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The apartment was too quiet, but it wasn't the kind of quiet that brought peace. It was the heavy, suffocating silence of an empty theater after the house lights go down—the kind that makes your ears ring because your brain is desperately trying to construct a sound that isn't there.
Angela sat on the edge of her bed, her knees pulled tightly to her chest. Her chin rested on the worn fabric of a Smosh hoodie she’d practically lived in every night for the past twenty-one days.
Three weeks.
Twenty-one fucking days since the world had fundamentally shifted on its axis. Twenty-one days since Amanda was just gone.
Every day since then has been a masterclass in dissociation. Angela had always been a high-energy person—vibrant, loud, and expressive, wearing her heart so far out on her sleeve it might as well have been stitched into the cuff. People expected her to always be "on." They expected the chaotic energy, the sharp wit, and the expressive facial expressions that had launched a thousand memes. And for the past three weeks, she had forced herself to give it to them, because the alternative was falling into a black hole she wasn't sure she could crawl out of.
And there was only one way Angela knew how to survive the nights.
She reached for her phone, her fingers trembling slightly. The screen illuminated her face, casting a harsh blue glow across her tear-stained cheeks. She opened her contacts, scrolling past hundreds of names until she reached the one she was looking for:
ughmanduh 🧍🏻♀️
It was the nickname Angela had specifically picked for her. She had thought it was funny then, and she used to chuckle whenever Amanda looked at her own contact card and rolled her eyes in affection for how stupid it was.
An ache flared in her chest just seeing the name. For the past twenty-one nights, this had been her ritual. When the noise of the day quieted down and the reality of her loss became too sharp to bear, she would call Amanda’s number.
She knew Amanda wouldn't answer. She knew, rationally, that the body of her best friend, her partner-in-crime, the love of her life, was resting in a quiet cemetery. The phone itself had been destroyed in the accident, no longer holding any digital remnant of who she had been. But the number still worked.
And more importantly, the number held the voicemail.
Angela pressed the call button and lifted the phone to her ear. She closed her eyes, letting out a shaky breath as she waited for the familiar cadence of the rings.
Ring.
Ring.
Ring.
Then, the beep. And then, her voice.
"Hey, it’s Amanda! I’m either shooting, driving, or just completely busy being the funniest person alive! Leave a message, or don't, I'm not the boss of you. Bye!"
The first time Angela heard it after the accident, she had sobbed so hard she threw up. But over the last two weeks, it had become her sanctuary. It was the proof she needed to know Amanda had truly existed.
It was the exact pitch of her humor—the dry, theatrical delivery that Angela loved so fiercely. Hearing it was like a warm blanket draped over a freezing soul. She wouldn't leave a message; she would just listen, let the audio wash over her, whisper "I miss you" to the silence that followed, and finally find the strength to close her eyes and sleep.
It had been a grueling, merciless day.
It started at the Smosh office. Walking into the studio every day without Amanda felt like stepping onto a set where half the lights were blown out and the script was missing its main character. Everywhere Angela looked, there was a ghost. There was the couch where they used to run lines, still holding the faint memory of Amanda’s booming, infectious laugh. There was the kitchen where they’d argue about snacks, the makeup chairs where they’d trade stories about true crime before a shoot, and that quiet corner where they used to sit beside each other, basking in the comfortable silence they always brought out in one another.
Everyone at Smosh was grieving, walking on eggshells, and treating Angela like she was made of glass. She hated it. She hated the pitying looks, the softened voices, and the constant, gentle, "How are you holding up, Ange?"
To survive the shoot, she had leaned entirely into her performance. She dialed her energy up to an eleven, screaming louder, reacting harder, and forcing a frantic, manic joy into her sketches just so no one would see the hollowed-out shell underneath—even though she knew they all knew she wasn’t okay. By the time they wrapped, her chest ached from the effort of breathing through a constricted throat.
Then came the audition.
It was a project she had been excited about for months—one that she and Amanda had prepared for every single day. It was a comedic role that, under any other circumstances, she would have nailed in her sleep. But when she walked into the audition room, the casting directors’ faces blurred together. Her hands began to sweat, and the inside of her mouth felt like it was stuffed with cotton.
When the director gave her the cue, Angela opened her mouth, and the lines just... vanished.
She opened and closed her mouth, trying to force her voice to come out, but when it finally did, she only managed a squeak. “I’m sorry, can I start again?” she stammered, her voice cracking.
“Take your time,” the casting director said, but their eyes were already scanning the clock. She forced a plastic smile and took a deep breath, trying again.
She stumbled over a basic joke. She completely missed a comedic beat. Her brain, entirely depleted of emotional bandwidth, simply refused to cooperate. Finally, she offered a horrified, performative smile, thanked them, and walked out into the blinding Los Angeles sun, feeling like an absolute fraud.
A failure.
