Sway Me One More Time

Chapter 03

There are silences that echo louder than any scream.

The kind that lingers, dry and metallic, in your throat long after you’ve walked away from the moment.

The kind that whispers your own name when you are utterly alone.

The kind that wraps itself tight around your ribs and tightens every time you dare to take a breath.

That, precisely, was the profound, suffocating silence I brought home with me.

I sat at my desk that night, my eyes tracing the same three, unreadable lines of homework. The pen in my hand felt impossibly heavy.

Or maybe it was just the insistent memory of his voice—how it used to c***k slightly, tenderly, when he said my name. Raina. No one called me that intimate shortened name anymore.

Only him.

It always begins the same.

A Silence. Not the comforting kind of peace, but the unnerving sort that hums beneath your skin. It is unsettling, too still, like the entire world is holding its breath before something catastrophic unfolds.

I am suddenly standing on some unfamiliar road, flanked by towering trees that look like silent, ancient witnesses. The air smells acutely of gasoline and iron, sharp and metallic on my tongue. I don’t know how I arrived here. I never do.

Then I see it.

The car.

Burning.

It rages, a roaring inferno, as if it holds a personal vendetta against the sky. Flames pour out from the windows, twisting and curling like predatory, sentient creatures. The heat should be agonizing, radiating in visible waves, but I feel only the chill crawling up my spine.

Glass shatters. A scream, muffled and tearing, struggles through the dense smoke. There’s someone inside. Their hand smacks against the window once. A second later, it slips out of sight.

My legs move on their own, spurred by a primal desperation. I try to run, but the movement is agonizing, like dragging myself through thick, resistant honey. The road stretches longer the closer I get, a relentless, taunting illusion. I want to scream. To smash the glass. To reach them. To save them.

And then—

The voice.

“It’s a setup!”

It slices through the noise of the inferno.

Hoarse. Wild. Desperate.

And terrifyingly, undeniably familiar.

My heart stumbles and trips in my chest. I know that voice. Somewhere deep, buried beneath years of rigid silence, that raw voice lives inside me. It has been gone a long time, but hearing it again feels like an old, deep wound being violently torn open.

My pulse pounds against my skull. My mouth struggles to form a word—anything—but I cannot speak.

The smoke thickens, swallowing the horizon. The world twists and writhes.

“Don’t trust them!”

The voice breaks on the last, desperate word.

A name bubbles up from the heart of the flames, impossibly clear—

My name.

“Lueraina…”

And I freeze.

My blood turns to a searing, sudden ice. That voice... that was her. I do not know how I know, but the knowledge is absolute. The scream, the agonizing way she spoke my name—it hits me like a memory I had fiercely rejected. But that cannot be right. It is impossible.

She is gone.

The fire swallows the car whole. The figure inside slumps over one last time. I stand there, rooted and helpless. The world fades into an absolute blackness, like a curtain being drawn on a stage, and all I can hear is my name echoing endlessly in the ashes.

When I jolt awake, my chest is heaving, my body entangled in sweat-dampened sheets. My hands are shaking. I press them flat against my heart, willing it to stay contained.

That voice. That scream.

It was her.

But how? Why now, after all this time? What horrifying connection does it mean?

I sit there in the dense dark, hugging my knees, listening to the oppressive silence as if it might finally yield an answer.

It doesn’t.

It never does.

By morning, the dream still clings to me like cold static—refusing to shake off even after two cups of scorching tablea chocolate and an extra minute under the therapeutic sting of the shower.

I move through the hallways like a ghost, maintaining my usual, cold poise, my lips pressed into that perfect, controlled line I’ve mastered over the years. But underneath, the shell is cracked. The air feels heavier today, like it’s subtly bracing for an impact.

The world is awake, loud with footsteps and chattering voices, but everything around me feels strangely muted. I feel as if I am underwater—drifting, detached, trying desperately to pretend my skin wasn't still laced with the phantom scent of smoke from a dream that felt far too real.

I reached my locker without registering the walk.

Right, left, right. I twist the lock open, expecting nothing but the quiet clutter of books and routine.

Then I notice it.

