Blood & Roses: The Blackwood Academy

Chapter 3 - A Mother Withdraws

Renee Morrison

The whistle pierced the air, sharp and clean.

I exploded off the starting line, legs pumping, lungs already burning. The track stretched ahead, four laps, one mile, the annual fitness test that everyone either dreaded or dominated.

I hadn’t cared about it in months. Hadn’t cared about anything in months.

But today, something was different.

Cassie ran beside me, her ponytail whipping in the wind. We’d been best friends once, before the accident, before I’d become the girl everyone walked on eggshells around.

She’d stopped trying to reach me after the tenth ignored text, the fifteenth unanswered call.

Now we ran stride for stride, our breath matching rhythm.

The first lap blurred past. My legs remembered this, the burn, the push, the drive. Boxing had kept me in shape despite everything else falling apart.

Cassie glanced at me, surprise flickering across her face when she realized I wasn’t falling behind.

Second lap. The pack spread out behind us. It was just the two of us now, fighting for first place like we used to fight for the last slice of pizza at sleepovers, for the good sleeping bag on camping trips, for stupid things that mattered because we were friends and competition was love in a different language.

Third lap. My lungs screamed. Sweat dripped into my eyes, stinging. But something in my chest cracked open, not breaking, but loosening. The tightness that had lived there for months eased just enough to let me breathe deeper.

Cassie pushed harder. So did I.

Final lap. The finish line wavered in the distance. Coach Danny’s voice echoed in my head from a thousand training sessions: Pain is temporary. Quitting lasts forever.

I dug deep, found reserves I’d forgotten existed, and kicked.

My legs burned. My heart hammered. The world narrowed to the white line ahead and the sound of Cassie’s breathing beside me.

Ten meters. Five meters. Two meters.

I crossed first by half a step.

My hands found my knees, chest heaving, spots dancing in my vision. Cassie doubled over beside me, gasping.

“Holy... crap... Morrison.”

Her voice was breathless but something else too... proud, maybe. Impressed.

I straightened, pressing my hand against the stitch in my side. “You... almost had me.”

“Almost doesn’t count.”

She laughed, and the sound cracked something else open inside me. When was the last time I’d heard genuine laughter? When was the last time I’d felt even close to normal?

Cassie stood, her hand finding my shoulder. “I miss you.”

Three words. Simple. Devastating.

My throat closed up. I focused on the track, the other students still finishing their laps, anywhere but her face.

“I miss my friend, Renee. The one who used to laugh at stupid jokes and steal my fries and talk about the Olympics like they were a guarantee, not just a dream.”

“That girl died months ago.”

The words came out harsher than I meant them. Cassie’s hand tightened on my shoulder. “No, she didn’t. She’s just buried under a lot of pain. But I saw her today. For like thirty seconds during that race, I saw her smile.”

I hadn’t realized I’d been smiling. The muscles in my face felt foreign, unused. “I don’t know how to be her anymore.”

“Then figure it out. Because watching you disappear is almost as bad as...” She trailed off, but we both knew what she meant. Almost as bad as losing you completely.

I looked at Cassie. “Ok, for you, I’ll try.”

Coach Henderson blew his whistle, calling us in. Cassie squeezed my shoulder once more before jogging toward the locker room.

I stood there in the middle of the track, the spring sun warm on my face, and felt something I hadn’t felt in months.

Hope. Small and fragile, but it was there.

The house was dark when I got home. Not just dark, heavy. The air pressed down like physical weight, thick enough to choke on. I dropped my backpack by the door and flipped on the hallway light.

“Mom?”

No answer.

Her car was in the driveway. She was home. Somewhere.

I found her in the living room, sitting in the dark, staring at nothing. Still in her work clothes—a navy pantsuit that hung looser than it should. She’d lost weight. We both had.

“Mom?”

She didn’t turn. Didn’t acknowledge me at all.

I tried again.

“I ran the mile today. Got first place.”

Nothing. Not even a flicker of recognition.

I stood there for a long moment, waiting for something... a smile, a word, any sign that she remembered she had a daughter standing three feet away. But she just sat there, shoulders slumped, face pale as a ghost.

I left her in the darkness.

The house felt wrong. Every room I walked through carried the weight of absence. My father’s recliner sat empty, the leather still holding the impression of his body.

His work boots by the back door, permanently caked in dried mud from job sites he’d never return to. Framed photos on the walls, our family, smiling, whole, a lie now.

I ended up in the kitchen, staring at the calendar still showing January. Three months behind. Neither of us had thought to turn the page.

The gym. I needed to go back to the gym.

Coach Danny had called twice, texted a dozen times. I’d ignored all of it, too raw to face the place where I grew up. Where my father had watched me train, had cheered me on, had believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself.

But Cassie’s words echoed in my head. I saw her smile.

Maybe that girl wasn’t completely dead. Maybe she was just waiting.

I pulled out my phone and typed a message to Coach Danny. Can I come train tomorrow?

