The Vaelis Knot

Chapter three Stevie

I woke to the screech of my alarm, a sound that felt like it was drilling directly into my temples. With a groan that started deep in my chest, I leaned over, fumbling blindly until my palm hit the "off" button, finally silencing the digital scream.

As I pushed myself upright, I went through a slow, agonizing stretch. My joints didn't just ache, they clicked in a rhythmic protest, and my lower back felt like it had fused into a single, unyielding block of wood. I suppose that’s the biological tax for spending the last twelve hours the day before in a sedentary trance. My world reduced to flipping through text books and jotting down notes.

For the past week, I’d lived entirely in my head, but today, my body was finally filing a formal grievance. It was a strange, heavy sensation, a physical lethargy that felt like it was begging me to crawl back under the covers, while simultaneously screaming for the blood to actually start moving through my veins again. I was a collection of stiff muscles and tired neurons, and I knew if I didn't get out of this bed now, I would be here for the rest of the day.

I sat up with as much enthusiasm as I could muster, dragging myself upward with all the speed and grace of a sloth wading through molasses.When my feet finally hit the floor, I fumbled for my phone. The screen blazed with a merciless 7:00 AM. Two hours. My first exam was at nine, a countdown that sent a sharp jolt of cortisol through my system. I forced myself to stand, my legs feeling like lead as I crossed to the closet. I pulled out my clothes for the morning: a white sports bra, a light blue crop top, and my favorite grey leggings.

In the bathroom, I caught a glimpse of my reflection and stopped dead.

I almost didn't recognize the person staring back at me. My long dark blonde hair—usually kept in a tidy, manageable state—was a chaotic crown of knots sticking out in every direction. Yesterday’s eyeliner had migrated south, smearing under my eyes in dark, oily smudges. I looked less like a woman and more like a raccoon that had spent the night at a rave in a landfill.

I shook my head at the mirror. Self-care, I promised my reflection. As soon as I am done with finals today, we are doing a full systemic reset. But first, I needed to go for a run. I needed the rhythm of my feet on the pavement to drown out my own thoughts. I needed to clear the mental fog before I walked into that lecture hall. It was the only way to transform from a "trash raccoon" back into a functioning human being.

I managed to tame the bird’s nest of my hair into a messy bun and went to work with the makeup remover wipes. It took three passes to fully "de-raccoon" my eyes. A quick, aggressive brush of my teeth followed—no point in a full beauty routine now when I was just going to sweat it all off anyway.

I pulled on my shoes, but as I reached for the door, I stopped to grab my hoodie, tugging it over my head to guard against any lingering chill that might still be in the air, and jammed my earbuds in.

Instead of my usual study podcasts or my "Calculus Flow" playlist, I swiped until I found the local news. My life lately had been reduced to a narrow, microscopic lens. Between the grueling Organic Chemistry labs, calculating trajectories in Physics, and memorizing the intricate signaling pathways for Cell Biology, I had become a ghost in my own city. I was so wrapped up in the molecular world—or watching Caleb and Adam fight at the Scrapyard on the weekends —that I’d become oblivious to anything happening on a macroscopic scale.

As the anchor’s voice began to fill my ears, I stepped out into the air. I needed the news to remind me that there was a world out there that didn't involve integration by parts or the Krebs cycle. I needed to feel the pavement under my feet to remind me that I was a biological organism, not just a brain in a jar trying to survive finals week.

The park was only a few minutes from our townhouse, and as I approached, the tension in my shoulders finally began to uncoil. It was utterly beautiful—a vivid, living middle finger to the grey slush and biting winds currently paralyzing the rest of the country.

Before me lay an expanse of vibrant emerald grass, fed by the recent rains and still wearing a heavy coat of morning dew. Above, the palm trees stood like jagged silhouettes against a sky so impossibly blue it looked like a filtered postcard. There were no snow-dusted pines in this landscape. Instead, the silver-green leaves of olive trees shimmered in the breeze, interrupted by the occasional, violent burst of crimson from a blooming bottlebrush tree.

