The factory had been closed for eight months when Mike finally went back. Not to work—there was nothing to work at—but to sit. He drove his '92 Ford through the gates, past the chain-link fence someone had cut and never repaired, and parked in the lot where the shift changes used to happen. Now the lot was full of weeds and broken glass and the rusted shells of cars that had been stripped for parts.

He sat in the driver's seat and looked at the building. It was a long, low thing, grey concrete and corrugated metal, with rows of windows that were either broken or boarded up. Somewhere in there, on the third floor, was a break room with a coffee machine that always tasted like burnt pennies and a vending machine that ate your dollars and never gave you anything. Somewhere in there was the station where he'd worked for fifteen years, tightening bolts on transmission housings until his hands were permanently stained with grease.

Fifteen years. He was thirty-five and he'd spent half his life in a place that no longer existed.

His phone buzzed. A text from his mom: u coming for sunday dinner?

He typed back: maybe.

He didn't know if he was. Sunday dinner meant sitting at the kitchen table while his mom talked about Sean. Always Sean. Sean who'd gone to community college. Sean who'd learned to weld. Sean who'd gotten a job at the plant before it closed. Sean who'd been driving to work on a Tuesday in November when a truck ran a red light and turned his body into something they had to identify by his dental records.

Ten years. Ten years and she still kept his photograph on the fridge, held up by a magnet shaped like a heart. Mike had tried to suggest moving it—subtly, casually, like he was just making a small suggestion about rearranging things. His mom had looked at him with that look, the one that said you will not speak his name in this house, and he'd let it go.

But the photograph was starting to bother him in a new way. Not the way it always had—that sharp, dull ache of grief mixed with something he'd never been able to name. Now it bothered him because he'd been looking in the mirror and seeing the same jawline, the same nose, the same shape of eyes. He and Sean had been close in height, close in build. From the right angle, in the right light, people had told him they looked alike.

The television station had put out a flyer: YOUNGSTOWN TALENT SEARCH. PRIZE: $50,000. Any talent. Any age. Auditions next Saturday at the Ohio Theatre on Market Street.

Fifty thousand dollars. It was a stupid amount of money. It was more money than he'd ever seen. It was enough to pay off the mortgage on his mom's house, enough to buy a truck that didn't leak oil, enough to stop feeling like the world had moved on without him.

He called the number on the flyer. They said anyone could audition.

He decided to audition as Sean.

Not as a joke. Not as a trick. As something that felt, in his bones, like the only honest thing he'd ever done.

He found Sean's clothes in the closet at his mom's house. A blue work shirt, a pair of dark jeans, a leather jacket that had smelled like Sean's cologne even after ten years. He put them on in front of the mirror and stood very still.

The reflection was his brother's.

Not exactly. Mike was heavier now, his face broader from years of eating whatever was cheapest. But the bones were the same. The set of the mouth, the arch of the eyebrows, the way the light caught the left side of the face differently than the right. If he tilted his head the way Sean used to tilt his head—just slightly to the left, like he was listening to something only he could hear—it was almost perfect.

He practiced. He stood in front of the mirror and talked in Sean's voice, which had been lower than Mike's, with a slight West Virginia drawl that Mike had never bothered to acquire. He practiced Sean's laugh, which had been sudden and loud, like it surprised even him. He practiced Sean's walk, which had been easy and unhurried, like he had all the time in the world.

He was good at it. Too good. It was like putting on a sweater that fit perfectly except for the sleeves, which were a little too long.

The night of the auditions, the Ohio Theatre was packed. Not with celebrities or aspiring stars—with people like him. People from around Youngstown, around Mahoning County, around the whole rusted belt of northern Ohio. A woman who could juggle chainsaws. A teenager who played the accordion. A man who told jokes in a voice that sounded like Bob Hope.

And a girl named Lisa.

Lisa was twenty-three, with short brown hair and a face that had been crying recently but wasn't crying now. She was auditioning to tell stories—real stories, she said, about her family. She stood next to Mike in the waiting area, fidgeting with the hem of her jacket.

"You're gonna audition as your brother?" she asked, looking at him sideways.

"Yeah."

