ARIELLE

Chapter1

They say your life can fit in a suitcase. Mine fit in a duffel bag and some cardboard boxes.

The air pressed against me, almost arguing with my choice to leave. It carried the same scent as the first time I tried to run away from home, a memory soaked in failure.

Dust—mixed with my mother’s expensive perfume, the one she bought more as a memorial for who she used to be than for actual use—settled in the corners of the house like regret. In the corner of my room stood a mahogany dresser from some forgotten ancestor; it, too, had gathered layers of dust. Since neither of us bothers with intensive cleaning anymore, I now mark the years by the amount of dust accumulated on furniture.

I folded another sweater into my duffel bag with more precision than was necessary. It was wool and charcoal grey, expensive enough to be important but cheap enough that I wouldn’t panic if it went missing. A perfect balance, a pity my life was nowhere near perfect. I hardly got attached to things; it was a useful skill I picked up by calculating everything in terms of loss potential.

Standing in the middle of my room, I took one final look around. At the posters on the wall, which were abstract art I had chosen myself, and not the safe landscapes my mother preferred. The bookshelf, which held books I had read through so many times that they were ingrained in my memory. It had become a room designed to contain someone who no longer fit inside.

On the dresser stood a framed photograph

I resisted the urge to pick it up. A resistance which, unfortunately, wasn’t strong enough.

The photograph contained the three of us, about nine years ago. Mom looked all polished and distant, 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 I was, actually smiling. A real, genuine smile that belonged to a different girl entirely.

I set the photograph face down on the dresser, the frame making a soft thunk on the wood. It was petty, the sort of thing a dramatic teenager did to send a message. But there were no adults around to witness it.

Or so I had thought.

“You’re really doing this.”

I turned around to find Mom standing in the doorway the way she always did, with one hand set on the frame, as though ready to retreat at any moment. How long she had been standing there for, I had no idea. I was too caught up in my thoughts to have noticed.

“The acceptance letter has been sitting on the kitchen table for three weeks,” I said, turning my attention back to the clothes I was folding. “I think it’s time to see if Halebridge actually exists or if it’s just a very elaborate 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 I now. Abbreviated. 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. That I’m supposed to stay and manage your grief because that’s what good daughters do. 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 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 any emotion show, none of it would be real.

“That’s not fair, Ari.”

“Fair?” I laughed, and it sounded strange to my own ears. “You want to talk about fair? 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 place, 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 had been dancing around this particular truth for months, and now I had just torn up the floorboards. But I was leaving, so what did it matter? It came with a peculiar kind of freedom, knowing I didn’t have to glue myself back together for my mother anymore.

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

“That wasn’t necessary.” She said quietly, her voice hollow and rehearsed. Like a line from a play she had practiced but was finding it hard to get into character. 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 make contact with a land mine.

“There has to be some other way,” she continued after me. I paused in the hallway, key in hand, 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 told her, and meant every single word. I had no idea how to make this less painful for her. 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 someone worth saving. At the very least, I didn’t just pack up and leave without her notice, although that had also 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, 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, one hand pressed against the frame like 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.

Everything for my exit was good to go. The gas tank was half full, the car seats were well cleaned, and the tires and brakes had been checked earlier for faults. It wasn’t a spontaneous decision or a sudden act of rebellion; I had been preparing everything for a while with such attention to detail, down to the GPS. I threw the duffel in the passenger seat and got in, my other things already sitting pretty in the car boot since last night. The car smelled like old air freshener and the wood-scented cologne Dad used to wear. A part of me loved that the car smelled like him, proof that he actually existed and wasn’t a fragment of my imagination.

I adjusted the mirrors and placed my hands on the steering wheel the way he had taught me to. The way he always drove while he was still here. I don’t remember crying when it happened; that was not my style. I was more into dark jokes and sarcastic remarks. I found out that life was less messy that way.

Mom appeared in the kitchen window, watching. I could see her through the mirror, already looking like a memory. That was when I turned the key.

The engine rumbled to life, familiar and reliable. I drove out of the driveway slowly, keeping my eyes forward. Looking back was a luxury I couldn’t afford because it was the fastest way to get stuck. On getting to the end of the street, I stopped and finally allowed myself a glance in the rear-view mirror. The house had already disappeared, life as I had ever known it receding into the distance like it had never been quite real in the first place.

I turned the wheel and veered the car towards the highway. Towards Halebridge. My hopeful chance at freedom and self-discovery. The day’s light was gold and honest and completely indifferent to the fact that I was leaving everything I had ever known, everything that defined me up until that moment.

Reaching for the radio, I turned it up loud, and a catchy K-pop song started playing in the background. I tried to sing along, to pretend like my heart wasn’t beating a little too fast. But a sudden realization hit, like when a bucket of cold water is poured on your face to drag you back to reality. I was really leaving, and it was too late now to start second-guessing.

Beep.

My phone buzzed on the passenger seat. I didn’t bother checking. It was probably a text from mom or maybe my aunt, checking in to make sure I was doing okay. Whatever it was, it could wait until I got to my destination. Driving rule 5 from dad: never engage your phone while on the road. I wasn’t about to start breaking his rules.

I felt something like relief as the highway stretched in front of me. A faint possibility that somewhere ahead, there was a version of myself that was still hiding inside, waiting to be brought out. It wasn’t much, but it was something.

And for the first time since Dad died, something felt like enough.