harbored of getting back together with Madison.

“Stacy!” Eric gasped while putting a consoling hand on his grieving friend’s shoulder, “He literally found out less than an hour ago!”

She shrugged and slid off the hood to stand beside Eric where she had a better view of Farley’s face and said, “You just gotta rip the bandage off and get over it.”

“Yeah except when you rip a bandage off a fresh wound, you end up reopening it and making it worse. You get gallons of blood gushing out like pew pew,” Eric retorted while miming awkward splashes from the top of his forearm.

Stacy folded her arms and bumped her hip to the side in what Farley liked to call her argument pose before replying, “I’m sorry, Mr. Aspiring Physician, but I was speaking in metaphors philosophically. It’s Kierkegaard’s dread. If you stand on the edge of a cliff and look at all the roads you can take, you’re not gonna go anywhere unless you actually get it over with and pick one of them and live with the consequences.”

“But this has nothing to do with picking a choice! His girlfriend that he’s had ever since he moved here just broke up with him. Where’s the choice in that?” Eric said, flailing his arms and pointing at Farley without looking.

And Stacy chimed in right on beat with her position in the debate, “It’s a choice to get over it or stand at the edge of the cliff in the same spot forever.”

Normally, Farley would have enjoyed the intellectual banter, and he’d probably have sided with Stacy’s points on this particular discussion (barring a few crucial differences of detail), but his thoughts were still on Madison and his complete loss of vision in too many aspects of his foreseeable future. He slumped his shoulders, sighed, and sloped back to lie on the hood with his hands as pillows, staring at the ceiling, and wondering if his conversation with Madison had actually happened.

He reached into his pocket for the portable astronomical compendium he used in place of a watch and calendar, not because he wanted to know the time, but because it provided a sense of comfort to him. His grandpa had promised to give it to him as a high school graduation gift if he was accepted to college, but Farley had had it for five years already - ever since the funeral a few months before his family moved to Sunchoke. It was the only thing with which he could feel a connection to the late Mr. Corrigan, and it had already helped him get over the loss of a pet hamster in the ninth grade.

Farley hoped it would help console him now, but his hand returned empty from his pocket, and he shot up to check the area for the small metallic device.

“Farles?” Stacy asked as her argument with Eric had subsided, “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, you don’t look so good, man,” Eric added with his own look of concern.

Farley thought about lying that he would be fine or saying that it was nothing to worry about, but these were the two people he spent most of his waking hours with and the least he could do was confess that his perfectly laid out life was falling apart at the seams.

“I lost my compendium” came out in a hollow voice through a constricted throat that made it difficult for him to speak or swallow. His eyes were starting to sting, and his body heat radiated palpably like an ominous aura that reminded him of solar corona.

Stacy and Eric performed their amicable duty of attempting to locate the nearly four-hundred-year-old device, but the search proved fruitless just as Farley realized he probably put it into the old lady girl’s purse by mistake. It was a loss almost as devastating as losing Madison - or maybe more, he wasn’t quite sure.

“My life is over. My plan is trashed. There’s just… There’s nothing. There’s no point anymore. Just… just… nothing. Poof, all gone,” he mumbled with his legs folded under him on top of Eric’s car. He was speaking to no one and the entire universe at once, or just anyone that cared to listen - or didn’t care. It made no difference.

“Um, yeah... Farley,” Eric said, tapping him on the shoulder, “I hate to do this now, but I just looked at the time. It’s almost four, and my mom will kill me if I’m not home in time again.”

“You’re eighteen,” Stacy cocked her head to say, “And your grades are fine. Just tell her she doesn’t need to keep you on a schedule all the time.”

Eric replied with eyes wide as his head snapped back like the very thought of such a radical idea was treason, but it couldn’t make Farley laugh this time: “That’s not how it works in an Asian house. Last time I said ‘damn’ she turned off the internet for two days!”

“That’s because you called her a ‘damn tyrant’ on your status update. You kinda deserved it, dude,” Stacy said as Eric rolled his eyes and pushed past her.

“Whatever, I gotta go,” he mumbled and poked Farley again.

Their words sounded like they came from a vacuum of space to Farley, but he nodded and slid off the car. He watched the Camry roll away with Stacy, and proceeded to plaster his supine body to the ground where Stacy decided to join him.

“It might be too early to say this,” she reassured him, “But it’s not the end of the world. It’s just the end of a high school romance, and everyone knows those are meant to end. You just go on and find another one later where they never saw you in your awkward puberty-pimpled stage. It’s like training wheels. ‘The unexamined life is not worth living.’”

“I love your quotes, but most people don’t talk like that,” Farley said in a deep and long sigh that released a bit of the unrest in his mind.

“Yeah and most people don’t say a breakup that happened an hour ago means nothing is left, either,” she made a point that Farley couldn’t argue with and not just because he felt too exhausted to try. “You’ll be alright, but while you figure this out, I’m gonna go meet up with my friends Mary and Jane on the roof. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

It was more of a question than a statement, but Farley reassured her he wasn’t planning on jeopardizing his pristine academic record just because he was feeling down. “You know, that’s why he never invites you over,” he said bringing his thumb and index finger to his lips, “His mom would go berserk if she ever found out.”

Stacy smiled at him and walked away saying, “Yeah, but like, in the end, aren’t we all just slaves to custom?”