One JADE The world feels quiet in a way that scares me. It’s late morning, but my room is dark. I haven’t opened the curtains. I haven’t moved much. I’m lying on my side, curled toward the wall like if I face anything else, I’ll break again. My hair brushes my cheek when I breathe. Short. Strange. Too light. Every time I lift my hand, I expect the old weight… and it isn’t there. Shani swept most of it into a trash bag last night, but there are still pieces on the bathroom floor. Strands that used to be part of me. I keep seeing them. I keep hearing myself say “Cut it off.” I keep hearing the scissors. I pull the blanket up to my chin and squeeze my eyes shut. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know who to be. I can’t go back to school tomorrow. I can’t walk through Royal Oaks with that many eyes on me. I can’t breathe under all those voices and whispers and articles and— A soft knock thuds against my door. I don’t answer. The door opens anyway. Aunt Susan steps inside, breathing harder than usual. Like she rushed here. Like she’d been pacing in the hall, trying to figure out what to say. Her eyes land on me in the dim light. “Oh, Jade,” she whispers. I don’t move. Not because I don’t want to. Because I can’t. She sits on the edge of the bed, hands clasped in her lap like she’s afraid to touch me without permission. “I don’t know how to parent,” she blurts out. Her voice cracks. “I’m an aunt. I’m supposed to buy you sweaters and make pancakes when you visit. I don’t know how to do… this. I don’t know what to say when the world hurts you like this. So I need you to tell me. Tell me what to do.” She looks so desperate, I almost sit up just to lie to her. But I can’t do that either. “I don’t know,” I whisper. My throat burns. “I don’t know what I need. I just… I can’t be here today. I can’t be in this house, or this town, or this school. I can’t think. I can’t feel. My heart is broken and I’m numb and—” The tears hit so fast, I choke on the first one. “I just want to disappear for a few hours,” I say. “Take me somewhere. Anywhere that isn’t here. Out of town. Somewhere no one will see me. I want clam chowder and a burger and maybe a stupid movie. I just want to feel nothing.” Aunt Susan’s shoulders drop in relief. “Okay,” she says. “Okay. That I can do.” I wipe my face with the heel of my hand. She reaches for me, brushing a short lock of hair from my cheek. The gesture is light. Careful. It still makes me flinch. “Heartbreak,” she says softly. “And feeling like you have nobody… that’s a feeling I’ve dealt with before.” I look at her. Really look. She’s not trying to fix me. She’s trying to walk with me. “But I’ll tell you this, Jade,” she says. “It always passes. I know it doesn’t feel like the sun will come out tomorrow, but it will. And you’ll get through this. I’ve lived long enough to know that when bad things happen, it might take a day, or a week, or a month… but time keeps moving forward. And before you know it, all of this will be in your rearview mirror.” A fresh tear slides out. I don’t bother wiping it. Aunt Susan pats my knee. “Let’s start small,” she says. “Let’s just clean your room.” She rises and crosses to the corner where the homecoming dress and sash lie in a sad heap of glitter and slime stains. She picks them up gently, holding them like they’re fragile. “What do you want me to do with these?” she asks. My stomach twists. “Bonfire,” I whisper. “I want to burn it.” She lets out a soft, almost approving hum. “Alright. We can do that.” She walks toward the bathroom to toss the dress in a bag, but freezes at the doorway. I already know what she sees. The hair. My hair. Scattered across the tile like something died there. My breath catches. A sound tears out of me before I can stop it. Something muffled and raw. “Shit,” Aunt Susan gasps. “I meant to clean that up last night. Don’t look at it, honey. Don’t—” But I already am. I press my hand to my mouth. My shoulders shake. A sob escapes, loud against my palm. Aunt Susan drops to her knees beside me. Her arms wrap around me, warm and steady. “There it is, girl,” she murmurs. “Let it out. Let it out.” I bury my face in her shoulder and cry again, harder than last night, because now there’s nothing left to hide behind. No dress. No hair. No crown. No mask. Just the pieces. She rubs slow circles between my shoulders while the sobs wring me out. Her voice stays soft and steady. “You’re here,” she says. “You’re safe. And this—” Another gentle rub. “This doesn’t get to break you forever.” I cling to her, small and shaking. Somehow, I get dressed. Don’t ask me how. It’s like my body moves on its own while my brain floats somewhere behind me, watching through fog. Black leggings. Oversized sweatshirt. Boots I don’t bother lacing all the way. I sip tea with honey because it’s the only thing that doesn’t make my stomach twist. My hands won’t stop shaking. Every sound feels too loud. Every breath feels too shallow. Shani shows up again around noon, hair in a messy bun, wearing