CHAPTER SEVEN
THIRTEEN YEARS OLD
· · ·
We were both changing — internally, externally. In all ways that mattered.
Mostly for the regular reasons. The ordinary teenage ones that everybody warns you about but don’t make sense until you’re already inside it.
But the directions we were changing in were different.
I was becoming more myself — while Cassian was slipping. Disappearing more and more right before me since that day.
Not dramatically. Not all at once.
I didn’t know how to bring him back this time.
He was having problems at school again.
Skipping class. More withdrawn. An attitude that had always been there but was sharpening into something with edges.
We found this out from his father.
More accurately — my parents drew it out of him. Because that’s who they were. They cared about Cassian in a way that didn’t require anything back, and they weren’t going to pretend otherwise just because his dad made it uncomfortable.
And his dad did nothing but try his hardest to make it uncomfortable.
I didn’t understand it then. The way he kept a wall between Cassian and our family. My parents had never been anything but good to his son — fed him, cared for him, loved him without condition.
And still his dad looked at all of it like it was something to discourage. Kept us at a distance. Especially me.
There was something specific about the way he watched my parents with Cassian. Not just cold.
Calculating. Like he was keeping track.
I just knew Cassian needed people who loved him.
God knows my parents tried.
They never stopped trying.
· · ·
It was also around this time I started noticing Cassian differently.
Not all at once. Just — incrementally. In the way you don’t realize something is happening until it already has.
He was taller. Broader in the shoulders, like he’d grown into himself while I wasn’t paying attention. His hair was longer, that honey blonde I’d always known gone a little more disheveled, like he’d stopped trying to manage it and it suited him better that way—all messy.
I’d catch myself looking.
A second too long.
My eyes lingering on the strip of skin that showed when he’d stretch out across my bed, shirt riding up, completely unbothered. And I’d look away fast. Pick up my phone or my book or stare at the ceiling.
I was starting to understand something about myself.
I just wasn’t ready to name it yet.
· · ·
He got a nose piercing around this time.
Did it himself.
I know because I was there — he showed up at my window one afternoon with a needle and asked me to hold the mirror.
I said yes immediately.
Of course I did. I’d do anything for him.
I watched his face in the reflection as he lined it up. Calm. Focused. No hesitation.
I closed my eyes right before he did it.
He laughed at me for that.
In my defense, I was holding a mirror two inches from his face while he stabbed himself with a sewing needle. Some of us have limits.
He flipped it inside his nose when my parents were around. Or his dad. It was our quiet secret — this small rebellion he carried hidden in plain sight.
Cassian was brave in a way I never felt like I was.
But with him, I felt it too.
Like bravery was something you could borrow if you stood close enough to someone who had it.
· · ·
We talked about girls sometimes.
Mostly him talking, me nodding along. Pretending I understood what he meant. Pretending I felt it the same way.
I didn’t.
I probably never had.
But Cassian was struggling and the world next door was getting quieter and colder, and whatever I was figuring out about myself felt small and selfish by comparison.
So I folded it up.
Put it away.
Made myself small in the one place I’d always felt safe being seen.
I told myself there’d be time for it later.
There’s always time for it later.
Until there isn’t.