18
Jade
Jade’s face already hurt from laughing. Evan had spent most of the movie insulting every male character with the confidence of someone personally betrayed by fictional men, and Lila had finally stopped watching Jade with that careful edge she had carried since breakfast. Somewhere between Evan’s running commentary and the junk food already scattered across the coffee table, the apartment had started feeling almost normal again.
“That man,” Evan announced, pausing the movie and pointing at the television with deep offense, “has the emotional range of a damp paper towel, and I refuse to let any of you pretend otherwise.”
Lila laughed beside Jade, tired but genuine, while Jade pressed the sleeve of her sweatshirt to her mouth. A knock interrupted whatever Evan planned to say next, and he whipped toward the door. “If that is a delivery person with mozzarella sticks, I’ll convert.”
“It’s probably Blue,” Lila said as she pushed herself off the couch.
A few seconds later, Blue followed her back into the living room carrying a paper bag in one hand and a grocery sack in the other.
She had changed out of her scrubs, trading them for jeans and a sweater, and her blonde hair hung loose around her shoulders.
“I heard there was a crisis,” she said, lifting the bag. “So I brought fries and sugar.”
Evan pressed a hand to his chest. “You angelic blonde menace. Marry me.”
Blue handed him the bag without breaking stride. “Not if you keep picking movies like these.”
Jade laughed again, and Evan’s head snapped toward her with ridiculous triumph. “There she is. That’s the sound I wanted. Again. Give it to me again.”
“You’re so weird.”
“And yet,” Evan said, reclaiming the recliner like a throne, “here I am, saving this family one terrible movie at a time.”
He hit play, and the room settled around them.
Popcorn crowded the coffee table beside candy wrappers and half-empty glasses, while Jade sat curled into the corner of the couch beneath a blanket.
Her sketchbook rested untouched beside her hip.
She had cried enough that morning to leave her eyes swollen and her head aching, but nobody in the room looked at her like she had become fragile because of it.
That part still felt strange.
Most adults changed once they knew something was wrong.
They asked questions until every answer felt scraped raw, or their faces softened into that careful expression people wore when pity started masquerading as concern.
Blue had walked in, handed Jade sour candy, and immediately insulted Evan’s movie choices.
Her mother had stayed close without hovering, sitting near enough that Jade could feel her presence without having to endure constant checking.
Somehow, that made everything easier.
Evan sat forward again as the movie gave him fresh material. “No. Absolutely not. You do not get to be at Harvard collecting mysterious brunette besties and then look wounded when your girlfriend has questions. I saw that earring. Elle saw that earring. We all saw that earring.”
Blue snorted into her drink, and Lila made a tired sound beside Jade. “You are so dramatic.”
“I am correct,” Evan said, one hand returning to his chest. “That girl is always in his orbit, he’s acting cagey, and now we’re supposed to believe this is wholesome academic bonding?
Please. If my boyfriend had one secret Harvard girl with perfect hair and misplaced jewelry in his room, I’d need a full slideshow and references. ”
Jade’s laugh came easier this time, and the warmth that followed settled somewhere deeper than amusement.
Everyone here knew now. They knew about Chloe, the lies Jade had told about where she spent her time, and how long she had been moving through school mostly alone.
They had watched her cry until she could barely talk, yet the apartment still smelled like popcorn and fries, Evan still argued with fictional people, and her mother still sat beside her.
Nothing had collapsed because Jade told the truth.
The realization loosened something she had been carrying for so long she barely remembered what it felt like without it.
She reached for popcorn and let the movie wash over her.
Blue stole one of Evan’s fries and ignored his outraged noise, while Lila sank deeper into the couch cushion with her legs tucked beneath her.
Nobody asked Jade another question. Nobody made her revisit the party or Chloe or the things kids at school had said.
For once, she could simply sit inside a room where people knew and still treated her like herself.
Exhaustion eventually took over. Jade remembered Evan beginning another rant about fictional relationship crimes and Lila telling him to shut up long enough to let the actors speak. After that, voices blurred into warmth and faded.
When she woke, the living room had darkened.