Her eyes welled with tears the moment she got into her car. The humiliation lingered, heavy and suffocating. She had prepared for this for months. She had read those lines over and over, making sure she wouldn't miss this opportunity.
She took another deep, shaky breath, but the disappointment sat heavy at the bottom of her stomach, refusing to go away no matter how hard she tried. The air in her lungs felt like it was dissipating, slowly replaced by a rising wave of anxiety and the crushing weight of letting people down.
Of letting herself down.
A choked sob escaped her as she sat in the parking lot outside the audition space. The reality of what had happened, and the knowledge that this had been her only shot at the project, came crashing down on her.
If Amanda were here, she would be holding me in her arms, telling me that I did great and that it’s their loss anyway, Angela thought. A small, bittersweet smile crept onto her face, but it vanished just as quickly when reality reasserted itself.
With a messy wipe of her tear-stained face, Angela started her car engine and made her way home, clinging tightly to the single thought that would get her through the drive: she would get to hear Amanda’s voice again tonight.
She needed that voice more than she ever had. She needed Amanda to tell her, even through a pre-recorded file, that everything was going to be okay. She needed to feel like she wasn't entirely alone in the dark.
Angela came home carrying the crushing weight of that disastrous audition. She dragged her lifeless body through the entryway and straight toward her bedroom, completely disregarding the fact that she was still wearing her outdoor shoes. She couldn't even remember if she had locked the front door behind her. At this point, she simply didn't care. If someone broke in, let them. She had nothing left for them to take anyway.
All she wanted—all she needed—was to crawl into the safety of her bed and lose herself in the sound of Amanda’s voicemail. The only thing stopping her was the layer of grime and sweat she felt clinging to her skin from being outside all day. It felt like a physical manifestation of her failure, and she couldn't bring it into her sanctuary.
With a heavy, hollow sigh, she moved toward the bathroom, carelessly dropping her bag onto the floor beside her bed.
The bathroom was cold. Angela began absentmindedly peeling away her clothes, her movements mechanical and slow, until she caught a glimpse of her reflection in the mirror. She froze, standing fully in front of the glass, stripped down to nothing but her underwear.
The harsh bathroom light offered no mercy. She watched herself take a slow, shallow breath, and as her chest rose, she saw just how prominently her ribs now cut against her skin. The collarbones she used to joke about were sharp, casting deep shadows across her chest.
She knew, rationally, that she had lost weight over the past three weeks. Eating felt like chewing glass, and keeping food down required an appetite she just didn't possess. But seeing the physical evidence of her grief staring back at her was different. It was proof that her body was slowly giving up, wasting away in tandem with her broken heart. She looked like a stranger—a hollowed-out version of the vibrant girl Amanda had loved so fiercely.
Angela pressed her trembling fingertips against her ribs, tracing the sharp lines, wondering how someone could still be walking around when so much of them had already died.
She may have looked at her body, but Angela refused to look at herself right now. She knew that if she looked into her own eyes, all she would see was the girl who had failed her audition because she couldn’t remember her lines—the exact lines she had spent months practicing with Amanda.
A fresh wave of angry tears welled up, hot against her cheeks. She tore her gaze away from the mirror, harshly stripping off her underwear, and stepped straight under the shower spray.
The water was freezing, but she refused to adjust the temperature. She wanted it to stay exactly where it was, needing the biting shock of the cold just to prove she could still feel something aside from the suffocating anger consuming her.
She came out of the shower feeling completely numb and empty. The cold water had done the trick—it had washed away the burning anger inside her—but the disappointment lingered. She knew it always would.
She pulled the Smosh hoodie over her head once again. She took a deep breath, inhaling the faint, lingering scent of Amanda’s favorite fabric softener. A wave of calm washed over her, and she knew it was ridiculous to feel so grounded over the scent of laundry detergent, but she didn't care. It was all she had left.
She looked around for her discarded phone and spotted it near the edge of the mattress, though she couldn't even remember putting it there. She unlocked the screen and immediately scrolled through her contacts until she found Amanda’s name.
She tapped the contact. She pressed the phone to her ear. She held her breath, waiting for the first familiar ring.
There was no ring.
Instead, there was a sharp, clinical, three-tone chime.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Angela’s brow furrowed. She pulled the phone away from her ear, checking the screen to confirm the call was still active, then pressed it back to her side of her face.
An automated, synthesized female voice—completely devoid of human warmth—began to speak.
"We're sorry. The number you have dialed has been disconnected or is no longer in service. Please check the number and try your call again."
Angela froze. Her heart stopped beating for a full second, then began to hammer violently against her ribs.
"No," she whispered into the empty room. "No, no, no."
She hung up frantically, her trembling thumb smudging the screen. Her vision blurred with sudden, hot tears. It was just a glitch, she told herself, her mind racing at a million miles an hour. Cell towers act up all the time. It’s just L.A. network issues. That’s all it is.
