If I Were Her

Chapter 8

The rules arrived quietly.

Not as a conversation. Not as a fight. Just as facts, set into the spaces where questions might have gone.

Her father stood in the doorway while her mother sat on the edge of the bed, close enough that Iris could feel the warmth of her leg through the mattress.

“You’ll commute,” Thomas said.

Not you should. Not we think.

“You’ll share your location,” Vivian added, her voice soft, almost hopeful. “Just so we know you’re okay.”

“There’s a curfew,” Thomas continued.

“And check-ins,” Vivian said. “Nothing constant. Just… regular.”

Iris nodded.

She nodded the way she always did now — once, precisely, as if agreement were a reflex rather than a choice. She absorbed the words as logistics. Timetables. Coordinates. A system to be learned and followed.

It was easier that way.

If she framed it as structure, she didn’t have to frame it as fear.

Her father seemed to relax, just slightly, as if the nod had loosened something inside him. Her mother smiled, reached out, squeezed Iris’s hand too tightly.

“See?” Vivian said. “We’ll make this work.”

Make what work, Iris wondered.

Their fear?

The space between them?

But she didn’t ask.

_______________

Ava’s hands were on her hips. The hallway felt too narrow, too quiet, too full of someone else’s rules.

“I’m not staying home,” she said, voice sharp, unflinching. “I’ll go to school like normal. I have classes. Friends. I’m not… I’m not stopping my life for this.”

“You’re nineteen,” Thomas said, low, careful. “We’re asking for some cooperation. This is about keeping everyone safe.”

Ava laughed — short, humorless, and bitter. “I’m not Iris. I don’t vanish. I don’t need supervision. I can breathe on my own.”

Vivian stepped forward, voice trembling, trying for calm. “Please, Ava… just for a while. It won’t be forever.”

Ava shook her head. Her jaw was tight, her chest tight. “No. I’m staying in my own life.”

Her parents’ eyes followed her as she stormed past, the hallway echoing with her footsteps.

She wanted to hate the rules. She wanted to feel loyal to her sister, to the parents who’d raised her. But she couldn’t. Not like this. Not when freedom was being measured like a ledger, not when safety had a cost she wasn’t willing to pay.

Ava leaned back against her bedroom door, arms crossed, and let out a slow breath. If Iris accepted it… maybe her parents thought she would. Maybe she would fold. But Ava knew deep down she wouldn’t fold, not for her sister, not for anyone.

Iris had no right to turn her life upside down

____________________

Iris returned to her room. A half-packed bag sat on the floor, clothes. Her world was smaller. Controlled. Concrete. Every morning she would leave the house to walk to school, every night she would return under curfew, every step tracked.

The rules weren’t harsh. They weren’t cruel. Just… constant.

And she had to comply.

Her phone buzzed. A call.

The name on the screen made her chest loosen before she could stop it.

She answered on the second ring.

“Hi, sweetheart,” her foster mother said.

The voice was warm. Not careful. Not strained. It didn’t brace itself before speaking.

Relief came first — a quiet exhale, deep and involuntary. The sound of that voice carried no expectation, no invisible ledger keeping track of gratitude or obedience.

“How are you?” the woman asked.

“I’m okay,” Iris said. It wasn’t a lie. Just incomplete.

They talked about school schedules, whether she had eaten, and little practical things that felt… safe. Not as walls, but as space.

“If you ever want to stay with us during breaks,” her foster mother said, voice light, “you know you can. Or if you ever need a little space…” She paused. “You don’t have to explain.”

Guilt followed the relief immediately. Sharp and familiar. For how easily she had let herself relax. For how natural it had felt to breathe without rules for a few moments. For loving more than one place, more than one version of safety.

“I know,” Iris said quietly. “Thank you.”

The call ended. She sat still, phone in hand long after the screen went dark.

She noticed the difference.

How safety could feel like rules, like tracking, like walls meant to hold the world back.

And how safety could also feel like trust — like being believed capable of choosing when to stay and when to leave.

Both claimed to love her.

Only one asked her to be smaller.

Iris set the phone down beside her and looked around the room — at the careful order, the half-packed bag, the open door to a hallway that never quite slept.

She understood then, with a clarity that didn’t comfort her.

Protection was not the same as freedom.

Being kept was not the same as being chosen.

She stood, crossed to the bag, and emptied it out onto the bed. The clothes, once folded neatly, scattered across the blanket in a haphazard pile. The decision had been made. There was no longer any point in pretending otherwise. She wasn’t going to stay in the campus hostel.

She zipped the bag the rest of the way, the sound final in the quiet room, and wondered which version of safety would cost her more in the end.