Chapter 2
Twenty-four hours earlier
“You’re seriously bailing on us?”
Abigail doesn’t even look up when she says it.
She’s perched on the couch with an arrow balanced across her knees, smoothing the fletching with a careful thumb.
Pliers, spare feathers, and a roll of bright fletching tape splay across the coffee table, forming a small toolkit, alongside open takeout boxes and half-empty soda cans.
Her bow leans against the arm of the couch within easy reach, like it belongs there more than any lamp or throw pillow. From where I sit, I have a clear view into her bedroom. The late light catches on something inside—ribbons and medals dangling from a corkboard, glinting like tiny suns.
Archery competitions. She never brags, but the proof is there in metal and shine, framed on her wall.
Abigail Li is the first friend I made during our first year of college, though the circumstances are now a running joke.
She was standing outside the dormitories speaking rapid Mandarin with her anxious parents when a couple of snobby girls passed, openly laughing at the bow slung across her shoulder.
“What’s she gonna do with that?” one sneered, confident the family couldn’t understand.
“Hey!” I snapped, not even sure where the anger came from. “Just because someone doesn’t look like they’re from around here doesn’t mean they don’t understand you.”
Abigail raised her brows at me, then said with perfect timing, “Not from around here, huh?” She smiled as she said it, and from that moment, we were friends.
She had immigrated from Taiwan with her parents when she was twelve. She understands the culture perfectly, but her favorite excuse is still, “I’m not from around here.”
“I’m not bailing,” I protest, tugging on my jacket. My running shoes sit by the door, laces spilling across the rug like they’re daring me to trip. “I’m just going to my mom’s. It’s not like I do this every night.”
The remains of Trevor’s latest project also spread across the dining table like an explosion of glassware and notebooks. He pushes his glasses up his nose, grinning the way he always does when he smells blood in the water.
Trevor Reddick is the second friend I made that same year, though it’s hard to say whether it was me or Abi who pulled him into our circle.
We all had freshman English together—a required course—and while Trevor is brilliant in mathematics and science, especially chemistry, he was hopeless in English.
He nearly failed freshman comp, and Abi has never let him live it down.
“Your mom lives half an hour away,” he says. “You could go tomorrow. Or next week. But tonight—tonight, dear Metra—you could be in the company of your cool friends instead of hearing another pitch about transferring from your mother.”
I roll my eyes. “She doesn’t bring it up every time… she just worries. That’s all. And who said you guys were cool?” I shoot back.
“It’s not exactly tequila shots and dancing, Mei-Mei,” Abigail mutters, still fussing with the arrow in her lap.
“You’ll survive one night without me,” I say, reaching for my keys.
“And quit calling me that. You’re only two months older than I am.
When we go out to celebrate my actual birthday tomorrow, I’ll be rested while you’ll both be hungover, so maybe I’m the responsible one, and you’re the ‘little sister’ in this dynamic. ”
Abigail finally glances up, one brow raised. “Touché, and yet, boring. I thought I raised you better…”
Trevor lifts a beaker filled with something that glows faintly in the lamplight. “Don’t worry, Abi. One day, she’ll regret not having lived a little. And then she’ll come crawling to us, begging for quality time with your bow badassery or my chemical genius.”
“Is ‘badassery’ even a word, Trev? And a chemical genius? Seriously?” I laugh. “You almost blew up the apartment last week.”
“Minor setback.” He raises the beaker in salute. He closes his eyes and reminisces, “Greatness requires failure, but how hilarious did Carleigh Fletcher look in just a towel when the fire alarm went off, and the entire building had to evacuate?”
Abigail rolls her eyes and sets the arrow aside, finally smiling. “We should be pre-gaming with shots right now. Instead, you’re off to play dutiful daughter, and Trevor’s geeking out with his potions.”
“And you’re… what? Preparing for a siege?” I shoot back.
“You never know what the night holds,” she retorts, smirking.
The night air stings my cheeks the second I step outside. I tug my coat tighter, breath clouding in front of me as I head toward the train station. Holiday lights strung along the streets glitter, wrapping every lamppost in green and gold, and shop windows glow as if starlight dusts them.
It is beautiful in a way that makes my chest ache. If only there were snow. I tilt my head up as if willing it to fall—flakes swirling in the lamplight, catching on my lashes, blanketing the sidewalks. But the sky only glares back, starless, cloud-heavy. I sigh. The weather rarely obliges.
My boots scuff against the pavement, steady as a metronome—step, step, step.
Enough rhythm to stir memories I never asked for: the single blinking light of some backwater town we’d once lived in.
Neon signs in Los Angeles. A bike’s rattle on the cobblestones in Amsterdam.
The sharp scent of rain in Glasgow. Always about a year. Never more.
By the time we packed again, I’d just learned the names of streets, the cracks in the sidewalks, the shortcuts to school.
