First Place:

You Are Here

By Corrie Haldane

I open Google Maps, drop into Street View, walk down streets I still dream about. I stop. Rotate. Zoom in. Mom sold the house three years ago, but here, it’s still ours.

Here, she’s still stepping out the front door. Her face is blurred but I recognize her purple sweater and the ugly brown purse she carried everywhere. Dad’s motorcycle is parked in the driveway. If I wait long enough, he’ll come out of the garage with a wrench in one hand, a beer in the other. 

And here, I’m the ghost, forever walking home from school.

Second Place:

Signal Lost

By K. L. Mill

Calculating route.

He hasn’t programmed it. The car just knows. Like he's known, probably for months.

In half a mile, turn right.

He turns left. Past the cafe where they met. Through the park where he reached for her hand and she shoved it in her pocket.

Recalculating.

“I think you already know,” she’d said, the night it ended. He’d left without answering.

You have arrived at your destination.

Danny's motorcycle is in the driveway. Of course.

He doesn't stop. Rolls past slowly, like maybe the house won’t notice.

Make a U-turn when possible.

He keeps driving.

Recalculating.

Recalculating.

Recalculating.

Third Place:

Stripes

By Jay McKenzie

He kisses the rivers and hills of flesh, a topography of where they were, how they got here. He thought she was lost: that between the milk-dusted mornings, and the ear-split nights, she was gone. I will find you, he thinks. He traces a tongue across the curved road that opened up this route.

Darling, I was never lost, she whispers into his hair. She has never been more grounded. But you, she says, needed to find your way home. And in the map that is her changed body, he crosses the silver-striped rivers, starts the long trek back.

Fourth Place:

George Holds a Soggy, Crumpled A–Z

By Heather D Haigh

Did he drive here? Why would he?

George usually keeps his maps neatly folded. Takes care of them with the pleasure of familiarity. Knows every crease. Like he knew every line, curve, and wrinkle to Louise. When anyone chided him about refusing to get a Sat Nav, Louise would say, no need—he never gets lost. 

 George could picture the futile route the infusions slogged around her body, as clearly as he knew every step of their weekly stroll around Thurcross.

 Knows, to the minute, how long it takes to walk to Saint Jude's.

Cannot imagine how he finds home.