Empty street.
Just shadows and streetlights and the distant sound of traffic.
A ringing begins in my ears. High-pitched. Insistent. The kind that makes you think you’re about to pass out.
Goosebumps ripple across my flesh under my coat. My mouth goes dry. My throat starts to close—that automatic response I’ve had since the stairwell, since the trauma, since my body learned fear has a physical shape.
It’s just anxiety,I tell myself.You’re freaking out because Alex made you paranoid. Because you’re thinking about Marcus and Dahlia and murder and?—
But my body isn’t listening to logic.
My body is screaming.
I look around. Try to find the source. Try to understand what triggered this.
There.
Across the street. A man leans against a lamppost. Smoking a cigarette. Casual. Indifferent. Not even looking at me.
He’s the only other person on the street.
Just standing there. Smoking. Dark jacket. Jeans. Could be anyone. Could be nothing. My legs tense to bolt. My keys find their way between my knuckles without conscious thought.
But my body doesn’t care what he looks like. My body is saying RUN.
I feel insane. He’s the only person on the street and I’m about to bolt like he’s holding a knife.
You’re being ridiculous, I tell myself. He’s just smoking. Leave him alone.
“Get it together, Dylan.” I shake my head. Force my feet to move. Turn the corner toward home.
One more block. Just one more?—
I freeze.
There, in the middle of the sidewalk, growing through a crack in the concrete…
A dandelion.
Not a bud. Not yellow petals waiting to bloom. Not even the white fluff ready to scatter wishes into the wind.
Just the stem. The leaves. Green and impossible in February.
Dandelions don’t grow in February.
I know this. Anyone who’s ever seen a dandelion knows this. They bloom in spring. Go to seed in summer. Die in winter. That’s how plants work. That’s how life works.
But here it is.
Growing in the exact spot I need to walk. Unavoidable. Unmistakable.
A déjà vu feeling washes over me. Strange and familiar all at once. Like I’ve been here before. Like I’ve seen this before. Like this moment has already happened and I’m just remembering it instead of living it.
Like someone’s trying to tell me something.
I can’t name it. Can’t place it. It just exists. This knowing without understanding.
I squat down. Reach for it. My fingers close around the stem—rough, real, growing through impossible concrete—and I rip it from its roots.
