I feel it settle into my chest, heavy and unmovable.
This isn’t a victim statement. It’s a wound, left open on paper. A child trying to survive something that should have destroyed her.
And suddenly, I understand something I wish I didn’t.
Rowan didn’t forget. She never moved on. She carried this with her—every word, every memory—until it hardened into something sharp enough to fight back.
Diary Entry 1:
I turned thirteen today.
No one remembered. Not Mom—still sprawled on the couch where she’s been since yesterday afternoon,empty bottles on the floor her only company. Not Dad, who hasn’t been home in three days and probably won’t notice even when he is. This house doesn’t remember things anymore. It just exists.
I told myself not to expect anything. I really did. But it still hurts. Everything hurts. It feels like my chest is packed too tight, like there’s no room left to breathe without something tearing.
It’s been six months since Missy died.
Six months, and I keep waiting to wake up. I keep thinking I’ll open my eyes and she’ll be there, yelling at me for stealing her sweater or laughing at something stupid I said. But she’s gone. And the space she left behind has swallowed everything. There’s nothing solid left to stand on.
The boys who killed her are still free.
I heard Mom crying when the police called again. I was halfway up the stairs, listening. They said they didn’t have enough evidence after all. After all. Like this was some kind of inconvenience. Like my sister wasn’t dead and buried.
How do they not have enough evidence?
I saw them. I told them who they were. I told them everything. I gave them names and faces and voices.
I can still hear Missy screaming when I close my eyes. It never stops. But apparently twelve-year-olds are unreliable. Confused. Emotional. They say that like it explains why no one believes me.
Yet I remember everything.
I remember their faces. I remember the way one of them laughed. I remember the car. The smell of the field. The way the air felt when I realized what was happening. I remember my panic, the blood, the silence that followed afterward.
None of that goes away just because I’m young.
I guess it doesn’t matter what you remember if you’re not important.
I guess it doesn’t matter what they did if they’re rich…
And as I stare at the words on the page, I feel them land in me one by one—each sentence a bruise, each memory a blade dragged slow. This isn’t a child asking to be saved. This is a child being taught, early and brutally, exactly how the world works.
I flip to the next page and stop. It looks like it’s been torn from a book—creased and crumpled, then smoothed out again. Like it was meant to be thrown away, discarded in a moment of impulse, and then retrieved later as an afterthought.
Four lines of text stare back at me, written again and again until the paper can barely hold them. The ink is pressed so hard it’s bitten through in places, letters overlapping, crowding each other, filling every inch of space. There’s no margin left untouched, no room to breathe.
This isn’t repetition born of carelessness. It’s deliberate.Obsessive. Like she was afraid that if she didn’t keep writing them, they might slip away. Or worse—be forgotten.
The strokes grow heavier as the page goes on. Angrier. The pen must have torn at the fibres, carving the names into the paper like a punishment that never quite satisfied. I can almost see her hand shaking, feel the force and anger behind each line.
This isn’t a list. It’s a fixation. A promise.
Names I won’t forget:
William Scott-Evans
Marcus Delaney
Unknown
