She didn’t say goodbye. One day she was there; the next, her room was empty and her bed was stripped bare. When I asked where she was, Greta told me to mind my own business and threatened to lock me in the basement if I kept “snooping.”
That night, I lay outside her door anyway, staring at the closed, hollow frame. No peppermint, no sliver of light. Just dust and cold air and the creak of the vents.
What she never knew—what I never told her—was that I’d heard her the night before she left.
The vents in that old house carried sound too well. I was curled up in my usual spot outside her room when I heard it: choked, broken sounds seeping through the wall. It took me a second to realize she was crying. Meredith, who never shed a tear for anyone, was sobbing into her pillow like the world was ending.
I lay there frozen, every muscle locked. I wanted to knock. I wanted to go in, to tell her it would be okay even if it was a lie, to thank her for every rule and every night and every scrap of kindness. To beg her not to leave me.
But I didn’t move.
I stayed where I was and let her cry alone. Cowardice pressed me to the floor heavier than any hand ever had. It was the first and only time I ever heard her break.
I’ve been making up for that night ever since.
I jolt awake, heart pounding, in the cramped back room behind the mall’s Santa setup. The vinyl of the cheap plastic chair has dug a pattern into my spine. My neck aches from the angle I slept in, and my right arm is a dead weight.
For a few seconds, I’m back in that hallway—peeling wallpaper, flickering light, her quiet voice. Then the smell of mall popcorn and stale coffee cuts through the memory and drags me into now.
I sit up with a groan and roll my shoulders until something in my back pops. Fluorescent light buzzes overhead. A crooked poster about “Maintaining Holiday Cheer!” is taped to the wall across from me, curling at the edges. Christmas music drifts in faintly from the concourse outside, some overproduced version of “Silent Night” that makes my teeth ache.
Her words are still ringing in my head:People like us don’t get happy endings, Nick.
She was so certain. So sure the world had already decided how our story ended.
She was wrong. She has to be.
I reach into the inner pocket of my jacket and feel for the familiar shape there. The little music box presses into my palm, solid and worn. My thumb traces the fading silver stars on its lid. The paint is mostly gone now, scratched by a dozen moves and a thousand restless nights, but I know every chip, every crack. I’ve carried this thing across state lines, through jobs, in and out of shitty apartments and worse motels. It’s the closest thing I have to a relic.
Anyone else would call this what it is: obsession. Stalking.
They’re not wrong. I just don’t care.
Meredith might believe people like us don’t get happy endings. The world proved that to her again and again. But I’ve spent the past ten years making sure I’m not helpless anymore. Learning how to disappear in plain sight. How to find people who don’t want to be found. How to pull records that should’ve been sealed and make money under names that don’t belong to me.
Every skill I picked up, every line I crossed, I did with one goal lodged in my chest like shrapnel: when I found her again, I’d be able to do something about it.
I slide the music box back into my pocket and push to my feet. My legs tingle as blood returns, but my resolve is steady. Out in the mall, they’re hanging their happiness on credit cards and fake snow. Out there, she’s walking through the world I finally clawed my way into, cold and untouchable and alone.
My chest tightens with something that feels stuck between longing and rage. Longing for the girl who sat in hallways and laundry rooms with me, saving me without ever meaning to.Rage at the world that taught her that accepting anything—a gift, a hand, a promise—only ends in pain.
Crying doesn’t help. They don’t care.
She was right about most people.
But I care enough for both of us.
I flex my hand, the edge of the music box digging into my ribs beneath my jacket. The tiny bite of pain steadies me, pulls me into focus.
“Hold on, Meredith,” I whisper into the empty room, voice rough. “You're not leaving me behind this time.”
Caring about her was never the problem. Leaving her to cry alone was.
Our story isn’t over just because she decided we don’t get happy endings. She wrote that rule when we were kids trying not to starve. I’m rewriting it now.
People like us don’t get happy endings handed to us.
So I’ll take one. For both of us.
