Sia's POV

  I don't know when Rio came into my life.

  That's not quite right. I know exactly when. I was two years old. He arrived and that was it. The world rearranged itself around him and I rearranged with it, without being asked, without minding.

  He was the kind of small that made you want to protect something. Soft cheeks and grabby hands and eyes that found you across a room like you were the only fixed point in it. Mom used to say he came out already knowing who he belonged to. I think she was right.

  Mom worked long hours. That was just the shape of our days, the thing we built our lives around. She left in the mornings while the sky was still a pale, undecided gray, and came back after dark smelling like the outside world, tired in that quiet way she never compined about.

  Sometimes she dropped us at the neighbors. Sometimes she didn't, trusting me with him the way you trust someone with something irrepceable. I was never bothered by it. I understood, even then, that everything she did was for us.

  So I took care of him. That was my purpose and I wore it easily, the way you wear something that was made for you.

  Our days were small and warm and full of him. His giggles chasing me through the hallway. His little hands grabbing my sleeve when something scared him. The drawings he'd shove into my face with that whole-body pride that only children carry.

  Thank you for the food.

  Sia, look what I made.

  Ha ha, you won't catch me.

  I was happy. I didn't question it. I didn't question any of it. I didn't think to.

  I don't know exactly when it changed, the way I felt. The way I saw him more than just my brother, something mine. It happened the way seasons change, so gradually that you don't notice until you're already standing in different weather, wondering when the air got cold.

  We were in middle school by then. The kind of afternoons that felt endless in the good way, the sky holding its light longer than it should, the streets warm and easy and familiar. Rio was twelve. I was fourteen. Life hadn't asked anything difficult of us yet.

  I was waiting outside the school gates the way I always did. The sun was low, throwing long shadows across the pavement, stretching everything out until the world looked slightly stranger than it was. Other students filtered past me in clusters, their voices overpping, bags swinging. I wasn't paying attention to any of them.

  I was watching for him.

  I saw him coming through the crowd, his bag slightly lopsided the way it always was, his hair a little messy. My chest did the thing it always did when I spotted him. That quiet warmth. That settling, like something clicking back into pce.

  I raised my hand to wave.

  And then I saw her.

  A girl beside him. Walking close, her shoulder nearly at his. The kind of close that carries a meaning even when you don't want to read it. My hand stopped mid-air.

  Who is she.

  Why are they together?

  Why is she so close to him?

  Something stung. Small and sharp and horrible, wedging itself between my ribs before I could stop it. I told myself it was nothing. Just a friend. Just a cssmate from his year, someone I probably recognized by face without knowing her name. Nothing to worry about.

  But why is she so close?

  I stood there and watched them walk toward me. His face was bright. He was talking, animated about something, his hands moving the way they did when he was excited. She was ughing. And he was smiling that specific smile, the unguarded one, the one that came out when he forgot to be careful about anything.

  Something moved under my ribs. Dark and quiet and not yet named.

  He shouldn't smile like that with other girls.

  The thought arrived completely formed before I could intercept it. And the worst part wasn't that I thought it. The worst part was how natural it felt. How obvious. How like a fact.

  Only I deserve that smile.

  I've been here his whole life.

  I've been the one.

  They reached me. The te sun painted everything in shades of amber and rust, long shadows bleeding across the pavement around our feet. The girl had a pleasant face. Neat hair. Nothing about her was threatening in any visible way.

  That made it worse somehow.

  "Hey Sia." Rio's voice was warm, easy. He gestured toward her with that open, uncomplicated friendliness he'd always had. "Meet her. This is Arya, my friend. And Arya, this is my sister, Sia."

  I looked at Arya. I looked at him. I saw the tension living in him beneath the surface, the particur quality of someone doing something they aren't sure they should. He was watching my face the way you watch weather.

  "Umm." He shifted his weight slightly. "Sia, Arya and I were thinking of going out to eat. Today is her birthday, so I thought." He paused. "Could I go?"

  For a moment the words didn't reach me.

  "What?" My voice came out too loud. It cracked across the air between us and he flinched, a small involuntary thing, taking half a step back. That half step nded in my chest like something physical.

  "I thought I could have some fun," he said, quieter now, his voice dropping to something careful. "You know, I don't really go that much."

  The honesty in it. The small vulnerability of it. I felt it and I felt the anger anyway, underneath and around it, not knowing which one to listen to.

  Why am I so angry. Why does this feel so wrong. Why does the sight of him wanting something outside of me feel like something being taken.

  "But do you even know this girl well?" I heard myself say, pushing the words into the shape of concern, of reasonable sisterly caution.

  "Yes." His answer was immediate and certain. "She's been really kind to me. We sit together in css. I've known her for almost a month."

  His reasoning was clean. There was nothing wrong with it. A month was long enough. A birthday was a reasonable occasion. A friend was something a twelve year old boy was supposed to have. Every part of it made sense and every part of it felt wrong to me in a way I couldn't justify or examine or look at directly without flinching.

  The sun was sinking further. The shadows on the pavement had grown long enough to swallow the spaces between us.

  "Ok," I said finally, the word coming out like something I was releasing against my will. "But you have to be home before eight. Don't even think about staying out a moment longer than that."

  His face changed. The brightness came pouring back into it, unconstrained, spilling out of him the way light spills through a window when the curtain is pulled back. He was so happy. So immediately, completely happy.

