Not to change anything.
Just to be there again. To know what I was standing inside before it became a before.
Because everything changed here.
And I wish I had been more prepared.
• • •
I remember sirens first.
Then the lights — red and blue bleeding through my curtains, painting the ceiling of my room in slow rotations. I got up without thinking. Pressed my face to the window.
Next door.
Whatever was happening, it was next door.
Suddenly, the house was alive.
My parents were already moving. I heard them on the stairs, their voices low and urgent in a way that made my stomach drop. They told me to stay inside. Didn’t explain.
Just — stay.
So I stayed.
And I stood at the window and watched the lights and tried to breathe and couldn’t quite manage it.
I didn’t know then that what I was feeling had a name. That the tightening in my chest and the way the room seemed to tilt and the certainty that something was horribly wrong — that was a panic attack. The first of many.
They would usually always involve Cassian in some way.
My parents came back inside maybe two minutes later.
It’s crazy how much can change in two minutes.
My mom was crying. My dad had his hand on her back, his face showing something I didn’t have words for yet.
I asked about Cassian.
They said he was okay.
They said to go back to bed.
I didn’t sleep.
• • •
My mom told me the next morning.
His mom had passed away.
I sat with that and couldn’t make it fit. She had seemed fine. Though sometimes, through the kitchen window, I’d catch her just standing very still in the middle of a room — not doing anything, staring at something I couldn’t see from outside.
I’d thought nothing of it then. I was ten. I thought adults stood still sometimes.
I wished I’d paid more attention.
They said she’d been sick. That it had been going on for a long time. That apparently even Cassian hadn’t known how bad it was.