A different movie played quietly on the television, and someone had tucked the blanket more securely around her legs. Her neck ached from sleeping at an angle, and her sketchbook had been moved from beside her hip to the coffee table, carefully set on top of a stack of magazines.
Jade stared at it for a moment.
Someone had noticed it before it could slide onto the floor.
The smallness of the gesture made her throat tighten in a way she found deeply irritating, so she reached for her phone instead. Voices drifted from the kitchen behind her, low enough that she could make out Evan, her mother, and Blue without catching the words.
The screen lit beneath her thumb.
Three new messages waited from an unknown number.
Her stomach dropped.
She opened the first.
Unknown: you cry to mommy yet?
The second followed immediately beneath it.
Unknown: bet she finally believes what a slut she raised
Jade’s mouth went dry as she opened the last one.
Unknown: you think this goes away because you block numbers? i can make a hundred more. whole school is gonna know what you are. just like her. maybe i’ll show you what a good little slut you are.
Her hand tightened around the phone until the edge bit into her palm.
The warmth she had woken inside vanished beneath a rush of cold. Her heart began beating too fast, and the kitchen suddenly felt much farther away than a few yards down the hall.
This was how it always happened.
Whoever sent the messages would disappear long enough for Jade to believe they had finally gotten bored. Sometimes she got a whole day. Then another number showed up, another email appeared, and the same words found her again.
She blocked the number and deleted the messages.
Her thumb remained over the dark screen.
Breakfast replayed in her mind. Evan telling her problems belonged to family. Her mother crouched beside her, furious at everyone except Jade. Blue would probably read the messages once, go frighteningly calm, and immediately start figuring out what came next.
Jade could walk into the kitchen and show them.
The idea lasted until she pictured her mother’s face.
Lila had already gone pale that morning when Jade told her about the party. Evan had gone from funny to furious in a breath, and Jade had cried so hard she barely recognized her own voice. Giving them this too felt like opening another wound before the first one had stopped bleeding.
Tomorrow made more sense.
She would tell them tomorrow.
Jade shoved the phone into her pocket and headed for the bathroom before she could change her mind. The light over the mirror felt too bright after the living room, showing every swollen edge around her eyes and the faint crease pressed into one cheek from the couch cushion. She looked wrecked.
She also looked different.
Some of the tightness she had grown used to seeing around her own mouth had eased.
Jade braced both hands on the sink and stared at herself. She hated that everyone had seen her cry. She hated remembering how badly her voice had shaken when she talked about Chloe, and she hated the helpless expression that crossed her mother’s face before anger replaced it.
But she had laughed afterward.
She had fallen asleep in a room full of people who knew the truth and stayed anyway.
That mattered.
Jade splashed cool water over her face and dried it before stepping back into the hallway. The kitchen voices came through more clearly now.
“…not sending her back in there blind on Monday,” Lila said, her voice low and tight.
“You aren’t,” Blue answered. “We’ll figure out the next step before then.”
Evan made an approving noise. “I volunteer as glamorous bodyguard. Intimidation through cardigans. It’s a very niche skill set.”
A smile tugged briefly at Jade’s mouth, but she stopped before turning toward the kitchen.
Her mother’s bedroom door stood cracked open farther down the hall.
The box came to mind immediately.
Jade had seen Lila with it before, though only once clearly enough to remember.
Her mother had been sitting alone with old photographs spread across her lap, her expression carrying that distant quality it sometimes took on whenever conversation drifted too close to Jade’s father.
Lila had closed the box quickly when she realized Jade stood in the doorway.
Private.
Important enough to hide.
Jade glanced toward the kitchen, then stepped into her mother’s room.
She knew which shelf held it. The box sat pushed toward the back of the closet, out of sight unless someone already knew where to look. Jade lifted it down carefully and carried it to the bed while voices continued in the kitchen.
The box felt lighter than she expected.
When she opened it, the faint smell of old paper rose into the room.
Photographs filled the inside, dozens of them gathered in loose stacks rather than albums. They looked like the kind of things someone had kept because throwing them away would hurt and leaving them where they could be seen would hurt differently.
Jade picked up the first one.
Her mother stared back at her from another life.