Chapter 32
The days after that phone call just ran together like spilled paint. Everything turned into an awful gray blur where nothing mattered.
She kept moving around, technically doing things, but it was like watching someone else live her life. She breathed, but never deeply enough. Even the air itself seemed to hurt.
The next morning, she woke up clutching her phone. Dead screen, cold as ice against her palm. She pressed it to her chest, where Lauren used to be, and felt absolutely nothing.
Everything was too quiet. She couldn’t deal with coffee. Didn’t shower. Didn’t even get dressed. She just sat on her bedroom floor with Salem pressed against her side, watching dust float in the sunlight coming through her blinds.
At some point, she reached for her camera out of habit.
She lifted it, aimed at the shifting light, tried to focus on Salem’s whiskers.
Her finger hovered on the shutter button, but she couldn’t bring herself to press it.
The weight of the camera grew unbearable, so she set it back down as if it were something fragile that might shatter her if she touched it wrong.
Hours passed like this. The day moved on without her permission. The next one did, too.
Thalia called repeatedly. The phone buzzed and buzzed, its sound rattling through the silence. Sierra stared at it until the screen went dark again. She couldn’t even make her arm move to answer.
Four days later, she finally grabbed it. When she spoke, her voice sounded like sandpaper.
“Hey,” Thalia said immediately. “Thank God. You don’t have to say anything, okay? I just needed to know you were breathing. I’ll just stay on with you.”
And she did. For twenty-three silent minutes, Sierra sat on her bed, Salem tucked under her chin, listening only to her sister’s steady breathing on the other end.
Jonas texted.
Jonas: If you need some time off work, take it.
Sierra stared at the words for nearly an hour before her fingers finally managed to type back.
Sierra: No, that’s the last thing I need.
If she stopped moving, she might never start again.
So she went to work. She photographed families, couples, graduates.
She lifted her camera, adjusted her lens, and gave directions in a voice that sounded distant even to her own ears.
A little boy in one family stared straight at her between takes and whispered, “Are you sad?” His mom hushed him gently, embarrassed, and Sierra forced a smile that made her face ache.
She clicked the shutter and kept going, but the question stayed lodged under her skin.
She showed up for every appointment, but she wasn’t really present. Everything felt like watching life through thick glass.
The Chaos Coven texted her every single day.
Jett offered to come sit with her. Raven left a container of soup on her doorstep.
Sierra reheated it one night, stood over the stove, and stared at the steam until it faded.
She dumped the untouched bowl down the sink.
Calliope texted that she was going to burn down Lauren’s studio “just to be a bitch about it.” Sierra almost smiled at that. Almost.
Two weeks later, her parents guilt-tripped her into dinner. She showed up because lying about being busy felt like too much work.
Tobias was bouncing around as usual, launching into some comic book rant about Batman and explosions. Normally she’d argue, but tonight she just pushed food around her plate. Even he couldn’t snap her out of whatever zombie state she was stuck in.
The doorbell rang.
Her mom bustled to answer, too cheerful, like she’d been hiding a secret prize. “Sierra, sweetie, we invited someone over.”
It was a clean-cut, conventionally attractive, painfully polite man. He handed her flowers and a box of dessert from a bakery downtown. He grinned too much, asking questions about photography that sounded like they’d been ripped from a Google search.
Sierra lasted five minutes before she excused herself to the bathroom. She gripped the sink until her knuckles went white. Hollow eyes stared back at her from the mirror. She wanted to throw up.
She came back out, mumbled a goodbye, and hugged Tobias so hard he wheezed. Then she left without explanation.
Her mom texted later.
Mom: I tried to understand this whole pansexual thing. I just can’t. I thought since you and Lauren broke up, you needed someone who could give you a real future, sweetheart.
Sierra turned her phone off.
Later that night she stood in her bathroom again, staring at the stranger in the mirror who used to be her. Eyes permanently exhausted. Mouth locked in a line that felt carved there.
Almost without realizing it, she reached for her camera again.
This time she pressed the shutter. Once.
Twice. Again. Not selfies. She couldn’t bear her own face, but pieces of her grief.
Her hands hung useless. The sketchbook filled with drawings of Lauren she couldn’t look at anymore. The empty side of her bed.
She printed them all and taped them to her wall in a jagged collage. At the top, in uneven handwriting, she scrawled Missing. It wasn’t just Lauren who was gone. She’d lost herself, too.
“I don’t know who I am without you.”
Salem made a soft little sound and rubbed against her leg. His warm body was the only thing that didn’t hurt.
She was bracing herself for another sleepless night when her phone rang. Tobias.
She answered, her voice barely above a whisper. “Hey.”
“Don’t hang up,” he blurted out. “I can’t stop thinking about dinner. That setup with Random Dude? Total bullshit. I already chewed Mom and Dad out.”
Her throat closed. “Tobias...”
“Don’t. Just listen for a second. You’re dying inside and pretending everything’s fine. Cut that shit out. Not with me.”
The words cracked her. She started crying again.
“You were in love with Lauren. It was obvious every time you said their name. That doesn’t just disappear because Mom and Dad are uncomfortable.” His voice was low, but fierce.
“I have no idea how to do this. How do I even exist without them?”
“You don’t need to have it figured out tonight. Just breathe. And when that feels too hard, call me. Anytime. I’ll answer.”
“What if I never feel normal again?”
“Then we’ll figure out a new normal. Together. You’re my sister, and I love you, broken heart and all.”
That made her sob harder, but it felt different—like something tight inside her finally cracked open.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
“Always. Now get some sleep if you can. Tomorrow doesn’t have to be good. Just show up.”
When they hung up, Sierra lay in the dark with Salem purring against her shoulder. The emptiness still pressed in heavy, but now there was a thin seam of light running through it. She cried until there was nothing left, and somehow morning happened anyway.