"What's he think about that?"

"He's dead."

"Oh. Sorry."

"Don't be. He can't think about anything."

She nodded. "My dad's still alive. That's worse, sometimes."

Mike looked at her. "What do you mean?"

"He's alive, but he's not—here." She tapped her temple with one finger. "He's somewhere else. Always somewhere else. I was sixteen when he started disappearing. First it was just on weekends—he'd drive somewhere and not come back until Monday. Then it was weekdays. Then it was just... pieces of him. He'd be at the dinner table and his eyes would be somewhere a thousand miles away."

"What was he disappearing into?"

Lisa shrugged. "Into nothing. That's the thing. There was nothing he was disappearing into. He was just... gone."

Mike felt something move inside him, like a stone shifting in a riverbed. "Maybe he was trying to find something."

"Maybe. Or maybe he was just running. People do that, don't they? When they can't face themselves, they become someone else."

The host called their names. Lisa went first. She told a story about her father buying her a bicycle the summer before high school, a red Schwinn with a basket, and how he'd ridden alongside her for three blocks before letting go, and how she'd looked back and seen him standing on the sidewalk, clapping, and how she'd kept riding because she didn't want to turn around and see him stop.

It was a simple story. It was the simplest story she'd ever told. When she finished, the audience was quiet, and the host said, "Thank you, Lisa," in a voice that was different from before—softer, like he'd been changed by what she'd said.

Then it was Mike's turn.

He walked onto the stage and stood at the microphone. The stage lights were hot, and the audience was a dark wall of faces, and for a moment he couldn't remember which side of the microphone he was supposed to stand on.

Then he thought of Sean.

He didn't impersonate him. He didn't do a voice or a mannerism or a joke. He just stood there, in Sean's clothes, with Sean's face looking back from the mirror in his mind, and he talked about growing up with a brother who was the favourite. He talked about the photograph on the refrigerator. He talked about the way his mom would say "if you were more like your brother" the way other mothers said "if you ate more vegetables."

He talked about going to the factory every day for fifteen years and coming home with grease under his fingernails and his body aching in places he didn't know had names. He talked about the day the factory closed and his boss shook his hand and said "thank you for your service" the way you thank a soldier, which is to say without meaning it.

He talked about standing in front of the mirror and seeing his brother's face and wondering, for one terrifying moment, if it would be easier to just become him.

And then he said, "But I can't. I can't be Sean. Sean is gone. And I'm Mike. And I'm thirty-five years old and I'm unemployed and I'm tired and I don't know what I'm going to do tomorrow. But I'm Mike. And that has to be enough."

The audience was silent. Not the polite silence of people who don't know what to do with what they've heard. The real silence. The kind that happens when something true has been said and the only appropriate response is to sit with it.

The host came back on stage and said, "Thank you, Mike." His voice was thick.

Mike didn't win. The winner was a twelve-year-old girl who played the piano, and she was sweet and talented and she deserved it. Mike stood in the audience and clapped, and his mom was beside him, and he could feel her hand squeezing his, and he knew that she was crying, and he was crying too, and for the first time in ten years, she was crying for him, not for Sean.

After the show, he drove back to the factory. Not because he expected anything to have changed—the building was still closed, the lot was still full of weeds, the coffee machine was still broken. But because he needed to stand in the place where his life had been and say goodbye.

He sat in his car and took Sean's photograph out of his wallet. He looked at it for a long time—the smile, the eyes, the slight tilt of the head. Then he put it back in his wallet and started the engine.

He would call his mom tomorrow. He would come to Sunday dinner. He would sit at the kitchen table and eat her cooking and listen to her talk about Sean and he would let her cry and he would cry with her and then he would stand up and say, "Mom, I love you. And I'm going to figure this out. All of it. The job, the money, the... everything. I'm going to figure it out."

And maybe he would. Maybe he wouldn't. But it would be his figuring, not Sean's, not anyone else's.

It would have to be enough.

--- OTMES v2 Objective Code: OTMES-v2-KXM-04-E0550-M2-T014-C5F9 E_total: 5.50 | Dominant Mode: M2 (Acceptance) | TI: 5.5 | θ: 200°