a look that says she didn’t sleep either. “You good?” she asks. “No,” I say honestly. She nods once. “ A bonfire?” Aunt Susan is already dragging a metal fire pit into the backyard. The November sun is thin and cold, but the air smells like woodsmoke from someone else’s chimney down the street. They pull the ruined homecoming dress from a garbage bag, like it’s biohazard. Maybe it is. Aunt Susan hands me the lighter. My throat closes. “I can do it,” she says gently. “No,” I whisper. “It has to be me.” I flick the lighter once, twice, on the third try it kicks to life. The flame licks up the hem of the dress, catching fast. The green satin curls inward, blackens, shrivels. I watch it burn. Part of me expects to feel better, lighter, free. I don’t. The flame catches the sash next. Then the glitter. Then the silk. Shani comes to stand beside me. Her breath fogs in the cold. “You want to burn this too?” she asks. I turn. She’s holding Leo’s hoodie. My chest caves. Maybe I kept it buried at the bottom of my closet because some part of me wanted something of his to hold onto. She holds it out carefully. Like it might explode. “You sure?” she asks. “You might regret it.” I take the hoodie. It smells like smoke and boy and winter air. My hand shakes around the fabric. One piece of me whispers don’t. Another whispers do it. And underneath both, something hollow whispers nothing matters. I swallow hard. Then I throw it in. The fire grabs it quickly. The drawstrings curl. The cotton crumples. The logo melts. Every moment we ever had goes with it. The night at the cliffs. The bonfire. Our first kiss. The last. His voice saying he’d protect me. His hand reaching for me when it was already too late. All of it burns. Aunt Susan quietly disappears inside, then returns with a second garbage bag. Hair. My hair. The pieces from the bathroom floor. The ones Shani didn’t get to. “Are you sure about this part?” Aunt Susan asks softly. I don’t answer. I dump the whole bag into the fire. The strands catch like paper, turning to ash in seconds. The smoke curls upward, gray twisting into white, drifting into the cold sky. Something in my chest cracks open. I don’t mean to say it, but the words slip out anyway. “I’m only seventeen. How am I supposed to deal with this shit?” Both women turn sharply toward me. Aunt Susan looks gutted. “Oh, honey…” she murmurs. “I—” She steps closer. Her hand finds my back, rubbing slow circles. “You’re right,” she says. “This is too much for seventeen. Even twenty-seven. Even forty-seven. And I know today feels like the world is ending.” Her voice wobbles for the first time. “But this…” She gestures at the burning heap. “This is cathartic. It’s a start. But it’s not enough. You need more than us for this. You need someone you can talk to without carrying our feelings too. I think you need a therapist, Jade. A real one. Someone trained for this. I can make some calls.” My lower lip trembles. I nod. Aunt Susan exhales like she’s been holding that breath for hours. “Good. Good. I’m very worried about you.” I stare at the smoke rising, the last pieces of my old life dissolving into the sky. “I can’t go to school tomorrow.” “You’re not going,” Aunt Susan says immediately. “Or the rest of the week.” I blink at her. “And then it’s fall break. Thanksgiving. Give yourself a few weeks off, Jade. I’ll email your professors. At this point, the school will do anything to avoid more litigation.” Shani snorts. “Facts.” “We’ll do everything remote on Google Classroom,” Aunt Susan continues. “You can take your midterms online. We’ll get you through this, okay? One step at a time.” My shoulders slump. “Okay,” I whisper. She squeezes my arm. “I know just the place. I already took tomorrow off. A friend of mine has a house on the Cape. You’ve never been up there.” “We live on the ocean here,” I say weakly. “Yes, but this is different,” she replies. “Different ocean. Different air. Trust me.” I look at her. She looks steady again. Strong. Anchored. I nod. We go inside. She helps me pack. It doesn’t take long. My phone keeps vibrating on the desk with texts and calls and group chats from school. I stare at it for a long time. Then I put it facedown and leave it there. We load up the car. Shani hugs me so hard I almost break again, then promises to call later. As we pull out of the driveway, I sink down low in the passenger seat so no one sees me. My short hair. My blotchy face. The new version of me I’m not ready to show the world. Aunt Susan slows at the stop sign. “Jade?” she says gently. I lift my head just enough to see. Leo’s car. Parked half a block down. He must have been waiting. He must have been watching the house. His car jolts forward the moment we turn the corner. My stomach drops. My eyes burn. “Aunt Susan—” “Don’t worry,” she says, gripping the wheel with both hands. “He can’t tail me. I’ve lived in this town for half my life. I know every back alley they’ve paved and every one they forgot to.” She takes a sudden right. Then a sharp