I lost the last scraps of my dignity when I tried to tell the truth, and nobody listened. When I walked into that town council meeting with trembling hands and stolen paperwork, thinkingthey’ll believe me.Thinkingthey’ll help me stop them.
But they didn’t.
They turned on me like a feral pack of ghouls because nobody wants to believe the Omega princess is the snake in the grass. Easier to pretend I was just ungrateful. Attention seeking. Crazy.
My chest feels too tight. My eyes sting. I press my palms hard to my eyelids until I see little sparks of light dance behind them.
I hate that my family still has this hold over me.
Get it together, Lo.
I push away from the pantry and head upstairs. The railing wobbles under my hand. The carpet smells of stale air and mildew. At the top of the stairs, my bedroom door is half open.
I nudge it wider with my toe.
Peach-colored walls. Bare mattress. Curtains drawn shut, but a sliver of light cuts across the floor, illuminating old candle jarslined up on the window ledge. My old perfume bottles. A dusty jewelry box with a cracked clasp.
It’s as if she’s still here. That girl with chipped black nail polish and punk bandposters, who used to believe she’d burn the world down just to prove she could.
I sit on the edge of the mattress. Springs squeal under my weight.
My reflection stares back at me from the cracked vanity mirror—hair tangled, face pale, dark circles under my eyes deep enough to bury secrets in.
I don’t look like her anymore.
And maybe that’s a good thing.
Because that girl was naive enough to think truth was enough. That girl thought coming home would feel safe again.
Idiot. Nothing will feel safe again.
I don’t let myself stay too long. The house might swallow me whole if I sit still.
If I breathe too deeply, I’ll dissolve into the wallpaper and become just another haunting no one wants to talk about. I’ll sink into the past I’ve done nothing but run from.
So I leave.
I’ll do what I have to before I fall apart again, and then I’ll leave.
I’m good at leaving.
Rafe Cadler’s shop sits exactly where I remember it when it was owned by his grandfather: brooding behind the old water tower.
It’s a metal box of a building, all rust and shadows and barely any signage. If you didn’t know what it was, you’d walk right by.
I shove my hands in my jacket pockets and cross the lot, boots crunching over gravel. My head’s still pounding, and my ribs feel like someone played kickball with them.
But sure. Let’s go retrieve my car corpse from another part of the town I wish I could avoid like the plague.
The garage door’s half open. Music’s playing, something twangy with no lyrics, just angry guitar and repressed emotions.
“Hello?” I call into the dim. “I’m here for the world’s saddest Honda Civic?”
Silence.
Then a low voice, flat as week-old soda:
“You’re early.”
