CHAPTER ELEVEN
SIXTEEN YEARS OLD
· · ·
Things changed that day.
The day on the bed. The it’s okay I didn’t believe.
If I had known what was coming, I would’ve held onto what we had a little tighter. Paid more attention.
Memorized it.
Because after that — it was completely gone.
· · ·
Cassian avoided me.
And I knew it immediately.
We’d spent every day together for eight years. Different schools — me at the overpriced prep school my parents paid too much for, him at public — but my parents picked us both up. He’d wait on the same corner every day, the one we passed on the way home.
He’d be there before we arrived, hands in his pockets, already talking before the door was fully open.
So the first day he wasn’t there —
I noticed.
I just didn’t say anything.
He texted me some excuse. I told myself it wasn’t a big deal.
The second day I was still fine.
My parents asked where he was and I lied.
“Said he joined a new club.”
I hated lying to them.
I never did.
But it wouldn’t be the last time I carved off a piece of myself just to keep from breaking.
· · ·
The thing about anxiety is it doesn’t wait for a convenient moment.
It had been sitting on my chest all week like something with weight. Low and constant. The kind you learn to work around, to breathe through, to carry without letting it show. I’d gotten good at that. Years of practice.
I’d go through the motions.
School. Homework. Dinner. Smile when I was supposed to smile.
But underneath it the dread just — sat there.
Waiting.
Every time my parents asked about Cassian I felt it tighten.
Every time I checked my phone and there was nothing.
Every time I looked at the corner on the drive home.
Empty.
Always empty now.
By day four I stopped looking.
By day six I stopped checking my phone first thing in the morning.
I would give myself five minutes time out and then obsess the rest of the day.
Progress.
By the time a week had passed, something inside me had twisted into something sharp and ugly.
I told myself I was mad at him.
But I wasn’t.
I was mad at myself.
At the way I’d looked at him.
At the way my body had just — decided, without asking me first.
I didn’t have the words for it yet.
I just knew it hurt.
And I was so tired of feeling it.
My parents asked about him again at the end of that week.
And this time —
I snapped.
“He doesn’t have to come over every night, okay? So stop asking. We’re fine. He’s just busy.”
The words came out harsher than I meant them to.
I didn’t wait for their reaction. Just turned and went straight to my room, slamming the door behind me.
· · ·
And then it hit.
The real one.
Not the low hum I’d been managing all week.
This was different — the walls of my room contracting, the air going thin and wrong, my chest locking up like something had reached in and squeezed. I sat down on the floor with my back against the bed because my legs just — stopped cooperating.
I knew the shape of these by now.
Knew they ended.
Knowing doesn’t exactly help in the moment.
I pressed my back hard against the mattress and stared at a fixed point on the wall — the nail where one of the band posters used to hang before I tore it down — and just breathed.
In. Out. Slow. The way I’d taught myself.
It took a while.
Long enough that the light in the room changed.
Long enough that I heard my mom moving around in the kitchen, the familiar sounds of dinner starting, and felt something loosen slightly in my chest.
She didn’t know I was up here falling apart.
She was just making dinner.
But I felt numb.
Anxiety and depression can creep up on you.
Make you feel like it’s okay to disappear.
So I stayed on the floor for a long time.
· · ·
When it passed I sat there for another few minutes just existing in the wrung-out quiet that comes after.
Empty in a way that was almost peaceful.
I looked at the walls.
God.
This is pathetic.
· · ·
I forced myself up.
I couldn’t leave it like that. I don’t do that to them.
I went to the kitchen, already rehearsing the apology in my head.
But my mom just smiled when she saw me.
“Hey, sweetie. You feeling better?” She ruffled my hair like nothing had happened. “Come sit, dinner’s ready.”
My dad tapped the chair next to him.
I groaned. Dropped into it.
My mom had made my favorite.
Mac and cheese. BBQ chicken.
For a second — everything felt normal again.
Like maybe I’d made it bigger than it was.
Like maybe I was just being dramatic.
I grinned, trying to shake it off. “Maybe I should yell at you guys more often.”
They laughed.
But it didn’t last.
The air shifted.
“So…” My dad leaned forward slightly, voice gentler now. “What’s going on? You don’t have to tell us right now. But when you’re ready — we’re here.”
My chest tightened.
“You’re all we have,” he added quietly. “The most important thing. Always.”
I forced a smile.
“I love you.”
“Love you too, buddy.”
A beat.
“You should try reaching out to him again. You two are so close.” He said it carefully. Like he meant it but knew it wasn’t the whole thing. “Everything’s gonna be fine.”
I nodded.
Because that’s what I was supposed to do.
Because that’s what normal looked like.
But I already knew.
Everything was not fine.