My muscles tightened on instinct. I sat up straighter, shoulders rolling back, face smoothing into the dead calm I wore like armor. If he wanted fear, he wasn’t getting it from my expression. He could earn it the hard way.
Amelia’s voice came muffled through the glass. I couldn’t make out the words, but the tone was thin with exhaustion. She was trying to speak like she didn’t care.
Like she hadn’t been reduced to a shaking animal in a cage.
I leaned closer to the glass, not because I wanted conversation, but because ignoring her felt dangerous. Not for her. For me. For whatever was building inside my chest.
“What?” I said flatly.
Her eyes flicked up, annoyed that I’d responded at all. She said something again, clearer this time, still muffled but readable.
“Do you think he’s coming back?”
She was trying to plan. Trying to anchor herself to something predictable. She needed an answer to cling to.
I didn’t have one.
“I don’t know,” I said.
Her jaw clenched. She snapped back, words blurred by the barrier but obvious in shape.
“You never know anything.”
I leaned in closer, my breath fogging the glass. “None of us know anything,” I said, harsher than necessary. “That’s the point.”
I shifted away from the glass, needing space that didn’t exist. “Don’t fucking look at me like that,” I muttered.
Her mouth parted. She looked like she wanted to argue, then thought better of it. She sank back against the wall, eyes dropping again.
Silence returned, heavy as wet cloth.
I stared at the concrete floor and let the darkness in my head creep forward anyway. It came whether I wanted it or not.
Images.
Pathosbury. The hallways. Her locker. Her face when I shoved her too hard and pretended it was an accident. The way her eyes would flare, defiant, even when she was scared.
Lillian.
Her laugh. Her hands on my shirt. The way she’d looked at me like I was something worth knowing, and I’d taken it because I was selfish and angry and starving for affection I didn’t know how to ask for.
Then the consequences. The spiral. The pregnancy. The way everything turned black and final.
The word suicide still didn’t feel real in my mouth. It felt like a story that belonged to someone else, something tragic you read about and put down.
Except it was welded into us.
Into Amelia. Into me.
I clenched my jaw until it ached, trying to grind down the guiltlike it was bone. It didn’t go away. It never went away. It just waited.
My father’s voice crawled up from the pit of memory, thick with whiskey and contempt.
You ruin everything you touch.
I swallowed hard. I wanted to punch something. The wire. The wall. My own face. Instead, I sat still and let the rage boil, contained, because I’d learned early what happened when rage escaped.
People got hurt. Mostly the wrong people.
