Darkness.

  The same darkness.

  Not the kind that swallows. The kind that stays. Presses. Refuses to move no matter how hard you push against it.

  Where am I?

  I tried to speak.

  Nothing.

  My mouth was there. I could feel it. But it belonged to something else. Something that had sealed it shut without asking, without warning, without leaving any edge to fight against.

  Help! Help!

  Please....

  Get me out of here....

  The words formed completely. Went nowhere. The silence took them the way deep water takes stones. No spsh. No surface disturbance. Just gone.

  Then a voice.

  Small. Delicate. From a direction that kept shifting every time I turned toward it.

  "Why did you leave me?"

  Something moved in me.

  Not in my chest. Deeper. A pce I hadn't known existed until that sound pressed against it. The recognition arriving before the understanding. The bruise found before the memory of the blow.

  "Please."

  Her voice again. Smaller this time.

  "Take me out of here. They're really bad. They don't give me chocote. Please. I can't stay here anymore. I can't."

  I couldn't see her. Couldn't move toward her. Couldn't give her even the smallest thing. Not a word. Not a gesture. Not the acknowledgment that I had heard her.

  I had heard her.

  Every word. Every pce the desperation had worn through and come out raw.

  The ground shifted.

  A slow tremor moving outward from beneath my feet. The edges of the dream beginning to fold the way they always did when the end was coming. Not sharp. Not sudden. Just a gradual losing of definition. The way a face loses detail when you stare too long.

  "No."

  Her voice cracked.

  "Please don't go. Take me with you. I'll be good. I'll be so good please don't leave me here please—"

  "Wake up."

  Mom's voice.

  Warm. Distant. Pulling.

  I know what that means. I always know.

  And yet.

  Why does it feel like loss.

  Why does it feel like I'm leaving something behind.

  Something rose in me in the st second before I surfaced. Not a thought. Not a decision. Just something moving upward from somewhere I couldn't name, arriving fully formed, escaping before I understood I was speaking.

  I will protect you.

  I opened my eyes.

  Mom was there.

  Sitting on the edge of my bed, watching me with the careful expression of someone checking that all the pieces had come back intact. The line across her forehead was deeper than usual. The one that only appeared when her concern moved past the point where she could carry it quietly.

  I didn't speak.

  I reached for her instead.

  She startled. A small, brief thing. Then her arms came around me and her hand found my back and moved in slow steady circles. I held on harder than I meant to. Pressed my face into her shoulder and felt the edges of myself slowly return.

  The dream receded.

  The room arrived.

  It took a while.

  "Can I have some water?" My voice came out wrong. Thin. Slightly unfamiliar. Like hearing yourself in a recording and not quite pcing it.

  "Of course. Hold on."

  She left. Her footsteps on the stairs. The quiet of the room settling back.

  I sat still.

  The sweat on my skin was cooling. My heartbeat doing something slow and reluctant in the direction of normal. The dream fading the way they do. Not disappearing. Just moving to that middle distance where it would sit for the rest of the day. Present. Not pressing.

  And then.. st night came back.

  Not slowly.

  All at once.

  The dark. The click of the door. The silence that had weight. The gap between the sister I had understood her to be and what had happened in that room. What her hands had done. What her voice had said. The specific register of it that I had never heard from her before and now could not unhear.

  I sat with it.

  Let it become real.

  How will I face her.

  How will I face any of this.

  How do I sit at the same table. How do I pass the same salt. How do I look at the same face and pretend the dark never happened.

  The door opened.

  Mom. Gss of water in both hands, held with the deliberateness of someone who had decided the thing they were carrying mattered. She crossed the room and held it out.

  I took it.

  Drank.

  "Don't worry." I made my voice as firm as it would go. "I'm fine. Didn't sleep well. And then the nightmare on top of it."

  I have to manage this myself.

  I have to.

  She already carries more than she shows. I see it in that line on her forehead. In the way she moves through evenings when she thinks no one is watching. I cannot add to it. I cannot be one more weight on someone already holding too much.

  She sat beside me.

  Her hand came to my face. Palm against my cheek. Warm in the specific way that only belongs to her. The warmth of someone who has been keeping you safe since before you knew what safe meant.

  "You can tell me anything." Quiet. Certain. "Whatever it is. I won't judge you. I promise."

  I looked at her.

  For a moment I was right at the edge of it.

  The words were there. Arranged. Ready. Needing only the decision to release them.

  Mom. Something happened st night. I don't know how to carry it.

  I pulled back from the edge.

  I can't lose this. I can't be the thing that breaks this family open.

  "I know," I said. Steadier than I expected. "I promise. When I need you I'll come to you."

  She held my gaze.

  I felt her reading my face the way she sometimes did. Carefully. Without rushing. Looking for the thing underneath the thing being said.

  I felt her find the wall.

  I felt her decide, quietly, without announcement, to respect it.

  Her hand squeezed mine once.

  Firm.

  "Okay." She stood. Smoothed her clothes. "Get ready for school. Sia already left."

  I absorbed this. I saw that coming. But I couldn't help bet ask, "Did she say anything?"

  "She didn't say anything."

  "She seemed in a hurry." Mom moved toward the door. "Don't worry. I called Mia. I asked her to walk with you."

  I went still.

  The words sat in me without moving.

  Stay away from that bitch

  Sia's voice. From st night. From the dark.

  "Why did you call her?" The words came out measured. Careful.

  "What do you mean why?" Mom turned, mildly surprised. "I can't leave my son walking alone, can I? And Mia is a nice girl. I like her."

  Ringggg

  The doorbell.

  Mom moved. Footsteps on the stairs. The front door opening. Voices drifting up from below.

  "Thank you for coming, Mia."

  "No no, it's my pleasure, auntie."

  I sat on the edge of my bed.

  Didn't move.

  Listened to the sound of two worlds that had no idea they were already colliding talking warmly to each other at the front door.

  Mia downstairs. Smiling. Knowing nothing.

  Sia somewhere in the city. Having left without a word. Having already said everything she intended to say in the dark.

  And me.

  Here.

  In the space between them.

  I guess this is it.

  The thought arrived without weight. Without drama. Just a pin observation about the shape of things.

  This was it.

  Whatever came next was already beginning.

  And I hadn't even gotten out of bed yet.

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  AnnouncementHey, I tried giving more space between lines in this chapter. Should I continue with this style, or should I make paras bigger?