“Hey, you’ve reached Willow! Can’t chat now, but will chat later! Leave a message.”
I freeze for a second, thumb hovering over the screen. I shouldn’t. But my mouth opens anyway.
“Hey, Will,” I say, my voice too small at first. I clear my throat, walking slower now. “So today sucked. Shocker, right?”
I step off the curb and start hopping over the railroad tracks, the pavement radiating heat even at night.
“I had some lady try to fight me over pancakes at ten o’clock at night. Screamed like I insulted her entire bloodline. Like lady, make the pancakes at home. Ours suck anyway!” I laugh, but it’s thin. Hollow. My chest tightens as I make it to the sidewalk, the buzzing of insects filling in the silence.
“I keep thinking you’ll answer one of these days,” I say softly. “You’ll pick up and ask if I made it home safe. You’ll call me an idiot for walking alone again. You’ll roll your eyes, and I’ll pretend not to care that you worry about me.”
The voicemail timer is ticking. I know it’s almost up. I can feel the words pressing behind my teeth.
“I don’t care if you’re mad, or if you left for some reason I’m too stupid to get... I just?—.”
Click.
The line cuts out, and I’m left staring at my screen in the middle of the empty street, feeling the silence settle like ash in my throat. “I miss you, Will.”
The walk home isn’t long, just a few cracked sidewalks and flickering porch lights away. Mason Park sits tucked at the edge of town like a secret no one wants to claim. My trailer's wedged between two others, one with a pit bull that won’t shut up and the other with wind chimes that sound like haunted silverware. The porch light’s busted—again.
I juggle the bag of food as I reach for the door handle, but it doesn’t budge. Locked.
“Seriously?” I mutter, pressing my forehead to the metal. I don’t remember locking it. Hell, I don’t even remember if we have ever had aworkinglock to our trailer. I take a step back and scream, “Mom! Mom!”
After a few moments, I step back, hands raised in frustration, an exasperated scream caught in my throat.Can this day get any fucking worse?If I walk into that trailer and find my mom on the floor again—OD’ing on whatever her new loser boyfriend handed her—I swear to God, I’ll rip my own damn hair out from the roots.
I circle around the side, where the screen window to my room sticks just enough to piss me off but not enough to stop me. I wiggle my fingers through the crack, pop the latch, and hoist myself up. My foot slips once—graceful as ever—but I manage to haul myself inside and land on my mattress with a heavythump.
The room smells like old incense and cherry lip balm. I left the fan running, but it’s just blowing the heat around like a lazyhand. The low sound of grunting rises from the next room and I gag at the mewling sounds of what I hope and pray is not my mother.
I spin around hoping I can slip on my massive over the head headphones when I notice my room looks empty, and notmy mom-stole-a-few-shirts-againkind of empty. No, this isyou’re-moving-the-fuck-outempty.
My heart kicks up.
The bookshelves are bare, save for one knocked-over candle I thought I lost months ago. My Polaroids? Gone. The dreamcatcher that’s hung above my window since I was thirteen? Ripped down. My desk drawers—wide open, hollow like they’d been looted. Even the little ceramic frog Willow made me in sixth grade is missing, and that thing has survivedeveryshitstorm in this house.
I turn in a slow circle, throat tightening, a rising pulse of disbelief hammering in my chest.
Then I see them.
Three black garbage bags slumped in the corner like body bags, sealed tight, full of my life shoved in without care. Like someone was cleaning up after a party that I didn’t even know was over.
And just like that, the numbness burns off.
“Fuck no.” The words rip out of me raw.
I yank one open, hands shaking. My hoodie’s inside—my hoodie, the one with the burn mark on the sleeve. My sketchbook, bent in half. My socks, my jeans, my makeup bag. All just… stuffed in like trash.
“What the fuck!” I yell, voice ripping through the stale air.
I rip open the second bag—more of the same. My old photo albums, crumpled notebooks, the mug I stole from Waffle House two years ago. The life I’ve been barely holding together, tied up in plastic like it didn’t mean shit.
My heart’s pounding so hard it hurts. My mouth tastes like smoke and betrayal.
I storm toward the hallway, every step heavier than the last. The closer I get, the louder the noises from her room—low, sloppy moaning, a bed creaking in rhythm.
I don’t knock.
