Blood Ties

Chapter12-Choice

Sera

I don't wake up.

The dark loosens just enough to let something else in.

I am almost fifteen.

Old enough to know when not to go home.

Weekends stop meaning what they're supposed to mean. They become gaps in time — hours I don't account for, places I don't explain. I learn how to disappear in ways that don't leave fingerprints. How to stay gone just long enough that no one looks too closely.

School slips first.

Assignments blur together. Deadlines stop mattering. Teachers start using my name with concern in their voices, like it's something fragile. I nod in the right places. I lie easily. I've been practising for years.

Alcohol comes later. Quietly. Not as a rebellion — as relief.

It dulls the edges. Softens the noise. Makes my body feel less like something I have to manage every second I'm awake. I learn how much is too much by crossing the line and dragging myself back. I learn which nights are worth remembering and which aren't.

Most of them aren't.

I tell myself this is a choice.

That's important.

Choice is the only thing that feels like it belongs to me.

The house I avoid doesn't change. The rules inside it stay the same. The danger doesn't announce itself — it waits. So I stop waiting first. I move faster than fear. Faster than inevitability.

I make a decision that feels logical at the time.

If something is already gone, it can't be taken.

I wasn't chasing anything.

I was closing a door before someone else could open it.

The thought settles in my mind with terrifying clarity. Not sadness. Not anger. Just resolve. I don't romanticise it. I don't regret it either — not then. It's strategy. Control. Damage management.

I tell myself I'm smarter than what's waiting for me.

I'm wrong.

But the choice is still mine.

That distinction matters more than it should.

After that, things unravel faster. My grades fall completely. Nights bleed into mornings. I start measuring time by how long I can stay numb. People stop expecting much from me, which feels like a relief and a sentence all at once.

No one asks why.

No one wants the answer.

Somewhere in the background, my mother exists like a shadow I've learned to step around. We don't talk about the way I'm never home. The way I'm fading. Silence becomes another kind of agreement.

I don't hate her yet.

But something in me hardens.

I stop believing in rescue altogether.

The present tries to intrude — a monitor beeping, a voice saying my name — but it doesn't stick. It slides off the memory like water off glass. I'm too far under for it to reach me.

Fifteen-year-old me learned how to burn everything down before anyone else could.

Adult me learned how to live with the ash.

The dark closes back in, heavier this time. Not peaceful. Just familiar.

I don't wake up.

I remember why I stopped waiting