The air was thick and restorative, carrying the sharp, medicinal scent of damp eucalyptus and the faint, fermented sweetness of fallen jacaranda pods. The sun was bright but had lost its summer bite, hanging low enough to cast long, cinematic shadows that stretched across the jogging paths. My favorite trail was a perfect thirty-minute circuit—a calculated loop that gave me just enough time to flush the scent of old textbooks from my lungs and still hit the coffee shop before the doors locked for my first final.

The news anchor’s voice droned on, shifting from traffic reports to a segment on holiday food drives and toy drop-offs. I made a quick mental note to stop by the market for cans and boxed dry goods. I wouldn’t have to go far to drop them off, my campus was already littered with donation bins labeled “Help those in need this season.” Most students walked past those bins without a second thought, but for me, they were a physical tug on a very old string. Growing up in foster care had left my heart permanently soft for the ones the world overlooked. I knew exactly what it felt like to be a ghost in the system—to be small, forgotten, and genuinely, hollowly hungry.

If it wasn’t for Mary Anne, my life would be a completely different equation. I wouldn’t be at my top-choice university, staring down a degree in Molecular Biology; I’m not even sure I would have survived high school. And Caleb... without her, my brothers rage would have likely landed him in a cell instead of a ring.

As my feet found a steady rhythm on the pavement, my mind drifted to the people who had filled the empty spaces in our lives. Mary Anne hadn't just given us a roof, she’d given us a tribe. I had just turned 8 and Caleb was 9 when she took us in, which was right after her youngest, Sequoia, had started college. Now, Sequoia was out in Tucson, Arizona, living a life of dust and discovery as an archaeologist.

She FaceTimed me whenever she could, her screen filled with sun-bleached trenches and the tiny, intricate brushes she used to coax secrets from the earth. Whether it was a prehistoric shard or an early American artifact, I loved the way her face ignited when she explained the significance of a find. Watching her, I felt a quiet pang of envy—I hoped that one day, when I was deep into molecular research, I’d look at a protein sequence with that same fierce, radiant pride.

Then, there was Joshua.

If Sequoia was the family’s intellectual North Star, Joshua was its resident jester. He owned Royal Flush Plumbing, and I couldn’t pass a local TV channel without bracing for his commercials. He was a spectacular dork, parading around in a ridiculous red robe with white fur around the trim and a crown that looked like it belonged in a high school play. Instead of a scepter, he’d brandish a plunger at the camera, declaring with total sincerity: “Call Royal Flush Plumbing, because you’re the king of your throne.”

I made sure to remind him how embarrassing he was every time I saw him, but behind the teasing, there was a debt I could never truly repay. He treated us like the younger siblings he never asked for but decided to keep anyway. Last semester, when my old MacBook finally succumbed to the stress of my lab reports and breathed its last, Joshua hadn't even let me finish my sentence before he insisted to buy me a new one. He and Caleb were cut from the same cloth—men of action who expressed love through work and protection. Between Joshua’s plumbing business and Caleb’s fights, I realized I was surrounded by people who worked with their hands so I could work with my brain.

My feet kept their rhythm, but my mind stayed with the family that had reshaped my world. Mary Anne’s household had a specific, weighted architecture to it. Joshua was the solid, goofy foundation—the oldest, the one who’d built a life out of pipes and "Royal Flush" robes. Sequoia was the youngest, the brilliant archaeologist digging through the past to find a future.

But there was a gap in the middle, a silence that sat between them where a sister should have been.

Willow. She’d been the middle child, but the ocean had claimed her when she was only twelve. It was a tragedy that had left a permanent, jagged scar on Mary Anne’s heart—a wound that never quite closed, even as she opened her doors to us. I think that was why she held onto us so tightly. She knew, with a terrifying, first-hand clarity, exactly how fragile a life could be.

To Mary Anne, we weren't just foster kids filling empty rooms; we were a second chance to protect the vulnerable. Knowing about Willow made every one of Mary Anne’s hugs feel a little more desperate, and every one of Joshua’s protective "older brother" moments feel a little more vital. We were the siblings who came after the storm, the ones meant to help heal a house that had once been quiet with grief.

As I was thinking of how much I was looking forward to seeing them over Christmas break, the world suddenly tilted on its axis. My toe caught a jagged lip of uneven concrete, and gravity, that relentless law of physics I’d been studying all semester, took over.