She clicked the contact again.
Beep. Beep. Beep.
"We're sorry. The number you have dialed has been disconnected..."
"Stop it," Angela begged the automated voice, her volume rising in the quiet apartment. "Stop it, put her on. Put her on!"
She hung up and dialed again. And again. And again. Seven times in rapid succession, her thumb hitting the glass so hard it stung. Every single time, the same cold, robotic voice cut through the line, delivering the same digital death sentence.
The service had been shut off.
It didn’t make sense to her. Angela knew Amanda’s family would never cancel the phone line without telling her—they didn't even know which carrier she used, right?. After all, all they had been handed by the authorities was a shattered piece of metal from the accident.
Logic completely abandoned Angela. Her panicked mind couldn't comprehend why Amanda’s family would close the account. Because, when stripped of grief, who in their right mind would continue to pay a monthly cellular bill for a broken phone that belonged to someone who was never coming back?
Angela would. She would have paid for it for the rest of her life.
The disconnection of Amanda’s phone service was an execution for Angela. She felt as if the universe had violently torn away the very last thread connecting her to the love of her life.
The phone slipped from Angela’s hand, thudding softly onto the mattress before sliding off the edge and landing with a dull smack on the hardwood floor.
The silence returned, but this time, it felt predatory. It rushed into her ears, filling the space where Amanda’s voice used to be, cementing the absolute finality of her absence.
A choked, strangled sound escaped Angela’s throat—a noise she didn't even recognize as her own. She dropped to her knees on the floor, reaching for the phone, but her hands were shaking so violently she couldn't pick it up.
Then the dam broke.
Every ounce of grief, every drop of exhaustion from today, every missed line from the audition, every forced smile at Smosh, and every single bit of agony she had tightly bottled up for three weeks came rushing to the surface in a violent, catastrophic wave.
Angela collapsed forward, her forehead resting against the cool wood of the floor, and she began to scream.
It wasn't a theatrical scream. It wasn't the loud, comedic screech that her fans knew. It was a primal, guttural sob that tore out of the deepest, darkest depths of her chest. It was the sound of a person being utterly broken in half.
"Amanda!" she cried out, her voice cracking, raw and bleeding. "Amanda, please! I can't do this! I can't do this without you!"
The tears poured down her face in a relentless torrent, soaking into the floorboards. Her body shook with violent, uncontrollable tremors. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, curling into a fetal position on the floor, gasping for air that felt like broken glass in her lungs.
She was entirely suffocated by the reality of the situation. Before tonight, she could pretend. She could pretend Amanda was just on a long vacation, or that she was busy shooting a project out of town, or that she was just a phone call away. The voicemail had been the anchor holding that illusion in place. It was proof of life.
Now, the anchor was gone, and Angela was being swept out into a stormy, violent sea.
Hours seemed to pass, though it could have been minutes. Time loses all meaning when you are drowning.
Angela lay on the floor, her face swollen, her eyes burning, her throat so raw it hurts to swallow. The violent sobbing had finally subsided, leaving behind a hollow, empty exhaustion that felt heavier than the grief itself. She lay perfectly still, listening to the rhythmic, shallow sound of her own breathing.
She looked across the floor at her phone. The screen was black now. It looked like a tiny, dark tombstone resting on the wood.
She realized, with a terrifying clarity, that she was never going to hear a new word from Amanda again. She was never going to get a chaotic text message at two in the morning. She was never going to hear her yell "Angela!" across the Smosh office in that tone that was equal parts exasperated and deeply affectionate.
Slowly, painfully, Angela pushed herself up into a sitting position, leaning her back against the side of her bed. She pulled her knees up to her chest again, burying her face in her arms. The Smosh hoodie still smelled faintly of Amanda’s favourite fabric softerner, but the comfort it usually brought was gone.
She was entirely alone in the room.
But as she sat there in the pitch black, her breath hitching occasionally, a tiny, fragile thought cracked through the despair.
The voicemail was gone. The phone was disconnected. But the memory of the voice wasn't.
Angela closed her eyes, squeezing them shut against the darkness. She forced herself to think past the trauma of the accident, past the grueling weight of the day, past the automated message on the phone. She went back further.
She remembered a sketch they had shot a few months ago. They had spent three hours in a hot, cramped room, completely ruining takes because they couldn't stop making each other laugh. She remembered the exact pitch of Amanda’s laugh—how it started deep in her chest and ended in a breathless, high-pitched wheeze when she was truly losing it.
Angela held onto that memory like a dying man holding onto a life raft. She played it over and over in her head, memorizing the cadence, the warmth, the sheer, unadulterated life of it.
The phone service was dead. But Amanda had lived. And as long as Angela was still breathing, as long as she could still remember the sound of that laugh, she would carry a piece of that voice with her, even through the longest, darkest nights.