The response came in seconds. Door’s always open, Mija. Been waiting for you to come back.

I set the phone down and heard my mother moving through the house, slow, shuffling footsteps that sounded too loud in the silence. She passed the kitchen without looking in, talking to herself in a voice too quiet to make out words.

The guilt hit like a fist to the gut.

I should have done something. Should have grabbed the wheel, screamed louder, seen the truck coming.

I should have saved him.

The logical part of my brain knew that was impossible. But logic didn’t live in the same space as grief.

I was fifteen feet away from my mother and might as well have been on another planet. We existed in the same house, breathed the same air, but we’d lost each other somewhere in the wreckage of that night.

I was alone. Completely, utterly alone.

And I had no idea how to fix it.

***

School the next day passed in a blur of faces and noise that didn’t penetrate the fog in my head.

I moved through the hallways like a ghost, barely registering the other students. Cassie waved at me during passing period. I managed a weak smile in return before the crowd swallowed her up.

Lunch came and went. I picked at a sandwich, tossed most of it, and headed toward my locker.

The hallway was mostly empty, that dead zone between lunch periods when everyone was either eating or cutting class. I spun my combination, yanked open the locker door.

A hand smacked my ass.

Hard. Deliberate. Accompanied by a laugh that made my skin crawl.

I spun around.

Brandon Schultz stood there with two of his friends, all of them wearing identical smirks. Brandon was a junior, a mediocre basketball player with an overinflated ego and a face that begged to be rearranged.

“Looking good, Morrison. Grief suits you.”

His friends laughed. My vision tunneled.

“Heard you’ve been getting into fights. Maybe you need someone to work out that aggression with. I volunteer.”

He reached for me again.

My hand shot out, fingers closing around his throat. I shoved him back against the lockers, the metal clanging loud in the empty hallway. His eyes went wide, hands coming up to grab my wrist.

I squeezed harder.

Three months of rage, grief, and frustration converged in my grip. I could feel his pulse hammering against my palm, could see the fear blooming across his face as he realized the girl he’d thought was vulnerable was dangerous.

I wanted to hurt him. Wanted to make him feel a fraction of the violation burning through me.

But I couldn’t.

One more incident. That’s what Principal Vega had said. One more, and I was done.

I released him, stepping back. He gasped, hand going to his throat. “You’re crazy.”

“Touch me again and find out just how crazy.”

I grabbed my books and walked away, leaving him coughing against the lockers. My hands shook. Adrenaline flooded my system, making everything too sharp, too bright, too much.

I’d almost done it. Almost thrown away everything because some entitled jackass thought grief made me weak. The shame hit as hard as the anger. I was spiraling. Losing control. Becoming someone I didn’t recognize.

Home was still dark. Still heavy. Still suffocating.

I dropped my bag and headed straight for my room, slamming the door hard enough to rattle the frame. The walls closed in, and everything I’d been holding back came crashing down.

Guilt. Grief. Anger. Loneliness. Fear.

It all converged into a scream that tore from my throat, raw, hoarse and full of everything I couldn’t say, couldn’t fix, couldn’t survive.

Brandon had smacked my ass, it shouldn’t have bothered me, but in my state, I felt violated. The fact that guys thought this behavior was acceptable sent me over the edge.

I grabbed the chair from my desk and hurled it across the room. It hit the wall with a crash that echoed through the house, wood splintering, one leg breaking clean off.

The sound hung in the air, and I stood there in the wreckage of my own rage, chest heaving, tears streaming down my face. I finally broke.

The door opened.

My mother stood there, and for the first time in months, she actually looked at me. Really looked. Her eyes were red but clear, focused in a way they hadn’t been since the funeral.

She crossed the room and pulled me into her arms.

I fought it at first, tried to push her away, but she held on. Held on like she was drowning, and I was the only thing keeping her afloat. Or was it the other way around?

We sank to the floor together, two broken people clinging to each other in the ruins of our lives.

She spoke first. “I’m sorry.”

Her voice cracked on the words. “I’m so sorry, baby. I’ve been lost. I’ve been drowning in this, and I forgot you were drowning too.”

Her honesty was raw, but welcomed. “I don’t know how to do this without him.”

“Neither do I.”

She pulled back, cupping my face in her hands. Her fingers were cold but steady. “But we can’t do this alone anymore. We need help. Both of us.”

“Mom—”

“A therapist. Someone who can help us figure out how to keep breathing when it feels impossible. Someone who can teach us how to survive this together instead of separately.”

I wanted to argue. Wanted to say I was fine, that we were fine, that we could handle this ourselves. But the broken chair, my bleeding knuckles, the hollow look in both our eyes said otherwise.

The word came out small but solid. “Okay.”

My mother pulled me back into her arms, and we sat there on my bedroom floor surrounded by broken furniture and broken hearts, holding on to each other like our lives depended on it.

Because maybe they did.

Maybe the first step toward healing was admitting we couldn’t do it alone.

Maybe asking for help wasn’t weakness.

Maybe it was the bravest thing we could do.