Always too soon. Always unfinished. This city doesn’t have Glasgow’s wild charm or Amsterdam’s pulse, but it has something I have felt nowhere else: roots. Permanence. A future, should I want it.
My mother had worried when I insisted on staying put for college—four years in one place was unheard of for us—but the scholarship had been too good, and I was tired—tired of leaving, tired of goodbyes, tired of unpacking into spaces that never felt like mine.
I dug my heels in and insisted. Here, I could finally breathe.
Build routines. Make habits. Pretend I were ordinary. And maybe—just maybe—I could keep it.
The train shudders as it pulls out of the station, the windows turning the city into streaks of gold and red light. I lean back against the headrest and close my eyes.
My thoughts wander again the way they always do when I have too much quiet, skipping from one place to another, like the map of my childhood unrolling in my head.
Always back to the apartments and houses, all the cities I never got to stay in long enough to matter.
At least once a semester, my mother tries to convince me to transfer to another school, another city—but I always refuse.
You’d think she’d finally give up by now.
But no—every semester, the same lecture about transferring, about starting over somewhere new.
As if I haven’t spent my whole life starting over.
Staying put has finally given me what she never managed to: friends who actually know me, not just “new girl” introductions.
Group chats full of inside jokes. People who notice if I’m not around.
Even dating—something I barely tried in the endless shuffle—is finally within reach. She wants me to throw it all away.
That’s when Mason’s face edges in, uninvited.
For a while, I thought what I felt for him was love, or at least close enough to pass.
But it never landed the way I thought it would.
Not like the books, not like the movies, not like the way people described it.
Instead of fireworks, it was… fine. Fun.
Comfortable. But a part of me kept thinking, is this love? Really?
I’ve never admitted it out loud—it feels too raw—but, looking back, I wonder if it had only ever been convenience. A relationship, because I finally could have one, not because it was anything more. Probably just too many books. I huff a quiet laugh, shaking my head—definitely too many books.
When it ended, it was sudden. Brutal in its swiftness. And when he moved on—faster than I could even catch my breath—I told myself it didn’t matter, that I was better off. That I hadn’t really lost anything.
So, I focused on my running. I ran miles every morning, pounding pavement until my legs ached and my lungs burned, until there was no room left to think about him or anything I thought we had.
If I could run far enough, hard enough, maybe I could leave him behind the way I’d left everything else in my past. But staring at the blur of lights rushing past, I’m still not sure I have.
By the time the train screeches to my stop at the small station on the outskirts of the city, the night air is sharper, threading under my collar.
I climb the cracked steps to 409 W. Broad Street.
I’ve made this walk a hundred times—long enough for the building’s shape to feel etched into my memory.
A squat brick rectangle with peeling paint on the stairwell railings, windows that crank outward instead of sliding up, and a lobby that smells faintly of old papers and somebody’s wet dog.
The sort of place that doesn’t ask questions, where neighbors mind their own business, and the only thing that matters is paying rent on time.
The faded striped wallpaper lining the stairwell walls has seen better days. I take the stairs two at a time, ignoring the way they groan under my weight, until I reach the third floor.
Her door looks the same as always—scuffed wood, brass numbers dulled to a shadow of shine: 302.
I knock once before using my key. The apartment greets me with a faint smell of pasta sauce simmering on the stove.
Pink tile peeks from the bathroom door down the hall, and the kitchen’s wallpaper leans in stripes, curling at the edges.
Old, worn, unpretentious. But it’s ours.
Mom looks up from the tiny kitchen table where she cradles a mug between her palms. Her hair—coppery red like mine, vivid even under the dull kitchen light—spills over her shoulders in loose spirals, a few threads of silver catching the glow.
Her warm brown skin, a shade deeper than mine, is smooth and luminous, touched more by weariness than age, with only the faintest lines at the corners of her mouth.
Her eyes are warm honey, flecked with gold, not like mine.
Mine are green—too bright, too sharp. I assume they come from my father, whoever he is. Mom insists I remind her of her own mother instead, with my golden-brown skin and my wild, auburn-tumble of curls, streaked with fire. Another relative I’ve never known.
She looks tired. Not aged, exactly, but in the way someone worn down by carrying too much could look.
The sight tugs at something in me—concern, protectiveness, even guilt.
And yet, right alongside it, irritation prickles.
All those years of being dragged from place to place, of never getting to plant roots, of always feeling like we were hiding from something I could never name.
I watched her double-check locks and windows, glance over her shoulder in grocery stores, and shut down any question I asked about our past. She has never explained. Not once.
I told myself it was paranoia. Maybe even cowardice.
Sometimes I wonder if she is ashamed of something.
Other times, I wish she would trust me with whatever burden she is carrying.
I love her. God, I do. But the not-knowing has built a wall between us, brick by brick.
Sitting across from her now, I can feel both sides of it pressing in on me—affection and frustration, worry and resentment—until I can’t tell which weighs more.