PAST
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MELINA'S POV
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"Can I sit here?"
The voice didn't have Dove's brightness. It wasn't Zara's teasing or Theo's easy-smug tone. Angela's voice was flat—cold, clipped, steady—like she was stating a fact instead of asking. No softness, no attempt at cheer. Just a sentence.
I looked down at my tray. My fork moved because my fingers moved; I wasn't actually eating. The cafeteria noise became a distant thing—the clatter, the laughter, the TV in the corner—everything muffled so hard it felt like someone had taken the edges off the world.
Angela didn't rush. She stood there longer than she needed to, eyes flicking from my face to my food and back again. Then, without another word, she slid a cold can across my table and sat opposite me.
"Is everything okay?" she asked.
There was no syrupy fake concern there, and not even the kind of forced kindness people use when they want credit. It was plain, almost indifferent. And somehow that made it mean more. She meant it. That was the thing that kept striking me—her not performing sympathy, just being near.
I'd practiced swallowing my feelings until it was automatic. Crying without purpose, explaining without clarity—those had become luxuries I couldn't afford. But across from Angela, who I used to roll my eyes at, the habit felt thin. She didn't fuss. She didn't ask me to tell everything. She just sat.
"You don't have to tell me," she said softly, like she could see the words jammed in my throat.
First impressions are always the false ones, I thought. It's a stupid truth that keeps proving itself.
"But it'd help if you smiled. You look like someone died," she added, flat as a page.
"You're not smiling either," I muttered.
"I mostly never smile," she said, standing. "But you always do." She left the can by my hand and walked away, steps even and quiet.
I held the can too long, feeling it sweat cold against my palm. What is this girl, I wondered. Why is she the one who does this right now?
———
"Zara, we need to talk."
Dove's voice was firm when she stood in front of Zara, who sat at her desk watching the light tilt across the window. The late sun gilded Zara's face and made everything look softer, but her expression stayed hard and far away.
"Not now, Dove," Zara said without turning. Her hand waved the words away like a fly. The voice sounded heavy, like it had been dragged through something.
Dove didn't step back. She folded her arms and stood, waiting. When Zara didn't answer, Dove reached for her wrist, intending to pull her out of the room where there wouldn't be so many eyes.
Zara snapped. The motion was sharp—jerked away, chair legs scraping. She stood in a rush and the room seemed to inhale with her.
"What the hell is wrong with you?! Leave me alone!" she screamed.
Her face was red, eyes wet. I'd never seen Zara like that—screaming, raw, not measured. There was fear under the fury, thin and bright. I noticed it before I understood why; fear shows itself in tiny hands, in the way lungs clutch when you breathe.
"I'm sorry… I'm sorry," Dove stammered, backing away as every head turned. She hurried to the door, shoulders pressed to her ears like she was trying to hold everything in. Her shoulder brushed mine on the way out; I didn't reach for her. I couldn't.
Zara sat back down slowly, hands trembling where they rested on the desk. For a moment, she was small in the chair, like someone had deflated a part of her.
I stayed at the doorway, feeling the heaviness settle into my ribs. The way the room had tightened—the way every other voice had died—stayed like a weight. I felt like she noticed the bruise on my cheek for the first time in daylight. It hadn't been there yesterday. Zara glanced at it and her eyes widened.
She came toward me—closer than she had been to anyone in hours—lips parting. She opened her mouth as if to say something. Whatever she meant to say stepped out of her when I walked past, heading for the back row like it was the safest place in the world, leaving Zara standing there. I kept my gaze straight ahead. Tears fell anyway, hot and stupid and unstoppable.
Walking past Zara, I tried to look strong. It didn't last long. The ache was from last night—everything last night—what Zara must have had to survive with her father, and the thinness of our friendship now, all the awkward words we couldn't say. I wanted the kind of friendship that lasted until exams and beyond, but it had splintered and I could feel the shards under my skin.
Zara didn't follow. She stood there as if the air around her was heavier. Eventually she sat back down, shoulders drooping like someone who had been holding a weight and finally let it go. The classroom carried on like it always did, but the normal felt like a lie.
___________
The day moved on in a blur—lectures stacking one on another, a blur of professors and faces. Nothing sank in except the crack. Professor Wing talked about theories or assignments—I don't know—and I watched his mouth move like it belonged to someone on television. The words were a pattern of sound. I kept thinking about Dove and Zara, about how small things sometimes explode into enormous ones.
"Why didn't you let her talk?" Angela's calm voice pulled me back from the fog.
I didn't know how to answer. It's different in the movies where people stand under streetlights and confess everything in two minutes. Real life is messy; it sits in your throat. I could feel it like chains. I can't pull them off because I don't know what I'm supposed to say. Zara needs space, I thought. She needs quiet. Maybe she'll come to me. Maybe she won't.
"I don't know," I whispered, not really answering.
"You guys should talk. Don't you think, Theo?" Angela asked, glancing to the right.
I hadn't noticed Theo slip in. He was there, half-scribbling on his notepad like this whole thing was no more than another squiggle on his day. "Yeah…you should," he said without looking up.
The kind of talk we needed to have didn't have a time or place. I agreed because it felt like agreeing was the right thing to do, but I also knew that agreeing didn't fix the knotted feeling.
—
Everything from stepping into college to stepping back into the apartment felt hazy. My chest ached like someone had tightened a band around it. The more I tried to name the feeling, the slipperier it became. I wanted Grandma. I wanted to sit on her porch and tell her about everything—the way Mom hit me and called me names, the way I felt like a bullock pulling a cart until I had no strength left, the way our little triangle of friends had begun to fall apart. I wanted someone to hold the shape of me and not ask questions.
By the time I walked home, tears had started again. People looked. I could feel their glances like tiny pricks. I tried to wipe my face when no one was looking, but it never felt clean.
"Can you help me cross?" a shaky voice asked.
I turned. An old woman stood there, fragile as porcelain but smiling with a softness I hadn't known I needed. I nodded, forcing a smile that felt paper-thin, and took her hand. It was warm, steady—everything mine wasn't at the moment.
When we reached the other side, she pressed a rose into my palm. "Consider this my blessing," she said, and her smile had a kind of faith in it that made me inhale sharply. She shuffled away with her stick and a slow swing in her hips like she'd never known any other way to move.
I stood there with the rose, breath ragged. The smell of it was like someone pressing memory into my face. I let out a shaky breath and walked the last stretch home, the petals against my palm like a small, stubborn comfort.
—
Night kept its distance from me. The moon was a bright thing in the sky, but it didn't soften what the day had done. I curled up in the corner of my bed, knees pulled close as if I could hold myself together with them. I shut my eyes, pretending to sleep because pretending was easier than being awake with all the noise inside my head.
That's when I heard it—a rustle. Soft at first, careful, like whoever or whatever was in the room didn't want to be discovered.
A cold ran down my spine. I stayed still, breath in slow, pretending sleep the way you pretend when you don't want to invite the world in. The rustle came again, and for the first time that night I felt awake in a way that wasn't hollow.
My ears sharpened at mildest of sounds, cause this is not hallucination, something is in my room. And if i open my eyes right now, i don't know what misfortune to welcome.
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