Perched directly on top of my chemistry textbook, delicate and deliberate, was a single folded sheet of paper. Cream-colored. Its edges crisp and luxurious. The kind of paper that had no business being in a chaotic high school hallway. No name. No handwriting visible on the outside. No sign of the hidden hand that left it.

I glance quickly over my shoulder, but no one is watching. The hallway buzzes with the usual, comforting noise—shoes squeaking against tile, laughter bouncing off the walls, teachers’ footsteps fading down distant corridors. No one even seemed to notice my stillness.

Everything is meticulously normal.

But this… this is a transgression.

My fingers hover, trembling slightly, over the paper before I finally gather the courage to unfold it.

The paper is strangely warm. Not from the sun, not from my momentary touch. Warm like it had been held too long, too tightly, by someone else.

Please. Just one conversation.

That is all it says. Four desperate words. No name. No definitive clue. Just that small, powerful please—and it hits harder than any forceful demand. It is like someone is standing just behind the sealed door of my memory, knocking softly. Not forcing their way in. Just… waiting.

My fingers tighten around the thin paper. My heart commits an act of self-betrayal: something stupid. Something old. Something terribly soft.

I don’t react externally. I fold it again, tuck it deep between my notes, and pretend it didn’t make my chest ache in a familiar way I thought I’d long outgrown.

The rest of the day passes in fragmented time. People speak to me, and I respond on autopilot. My mind plays a brutal tug-of-war with the note, twisting those seven words into painful, accusatory questions. What conversation? Why now? What does he possibly think he could fix?

By the time the last bell rings, I am utterly exhausted from the relentless effort of pretending.

I return to my locker, ready for the swift escape home, already calculating excuses to retreat early.

Then I see it.

Another note.

This one has been slipped discreetly between my binder and pen pouch, attempting a less obvious infiltration.

I freeze for a suspended second.

Then I take it.

Same precise handwriting.

Just five minutes.

That is all it says.

No pleading please this time. No elaborate explanation. Just a stark timeframe. As if a mere five minutes could possibly be enough to account for what was irrevocably broken between us. For the year of deafening silence. For that crucial morning he failed to show up. For the agonizing way I had to learn to build myself whole again, stone by meticulous stone, without him.

But still, I stare.

Five minutes.

It is utterly ridiculous.

And yet…

I fold it carefully with the first note, burying them together, afraid they might spontaneously dissolve if I move too quickly. My fingers shake—only slightly. I pretend the tremor is caused by the chill of the air conditioning.

My mind is already racing.

No one leaves notes like these anymore. People text. People post. People avoid confrontation with brutal, modern efficiency.

But this—this is old-school. It is deeply personal and painfully intentional. This is the act of someone who knows I would read it even if I never replied.

My first, fierce instinct is to crumple them. To toss them deep into the forgotten recess of my locker and slam the door shut, locking out the memory. I don’t have time for cryptic messages. Not when I have urgent student council meetings, looming quizzes, and the ghost of a nightmare still whispering fiery warnings in my ears.

But the crushing truth is this: I know who left them.

I don’t possess tangible proof. I don’t need it.

There is something about the pure simplicity of the gesture that scares me more than any open anger ever could.

He isn't demanding an audience.

He is simply waiting.

Geighbryel.

My chest tightens the way it always does when his name crosses the thoughts I have reserved for other things. After a whole year of silence, after disappearing as if our love were nothing more than a fleeting summer story—he is back. Sitting in the next classroom. Breathing the same school air, acting as if nothing monumental transpired.

And now, notes. Fragile paper artillery.

I stare at them one last time before sliding them into my notebook, burying them like a secret I am profoundly unready to face.

A version of me—the vulnerable girl I buried months ago—screams to say yes.

But the stronger, rebuilt version standing here now isn't sure she can survive hearing the answers.

Five minutes.

What could he possibly say in five minutes that would truly matter?

What could he utter that wouldn't simply make everything worse?

As if five brief minutes could save something already long fallen apart.

I close my locker gently. The hallway noise fades behind me as I walk away—but the notes stay pressed against my chest, heavier than they have any right to be.

And I hate that a stubborn, foolish part of me desperately wants to say yes.

But as I walk down the hallway, the question echoes, a painful, lingering sound:

If I give him five minutes… what will he give back?