Chapter 14
Octavia- years ago
Such a delicate creature.
Its wings are bright green with splashes of pink, the fuzzy little body almost too soft-looking to belong to something real.
Every few seconds, its tiny legs tap lightly against the glass jar like it’s testing the limits of its world.
Dropping another leaf inside, it immediately sets to work, nibbling at the edge as if none of the rest of life matters.
This beautiful moth used to be a caterpillar.
Just a tiny thing crawling along the windowsill, seconds away from being crushed beneath Hannah Killian’s stupid shoe before I scooped it up.
Hannah is gone now anyway, adopted out a week ago.
I’m not sorry about it. Sharing a room with her was a special kind of misery, the sort that made sleep feel like a gamble and silence feel suspicious.
Now her bed sits empty across from mine, sheets stripped, mattress bare, one more reminder that people come and go from Brightside all the time.
Mostly go.
The emptiness should feel lonely. Instead, it feels like relief.
Of course, that relief won’t last. It never does here. Sooner or later another girl will roll her suitcase through that door, another kid with a file, a sad story and a face prospective parents will probably notice long before they ever really look at mine.
Fine by me.
Anything is better than where I came from.
Anything is better than ever seeing my mother’s eyes again.
I still dream about the motel room sometimes.
The peeling wallpaper. The smell of old smoke and mildew.
The way the paramedics wheeled her out while I stood there frozen, too tired and too relieved to cry the way everyone probably thought I should.
I remember watching her eyes close and feeling something ugly and enormous move through me.
Relief.
The kind that made me feel monstrous.
At least now the only place she can haunt me is in nightmares.
“You need a name,” I whisper, looking back at the moth. “Marlo?”
The name belonged to one of my old bunkmates, a girl with a sweet smile and a habit of humming to herself before bed. The moth just keeps wandering around the inside of the jar like it doesn’t care what I call it.
“Goldie?” I try with a quiet laugh, tapping the glass softly.
The halls beyond my room are already stirring.
I can hear the noise picking up, voices overlapping, shoes scuffing against tile.
Most of the kids from Brightside have been dragged out to socialize with the kids visiting from the other home.
It’s one of those forced events the adults insist are “good for us,” as if putting damaged children in a room together and calling it community changes what any of us carry.
It’s only a matter of time before someone comes looking for me too.
Until then, I want these few quiet minutes with my little creature.
Tapping the lid, the moth’s tiny legs reach upward like it’s begging for a way out.
“Don’t,” I whisper. “Make me regret this.”
Slowly, I unscrew the lid, resting one finger on the rim, already trying to work out how I’ll catch it if it bolts the second I give it air.
It doesn’t.
Instead, those tiny feet graze my fingertip first, so light I almost miss it. Then it crawls onto my finger all on its own, settling there as if it trusts me. I hold perfectly still, breath trapped in my chest, while its wings lift and settle, lift and settle, showing off all that impossible color.
I carry it to the edge of my bed like I’m transporting something sacred. Once I sit, it wanders slowly over my knuckle and down toward my wrist as I let one finger brush the edge of its wing with all the caution in the world.
“Rose?” I murmur.
The moth flutters once.
That feels enough like an answer to make me smile.
“Rose it is-”
The room shakes with the force of my door slamming open.
I flinch so hard I nearly drop her.
My hand jerks downward toward the bed as Rose crawls off onto the blanket just as a body barrels into the room. The door slams shut behind him hard enough to rattle the frame. He stands there gripping the handle with a white-knuckled hand, chest heaving, like he outran something with teeth.
“Fucking idiots,” he gasps, voice rough and angry. “Parading us around like dogs.”
The second I clear my throat, his entire body goes taut.
I stare at him.
He stares back.
“Why are you in my room?” I ask, the anxiety in my voice making me hate myself a little.
Because suddenly he isn’t just a boy.
He’s a boy alone in my room with the door shut, and all the old warnings start rattling loose in the back of my mind. Every awful thing my mother let happen. Every man who stood too close. Every look that meant something bad was coming.
My eyes flick instinctively toward the call button by the wall.
I only get one step.
