Chapter 1 : What took the light in the hallway
I didn't choose this town. I didn't choose the silence that followed.
But then there was Tyler—loud where I was quiet, light where I was breaking. He didn't know what he was saving. I never told him.
This isn't a love story. It's a confession buried under everything I lost, and everything I was too afraid to feel.
Read it like you're listening. Like you can hear what I couldn't say out loud.
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Mom couldn't pack fast enough. It wasn't careful—it was survival. Shirts still warm from the dryer got crumpled into bags, drawers yanked open like they owed her something. Every slam, every zipped suitcase sounded like goodbye. She had been talking about leaving for months, but this—this was her running. And she didn't look back, not even once.
It was like she was afraid the house would ask her to stay.
My brother, though, moved like he was underwater. Like grief had weight, and he was carrying it in his limbs. He drifted from room to room, brushing his fingers against the walls, picking up things he'd already packed, like maybe if he touched them again, they wouldn't leave with us. He kept making excuses—forgotten chargers, missing socks, a last look at the backyard. But really, he was just trying to stretch time. Trying to memorize the way light fell in the hallway. The way the house creaked when the wind hit just right.
He didn't say it, but I knew. He wasn't ready to let go.
And me?
I didn't know which one of them I envied more—the one running, or the one who still wanted to stay.
I just stood there. In the middle.
My hands were empty. I didn't pack anything, not really. Just carried a book I hadn't finished and a hoodie that didn't even smell like me anymore. I let Mom and Alex fill the bags and the silences. I let the house echo.
Because I didn't know how to say goodbye to something I never felt like I belonged to.
Leaving didn't hurt the way I thought it would. It felt more like floating. Like watching my life happen through someone else's window.
And still, I looked back. Once.
Just once, through the dusty car window, at the porch light that never worked, the dented mailbox, the cracked front step where I scraped my knee when I was seven. I didn't cry. I just blinked too long and let the rest blur.
We didn't speak much on the drive. Alex had headphones in. Mom kept tapping the wheel like the rhythm might hold her together.
And I sat in the back, listening to the silence I didn't choose.
Not knowing that later—when the house was gone and Alex was gone and everything got swallowed in a moment I didn't see coming—I'd miss that silence. I'd beg for it.
Because before the silence, there was still a heartbeat.
Mine
The new town was smaller, somehow. Or maybe it was just that everything in it felt borrowed—like someone else's clothes I hadn't grown into yet. The streets were too clean. The trees too trimmed. Even the sky looked staged, like it was pretending to be blue.
We moved into a rental with beige walls and no history. I think that's what Mom wanted. No memories to trip over. No ghosts to dust off.
Alex hated it. Said the walls made him feel like he was disappearing. He drew all over them with Sharpie the second week we were there. A constellation near the ceiling. A quote from a band none of us listened to anymore. Mom yelled, but only for a second. Then she looked at him like she was trying to remember something. Maybe the version of him before.
Me? I didn't draw on anything. I just started walking. I didn't know where I was going. I just liked the feeling of motion. Like maybe if I moved enough, I'd land somewhere that felt real.
That's how I found the basketball court behind the middle school. And Tyler.
He was loud, like someone who never learned how to whisper. He talked with his hands and laughed like he meant it. I don't even think he noticed me at first—not really. I was just another shadow at the edge of the court, hoodie up, eyes down. But he passed me the ball anyway.
"You play?" he asked.
I didn't answer. Just took the shot. Missed.
He grinned like that was the right answer anyway.
We didn't become friends fast. It was slower than that. Like water carving into rock. Every day he'd show up. Every day, he'd ask me something dumb—favorite cereal, last movie I cried at, whether I believed in ghosts. I didn't always answer, but he didn't stop asking. Like he was building a map of me one piece at a time.
Eventually, I let him.
I started talking. Not a lot. But enough. Enough for him to call me by my name like it meant something. Enough for him to text dumb memes at 2 a.m. Enough for him to sit next to me when I was too quiet and not ask why.
He never knew what he was saving.
And I never told him.
Because the thing is, I didn't know how to want him without breaking myself open. I didn't know how to say I see you and it hurts—so I didn't. I just watched him fall in love with a girl who wore cherry lip gloss and called him Ty. Watched him smile like the sun was something he could hold in his hands.
And I stayed silent.
Because I knew how to survive heartbreak. I didn't know how to survive hope.
And then came the crash.
Literally.
One blink, one phone call, one wrong turn. And just like that—Mom and Alex were gone. Both of them. Airbags, impact, headlines. Done.
I didn't answer the phone the first time it rang. I was watching Tyler practice layups under a bleeding sky. I remember thinking don't ruin this.
But the world doesn't ask permission to fall apart.
It just does.