ARIELLE

CHAPTER 1

You know that feeling when you wake up disoriented, not knowing where you are, and then there’s a loud noise?

Panic overdrive.

That was exactly what I experienced the next morning. I woke up to the sound of chaos and a surge of panic that faded about five seconds later when I remembered where I was.

College. Halebridge. The dorm room with cream-colored walls and a window facing the courtyard. Right. Day two of my new life, where I was meant to figure out who I wanted to be now that no one was watching to judge my choices.

The chaos turned out to be none other than Star.

She burst through the door like a wound-up rubber band waiting to be released, arms full of plastic bags of books, hair still wet from the shower, and an expression of pure manic energy that made me wonder how many cups of coffee she already had.

What a perfect way to say good morning.

“Oh, thank God, you’re awake!” she announced, dumping the bags onto her bed. “I didn’t want to go to the bookstore without you, but I also couldn’t wait because they’re probably going to run out of the good notebooks and I need good notebooks, you know? Like, regular notebooks are fine for regular classes, but I need something that feels intentional and aesthetically pleasing enough for my writing seminar because it involves actual writing, so I have to be very creative, and—”

She stopped, breathed, and took in my expression.

“I’m doing that thing where I talk too much when I’m excited,” she said, like the same thing had happened many times before.

“Enthusiastically,” I confirmed, sitting up while trying to arrange my face into something close to human. I didn’t even need to look in a mirror to know what my hair looked like; it’s most likely a perfect representation of a bird’s nest.

I had slept well, which was surprising because I hadn’t expected to sleep at all in a strange bed, in a strange room, in a strange place. I had been ready for insomnia. That’s putting it lightly; I had actually been braced for it.

Instead, I had gotten actual sleep. Actual rest. My body apparently recognized there was no threat and decided to behave normally for once.

Star grinned. “Sorry if I freaked you out. My mom says I’m like a golden retriever with anxiety and too much energy channeled toward multiple objectives all at once. It’s something I’m actively working on. Anyway, I got us some snacks.”

She pulled things from the bags with the reverence reserved for museum artifacts. “Hot Cheetos, gummy bears, the fancy popcorn they’re selling for like twelve dollars, and—”

She held up a container of brownies like a trophy. “My mom sent these early this morning. She thinks I’m going to starve at school, so she’s making it a habit to send food regularly. But I can’t eat them all, so you have to help me. It’s basically a moral obligation.”

I looked at the brownies, and they looked homemade in a way that showed the baker cared a lot about the person eating them.

Unfortunately, I hadn’t had anything like that in about two years because Mom stopped cooking around the time Dad died. It seemed her ability to nurture others went into the grave with him, and she never quite figured out how to get it back.

Well, maybe because it’s in the grave

And with that thought came all that transpired between Mom and me the day I left home.

Flashback

* * * * *

“You’re really doing this.”

I turned around to find Mom standing in the doorway, looking like she could retreat at any moment. How long she had been standing there for, I had no idea. I was too focused on the framed photograph on the dresser to have noticed her appear.

The photograph was taken of the three of us about nine years ago. Mom had a polished and distant look, her signature look for every kind of formal photograph. Dad, on the other hand, had his hand on my shoulder with a half-smile reserved for moments when he forgot to worry.

And then there was Arielle, smiling. A real, genuine smile that belonged to a different girl entirely.

“There’s nothing else for me to do; the acceptance letter has been sitting on the kitchen table for three weeks,” I said, making my way back to the clothes I was folding. “I think it’s time for me to see if Halebridge actually exists or if it’s just a very well-planned college scam.”

Mom, however, wasn’t having any of it. “You know what I mean,” she responded matter-of-factly.

Welcome to what passes for conversation between my mother and me now. Abbreviated and coded, neither of us willing to break the careful surface tension we had maintained since the funeral.

Funny enough, it felt like I had died on that day too, but in a way that allowed me to keep breathing.

“I don’t know what you mean, mother,” I started.

She visibly stiffened, her lips pursed in a straight line. It irked her whenever I referred to her as mother. She often complained it was too cold and distant, and said mom sounded more familiar: like home.

Too bad home stopped being home a long time ago.

“Or maybe I do,” I agreed on second thoughts, running my fingers through my hair. I could already feel a headache coming on. “You mean that it feels like I’m abandoning you, because you expect me to stay and manage your grief as the good daughter I’m supposed to be. You mean leaving is the second-worst thing I could do to you.”

The first, of course, being the main cause of Dad’s death.

My mother’s jaw tightened. I could sense I was pushing her buttons, and it was becoming more difficult for her to manage her expression. Something she had mastered after Dad died. She probably thought that if she didn’t let her emotions show, none of it would be real.

“That’s not fair, Ari.”

“Fair?” I laughed, and my voice sounded different to my own ears. “You seriously want to talk about fair? Well, fair would be having a mother who didn’t look at me after the funeral like I was the reason she lost her husband. It would be not having to walk on eggshells around someone who’s supposed to be my safe space, wondering if I’m supposed to earn forgiveness for something that wasn’t my fault.”

I dropped one final blow. “And you don’t get to call me Ari; you lost that right after Dad died. It’s just Arielle to you now.”

Okay, okay, I know that was super disrespectful, and I probably shouldn’t have said that. We’d been dancing around this particular truth for months, and now I had just scraped the wound raw. But I was leaving, so what did it matter?

Being straight to the point came with a peculiar kind of freedom, a knowing that I didn’t have to glue myself together for my mother anymore.

Her hand dropped from the door frame. Arielle: 1, Mom: 0

“That wasn’t necessary,” she said quietly, her voice sounding hollow and rehearsed. I almost felt bad for her.

Almost.

I zipped my duffel bag shut; there was no going back now. Picking up the bag, I moved past her, squeezing through the doorway carefully as though trying not to step on a land mine.

“There has to be some other way,” she continued after me. On hearing that, I paused in the hallway, key in hand, but body already miles away. The moment hung between us, tension thick enough for a knife to cut through.

“I don’t know how else to leave Mom,” I replied, meaning every single word.

I honestly had no idea how to make this less painful for her. I had to leave now because it had become almost impossible to breathe, and if I stayed another day, I’d be risking suffocation. I didn’t know how to be the daughter she wanted while still being my true self.

At the very least, I didn’t just pack up and leave without her notice.

Even though that had been very tempting.

My walk to the driveway took longer than it should have. I moved slowly, the childish side of me giving her time to say something. Anything at all. An apology for being a shitty mother, or an effort to try to convince me to stay.

Try, being the keyword, because my mind was already made up. But it would still have been nice to hear it.

She didn’t say any of those things. Typical. Mom: 1, Arielle: 1. We were even now.

Instead, she remained standing in the doorway, her hand pressed against the frame as though she was holding herself up. And at that moment, it was obvious that I wasn’t the only one drowning; she was, too, but in a different way.

* * * * *

End of Flashback