TWO WORLDS COLLIDE 1.0

CHAPTER 2

We loaded the last of our boxes into the trunk of the taxi just as the morning sun began creeping higher into the sky.

The driver stepped out once to help Sofia shove in the final suitcase, then slammed the trunk shut with both hands.

“There,” he muttered. “If this thing opens on the highway, we all die together.”

Sofia laughed tiredly. “Comforting.”

He gave a lazy shrug before climbing back into the driver’s seat. I guess he was a fun person.

The house stood behind us looking strangely empty now, stripped of the little pieces that had made it ours. No flowerpots by the window. No laundry basket Sofia forgot outside sometimes.

No dim yellow light glowing from the kitchen. Just a small worn-out building sitting quietly beneath the morning heat.

I stared at it for a second longer before getting into the car. Sofia slid in beside me and shut the door with her shoulder.

The taxi smelled faintly of old leather, gasoline, and peppermint gum. “Everybody okay ?” the driver asked.

“Fortunately,” Sofia answered.

The man snorted and pulled away from the curb. Soon the house disappeared behind us. The city moved outside the window in slow fragments—small shops opening for the day, tired street vendors dragging chairs onto sidewalks, motorcycles squeezing through impossible spaces between cars.

Everything looked normal. Which felt strange. I pressed my forehead lightly against the cool glass as my thoughts drifted somewhere else entirely.

Backward. It had only been a year ago. One year. Sometimes it felt like ten minutes ago. Sometimes it felt like another lifetime entirely.

It was my sixteenth birthday when my dad bought his first real car. Not some rusty thing held together by prayers and bad decisions, but an actual new car.

He’d spent almost two months acting like he was secretly married to it.

He washed it every morning. Parked it where everybody could see. Got angry whenever birds came near it. My mom used to tease him constantly about it. “I’m starting to think you love this car more than us,” she’d said once while we stood outside our apartment.

Dad looked offended. “That’s ridiculous.” Then he pointed proudly at the car. “This one listens to me.”

Mom laughed so hard she nearly dropped the grocery bags. That morning, on my birthday, he decided we should celebrate properly. “A beach trip,” he announced dramatically at breakfast. “Family tradition.”

“We’ve literally never done that before,” Mom said.

“Every tradition starts somewhere.” I remembered how happy they looked. That was the worst part. Not the crash. Not the hospital. Not even the funerals. It was remembering how normal everything had been right before my entire life split open.

We had music playing in the car while Dad drove. Mom sat in the passenger seat arguing with him over directions even though we all knew she was worse with roads than he was. “I’m telling you, this way is shorter.”

“You said that twenty minutes ago and now we’re beside a goat market.”

“That’s called adventure.”

Dad looked at me in the rearview mirror. “You see what I suffer through?” I laughed. Mom turned around dramatically.

“Don’t encourage him.” I could still remember sunlight flashing through the windows.

The smell of my mother’s perfume mixing with the ocean air drifting in from outside. My father tapping his fingers against the steering wheel to the music.

Then— A horn. Loud. Too loud. Everything after that happened in pieces. A truck speeding toward us.

Dad shouting. Mom screaming my name. The violent jerk of the steering wheel. Then impact. Metal crushing. Glass exploding. The world flipping over itself again and again. I remembered the feeling more than the images. Weightlessness. Terror. My head slamming sideways. Then darkness. Complete darkness.

When I woke up again, the world smelled like disinfectant and medicine. At first I thought I was still dreaming because everything looked blurry and too bright. Machines beeped beside me steadily. My throat burned. My entire body felt heavy.

Then I saw Sofia sitting beside the bed. Crying. Her face looked awful. Pale skin. Red swollen eyes. Hair tied up messily like she’d been too exhausted to care anymore.

I tried saying her name but my voice barely came out. Still, the second she realized I was awake, she froze.

Then suddenly she was grabbing my hand so tightly it hurt. “Oh my God,” she whispered shakily. “Oh my God.” She hugged me carefully like she thought I might disappear if she held too hard.

I remembered asking her what happened. At first she avoided answering. Then she finally told me. I had been in a coma for a month.

A month.

An entire month of my life gone without me even noticing. Then I asked about my parents. That was when she started crying again. Real crying. The kind people do when they’ve been holding something inside for too long.

She told me my mom died before they even reached the hospital. Internal bleeding. The pregnancy made things worse.

Pregnancy.

I remembered staring at her blankly after she said that. Pregnancy?

Apparently, my mother had planned to tell us properly during dinner that same night. I would’ve had a little sibling.

The thought still felt strange even now. Like mourning someone I never got the chance to meet.

Then Sofia told me about my dad. He survived the crash at first, but his injuries were too severe. Too much blood loss. Too many complications. He died two weeks before I woke up.

I remembered lying there in that hospital bed feeling absolutely nothing at first. Not sadness. Not anger. Nothing. Just emptiness.

Like my brain couldn’t process grief that large all at once. Then eventually the questions came.

Was I supposed to feel lucky for surviving? Or guilty?

Because sometimes survival felt less like a blessing and more like being abandoned accidentally.

One thing became painfully clear after that. I hated being left behind. It settled deep inside me quietly and grew there. Every time someone was late answering a call. Every time somebody promised they wouldn’t leave. Every time someone hugged me goodbye.

A part of me waited for abandonment like it was inevitable.

When Sofia took custody of me to stop me from being thrown into foster care, I didn’t trust her either. Not at first. I kept waiting for her to realize I was too much trouble. Too broken. Too sad.

But she stayed. Even during my worst days. Even when I stopped talking for hours. Even when I snapped at her unfairly. Even when I refused to leave my room. She stayed anyway.

Somehow, over time, she stopped feeling like a cousin and started feeling like home.

Now she sat beside me in the taxi scrolling through her phone while humming absentmindedly to music only she could hear.

Completely unaware that I was staring at her. She looked up suddenly. “What?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re being weird.”

“You’re always weird.”

“That’s true,” she admitted immediately. I smiled faintly and looked back out the window.

She was the one who convinced me not to not quit school after the accident. I had wanted everything to stop. School included. Life included, honestly.

But Sofia refused to let me disappear into myself completely.

When I got accepted into Prescott Prestige College, she celebrated enough for both of us. I still remembered her bursting into my room waving the acceptance letter around like she’d won the lottery.

“You’re too smart to become mysterious and unemployed,” she’d declared.

Now we were moving because of that decision. A fresh start, according to her.

She claimed she needed one too after losing my mother—her aunt, and the last close family member she had left.

I adjusted the sleeves of my hoodie unconsciously, making sure they covered the faded scars running along my arms.

Even after a year, I still hated looking at them. The marks across my shoulder. The pale line near my collarbone. The uneven skin near my ribs. Every scar felt like evidence of something I survived badly. So I hid them.

Always.

Outside, the city slowly began thinning into longer roads and wider spaces as we continued the drive toward our new life.

I didn’t know what waited for us in Prescott. I didn’t know if starting over was actually possible.

But somewhere deep inside me, beneath all the grief and fear and exhaustion, there was a strange feeling I couldn’t explain. A quiet certainty. Like maybe— just maybe— this year wouldn’t destroy me too.