left. Then another, fast enough I have to grab the handle above the window. We shoot through a narrow street I’ve never noticed before, past two churches and a row of closed shops, weaving through Middletown like she’s been training for this moment. “Hang on,” she says. “What are you doing?” “Losing him.” And she does. She doubles back through a side street by the marina, cuts across the old bridge, and merges onto the coastal highway heading toward the Cape. The ocean stretches wide and cold beside us. The sky is pale. My heart is heavy. I sink back into my seat and finally let a quiet sob slip out. Aunt Susan keeps one hand on the wheel and reaches the other over, resting it gently on my knee. “You’re safe,” she says. “We’re getting out of here.” I stare straight ahead. For the first time in twenty-four hours, I believe her. The highway hums under the tires, steady and low, almost like a lullaby if my chest didn’t feel like it had been hollowed out. Aunt Susan doesn’t push conversation. She keeps both hands on the wheel, eyes focused, shoulders tense enough to show she’s still half-expecting Leo to pop out from behind the next sign. We drive in silence for twenty minutes before she signals left toward a Dunkin’ Donuts off the highway. It’s almost empty, just a bored teenager wiping counters and a guy in a fishing jacket waiting for a bagel. Aunt Susan orders without asking me, which I appreciate. I can’t make choices right now. My brain feels like wet cement. “One large toasted almond latte,” she says. “For my niece. Lots of whipped cream. Go wild.” The kid behind the counter quirks a smile. “Rough morning?” “You don’t know the half of it,” she mutters. She hands me the cup when we get back in the car. It’s warm. Too warm. I wrap both hands around it anyway. I take a sip. Sweet. Hot. Comforting in a way I didn’t expect. “Coffee is like alcohol to me,” she says as she buckles in. “One sip and I start oversharing.” I huff a tiny laugh. She turns on the radio to some oldies station that shouldn’t fit the mood but somehow does. Fleetwood Mac hums under her voice as she starts talking. “Your mom and I… we had a falling out,” she says. “A long time ago. Before you were born.” I blink. I’ve never heard the full story. Mom never talked about it. “It was over something stupid,” she continues. “Like most family arguments. I was jealous. I thought your grandfather loved her more than me.” My brow furrows. “Why would you think that?” She shrugs. “I don’t know. I was twenty. Dumb. Insecure. Angry at the world. Your mom… she was the golden child. Or at least I thought she was. Dad went to all her events, talked about her achievements. I felt like background noise.” I sip my drink again. The warmth spreads through my chest, but it doesn’t fix the ache. “I don’t think he favored either of us,” she says softly. “We were just two different kids. She was sunshine. I was… fog.” I watch the guardrails blur past the window. “When your grandfather died…” she pauses, breath tight. “I handled it badly. I lashed out at her. Said things I didn’t mean.” My throat stings. The way she said it—regret wrapped in years of silence. “That’s why I stayed out here,” she says. “I wanted distance in a familiar place. Your mom didn’t even ask me to buy out her half of the summer cottage we live in now. It was our father’s happy place. And keeping it in the family meant something more than money. So I took the fishing shack. Took a job at the clinic. Tried to build something that was mine.” She glances over at me. “And your mom… she met your dad in college, got married, moved out to Ohio, and built her life there.” Her fingers tap the steering wheel. “We never fixed it. Not really. Sure I came to visit but we never spoke about the emotional baggage between us.” I swallow hard. “I didn’t know,” I whisper. “I know.” She sighs. “Your mom and I loved each other. We just weren’t very good at showing it. And then time passed. Years passed. And resentment turns into habit. Before you know it, you don’t remember how to talk.” The wind rushes against my window. She keeps going, words gentle, steady. “But I never stopped loving her. And when everything happened to you in Ohio…” Her voice breaks for half a second. “I told your mother I’d take you. No hesitation.” My chest tightens. I stare down at the cardboard cup, blinking fast. “She didn’t ask twice,” Aunt Susan says. “She trusted me with you. And I know I mess up sometimes, and I know I’m not perfect, but I’m trying, Jade. I’m really trying to be someone you can lean on.” Something pricks behind my eyes. “I know,” I say, barely audible. “I know you are.” We fall quiet again. The latte warms my hands. We drive past dunes. Salt grass. The smell of cold ocean. The sky stretching gray and flat above us. I lean my head against the window. For the first time today, the numbness bleeds into something smaller. Not pain. Not comfort. Just… something human. And maybe that’s enough for now. ...
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