  At that moment it felt worth it. Whatever it cost me, whatever this feeling was that I didn't have a name for yet, his happiness made it worth it.

  "You have the phone, right?" I asked.

  "Yes."

  "If anything happens, if you need anything at all, you call me immediately. Don't hesitate."

  He nodded, already half-turned toward leaving, excitement barely contained in his body. I looked at Arya. I straightened my posture. I let my expression say what I needed it to say clearly.

  "Take care of him. Please."

  She met my eyes without flinching. "Don't worry. I will."

  They turned and walked away together down the amber-lit street, his bag still lopsided, their shadows stretching long behind them across the pavement until the crowd swallowed them and they were gone.

  I stood there in the warm evening air and the feeling settled into my chest like something that had arrived and decided to stay.

  It's fine. He just went to a friend's birthday.

  Nothing will happen. It's fine.

  I went home. Changed my clothes. Showered. Followed every step of the routine my body knew without requiring my mind to be present. The apartment was quiet in that specific way it got when Rio wasn't in it, a different quality of silence than ordinary silence, a room-shaped absence.

  I made dinner. Set the table. Sat down.

  The clock on the kitchen wall read seven fifteen.

  He'll be back soon.

  I ate without tasting anything. Washed the dishes. Dried them. Put them away in their proper pces with the specific, deliberate carefulness of someone who needed their hands to be doing something.

  Seven thirty.

  I sat on the couch. The television was on but I wasn't watching it. The light in the room had shifted to that ft, bluish evening tone, the streetmps outside the window just beginning to glow. I was looking at the clock every few minutes and then telling myself to stop and then looking again.

  Seven fifty.

  He's probably on his way. Traffic. He'll be here.

  Eight o'clock came and went in silence.

  I picked up my phone. Dialed his number. It rang four times and cut to voicemail. I hung up and dialed again.

  Voicemail.

  Again.

  Voicemail.

  Eight fifteen. The apartment felt smaller than it had an hour ago. I was sitting very still on the couch, both hands around my phone, calling his number over and over in a rhythm that had stopped being rational and become something else entirely. Something closer to prayer.

  Pick up. Rio, please pick up.

  Eight thirty. Eight forty-five.

  The front door opened.

  Mom came in carrying the weight of a full day's work on her shoulders, her coat slightly wrinkled, her eyes already searching for the shape of ordinary evening. She looked at me and stopped.

  "What happened, Sia?" Her voice was immediate, low, reading my face the way mothers read their children. "You look worried. Where's Rio?"

  I opened my mouth. Nothing came out. My hands were trembling around the phone, still dialing, the line still ringing into nothing.

  "Rio isn't responding." The words came out broken somewhere in the middle. I felt the line of warmth down my cheek before I registered I was crying. "He said he'd be back by eight. He's not picking up. He's not—"

  Mom crossed the room in three steps and grabbed my shoulders, her grip hard enough that I felt it, hard enough that it should have hurt, and I couldn't care about that at all. Her face had gone pale under the apartment light. Her eyes had that look, the look you never want to see on your mother's face.

  "Not responding?" she repeated. "What do you mean? Where did he go?"

  "A friend's birthday." My voice was barely a voice anymore. "He said he'd be home by eight. I've been calling. He's not picking up. He's not—"

  The words stopped working. Mom was already moving, already pulling her own phone out, already dialing, her mouth set in a line I had never seen on her before. We were both out the door before I had finished processing that we were leaving.

  The night air was cool against my wet cheeks. The street was quiet at this hour, most windows lit from within, the ordinary hum of the neighborhood carrying on around us, indifferent to the specific terror moving through my chest. Mom was speed-walking beside me, her heels sharp against the pavement, her voice rising into the night.

  "Rio, where are you? Please pick up the phone. Please."

  Her face in the moonlight. The tears catching the light on her cheeks. I had never seen my mother cry before that night. Not once. And seeing it now made something in me understand, in a way I hadn't quite understood until that moment, just how serious this was. Just how far outside the ordinary we had already traveled.

  We ran toward the nearest police box, its small rectangur light glowing at the end of the street like the only fixed point in a tilting world. Something to aim for. Something to reach.

  I was three steps from the door when my phone rang.

  The sound split through everything. I stopped moving so suddenly that Mom nearly ran into me. The ringtone was jarringly loud in the night air, impossibly loud, each note of it cutting.

  I looked at the screen.

  Rio.

  I answered before the second ring finished, my voice already going, already desperate before I'd even processed that I was speaking.

  "Rio, where are you? I've been calling for so long. Why weren't you picking up, why—"

  A pause on the other end.

  Then a voice that wasn't his.

  A stranger's voice, calm and careful in the way of someone delivering something they don't want to deliver.

  "I'm not Rio." A breath. "I found this phone next to a body. Please come to the city bridge."

  The call kept going. The voice kept talking. I don't know what it said after that.

  Mom was in front of me, both hands on my shoulders, her face inches from mine, saying something. Asking something. Her mouth was moving. Her eyes were wide and terrified and searching my face.

  I couldn't hear her.

  I couldn't hear anything.

  Was it my fault?

  The thought arrived so quietly. So gently. Like it had always been there, waiting for exactly this moment to make itself known.

  I couldn't protect him

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  AnnouncementNext chapter will be the continuation of Sia's POV. I hope you liked this chapter. Make sure to share your thoughts. If you have any suggestions, you can tell in the comments.