He crosses the room before I can hit it, fast enough to make my breath catch, his hand closing around mine.
The contact freezes both of us.
For a second all I can hear is our breathing.
“Stop,” he whispers.
His voice is lower now. Not soft exactly, but desperate enough to sand some of the sharpness off.
“They’ll find me eventually. Just… give me a minute away from them.”
Up close, he looks younger than he did from across the room. Frail in that hard, wiry way some boys get when they’ve grown too fast and eaten too little. His shirt is untucked. His clothes look used, like they’ve belonged to too many hands before landing on him.
A St. Augustine boy.
I know it before he says anything. You can always tell. Not by how they look exactly, but by the way they carry themselves. Too watchful. Too quick to bolt. Too ready for a fight.
“You’re supposed to be with your Warden,” I whisper.
“The Warden can go to hell,” he scoffs, finally letting my hand go. He glances toward the door like he can still hear the adults outside hunting for him. “Trust me, they won’t leave this preppy hell without me.”
A laugh slips out of me before I can stop it.
“Preppy?” I repeat, shaking my head.
The word sounds ridiculous in a place like this, with its overpainted walls, donation-bin furniture and adults who smile too hard when visitors are around.
“Most of us would have ended up at St. Augustine,” I say, glancing down at Rose still moving across my sheets. “We just weren’t caught.”
That lands between us differently than I expect.
He goes still again, but this time not because he’s scared. Because he’s listening. Really listening.
He lets out a breath through his nose, leaning back against the door for a second like he is trying to decide whether to bolt again or stay where he is.
“Well,” he says at last, his voice still rough from running, though less jagged now, “I didn’t have a chance.”
Something in the way he says it lands heavier than the words themselves. Not dramatic. Just matter-of-fact, like he’s talking about weather instead of a whole life that went one direction while mine managed to slip another way by luck, timing, or adults looking the other way.
His eyes move around the room then, taking in the empty second bed, the uneven posters on the wall, the stack of books by my pillow, the little cardboard box I use as a bedside table.
“Nice room,” he says.
The sarcasm is faint, almost absent. He means it more as observation than insult, which somehow makes it sadder.
Before I can answer, he pushes away from the door and takes a few steps toward my bed, clearly intending to throw himself down onto it like boys always seem to do, like they never think about what might already be there.
My hand shoots out on instinct, catching his sleeve, yanking him back hard enough that he stumbles a little.
“You’ll crush her,” I hiss.
He blinks at me, startled. “Crush who?”
I don’t answer right away. I just lean over the blankets and scoop Rose carefully into my palm, lifting her from the crumpled patch of quilt where she had frozen in place after his entrance. She crawls onto my fingers like she already knows the shape of me.
“Rose,” I say, holding my hand out slightly. “My moth.”
I brace myself for the laugh.
Or the face people usually make when they think you’re strange and then try to cover it with politeness.
Instead, his expression changes entirely.
His eyes widen, not in mockery but in something that looks almost like wonder. He takes one small step closer, careful this time, his whole body shifting from restless and sharp into something calmer.
“I haven’t seen one like this in years,” he says softly.
The softness catches me off guard more than if he had laughed.
His gaze stays on Rose, following the bright green and pink of her wings with an attentiveness that feels completely at odds with the boy who slammed into my room cursing and furious two minutes ago.
“Can I?” he asks.
He lifts his hand just a little, palm open, waiting.
The hesitation in me has less to do with Rose and more to do with him. Letting people touch delicate things has never felt wise. But there’s something in his face right now that makes him seem younger. Less dangerous. Just a kid looking at something beautiful like he forgot he was allowed to.
Slowly, I nod.
He sits on the edge of the bed this time instead of dropping onto it, moving with surprising care. Lowering Rose toward his hand, for a second she pauses between us, her tiny feet testing his skin before she crawls onto his palm.
He goes very still.
It’s almost funny, the difference between this and the way he moved through my room before.
The St. Augustine boy who ran in like a storm is suddenly sitting beside me like one wrong breath might scare her off.
His hand is bigger than mine, rougher-looking, but he holds Rose with impossible gentleness.