Waking up felt like a punch to the skull. My pillow had migrated halfway across the room in what I can only assume was some sleep-paralysis demon's idea of interior decorating. The sun bleeding through my curtains wasn't helping either—it had that judgmental, post-apocalyptic morning-after energy, like, "Hey fucker, remember your life's a mess?"
My brain immediately latched onto the one image I didn't want to think about: Raven's drawing.
That crooked, floating house. The bleeding corners. The fucked-up beauty of it. It was still there behind my eyelids like it had been branded into my neural circuits. Something about it felt like a memory I'd never had, or worse, one I'd buried so deep I didn't know it belonged to me.
I grabbed my phone and checked it out of habit.
Nothing.
No texts. No notifications. Just a lock screen photo I hadn't changed since eighth grade a blurry shot of a snow-covered streetlamp that now felt pretentious as fucking hell.
Not that I was expecting a text. I mean, why hell would she text? We only shared a moment that was barely a moment. A freak hand-brush over a stupid red pastel. But also? It wasn't nothing. I felt it. And I hate that I felt it.
I rolled out of bed like a corpse falling out of a morgue drawer. My room smelled like detergent and emotional decay. I pulled on yesterday's hoodie and made my way to the kitchen like a zombie who listened to too much Radiohead. Dad was already there. He looked up from his coffee with that cautious optimism parents get when they think you might be salvageable.
"Morning," he said, too brightly.
"Define morning," I muttered.
He slid a plate of scrambled eggs toward me. They looked edible, which was progress.
We ate in silence for a while. Well, I stared at the eggs like they owed me money, and he tried to pretend this wasn't the most awkward breakfast in human history.
Then he tried it.
"So… that girl you were walking with yesterday…"
I froze mid-bite. "Please don't."
He raised his hands. "Just making conversation."
"Try making less of it."
He sighed and went back to pretending to read the paper like it was still 1995. I wanted to disappear into my hoodie and never return. The truth was, I didn't know what to do with what happened. That art class. That project. Her eyes. The way she saw me without flinching. It was like she knew exactly how fucked up I was and still chose to sit beside me anyway.
That's not normal. That's not safe.
I rinsed my plate, ignored the awkward dad energy hovering behind me, and fled back to my room like it was a bunker in a war zone.
I flopped on my bed and stared at the ceiling. The drawing wouldn't leave my brain. Neither would her hand. Her voice. That moment.
God, I was so screwed.
My phone buzzed. I leapt for it like a crack addict.
Spam.
Of course.
I threw it across the bed and buried my face in the pillow, screaming internally and maybe a little externally too.
This was going to be a long day.
I gave up trying to function around noon.
School felt like some kind of waking purgatory where everything echoed and everyone spoke just loud enough to make my headache worse. Teachers droned. Kids laughed too hard. Some asshole in the back of bio was whispering about me and Raven like we were tabloid fodder.
I wanted to shove a scalpel in his eye. Lovingly. Spiritually.
Instead, I stared at my worksheet and pretended to be a functioning organism. Spoiler alert: I was not.
Raven didn't look at me once in art class.
Not once.
She came in late, sat down, took out her pencil, and didn't say a single fucking word. I didn't either, because I'm a coward and also possibly emotionally constipated. But I kept side-eyeing her like some kind of Victorian ghost haunting the corner of a painting.
She looked tired.
Worse than yesterday. Like she'd fought demons in her sleep and lost on points. Her eyes were duller, mouth pulled tight like she was chewing on her own thoughts. And I wanted to say something. Anything.
But I didn't. Because what the hell do you say to someone who drew a haunted house bleeding from the walls and then accidentally touched your hand like the universe glitched?
"Hey, cool trauma. Wanna trauma-bond over caffeine and mutual despair?"
Yeah. No.
I watched her draw in silence. Her pencil moved like it was tracing memories she couldn't shake. Fast, deliberate, furious. Every line was a scream with its throat slit.
When class ended, she was gone before I could even blink.
I just sat there, gripping my own sketch like it might disintegrate if I let go. My hands were sweating. My heart felt like it was punching my ribs out of spite. I walked out of class in a daze, smacked into someone's backpack, mumbled something like "Sorry I exist," and kept moving.
The rest of the day didn't even register. Just static. Like I was tuned to the wrong channel and couldn't fix the antenna.
By the time the final bell rang, I'd already decided I was going straight home, burrito myself in a blanket, and drown in self-pity and discount Oreos. I didn't even check my phone. Why would I? Ghosts don't text back.
I headed toward the back exit of school the one with the busted lock and zero human interaction and shoved open the door like I was escaping prison.
And then I saw her.
Raven.
Standing under the dead oak tree by the side gate. Waiting.
She was just… there.
Hands stuffed in the pockets of that worn-out hoodie she always wore. Hair pulled back messily like she didn't give a damn, which somehow made her look even more like she stepped out of a doomed indie film. Her eyes flicked up when she saw me, and for a second, neither of us said anything.
"Hey," she muttered.
"Hey."
God, we were such disasters.
I glanced around like someone was gonna jump out and film this for some teen soap opera. But no one was there. Just us. Awkward, broken us.
"You walking home?"
I nodded, throat suddenly dry.
She shrugged. "Mind if I tag along?"
I wanted to say something witty. Something chill. Instead, my brain short-circuited and I just mumbled, "Yeah, sure. Whatever."
We started walking. Side by side. Too close to be strangers, too far to be anything else.
It was quiet at first. Uncomfortably so. The kind of quiet that made you hyper-aware of your footsteps and how stupid your arms look when they're just hanging there.
I kept my eyes on the road. She kept hers on the cracks in the sidewalk.
A dog barked in the distance. A crow screamed like it had beef with God. Somewhere, someone was blasting a song I couldn't place but it sounded angry and sad at the same time. Fitting.
Raven broke the silence first.
"I had the dream again."
I blinked. "Dream?"
"Yeah," she said, voice low. "The one where I'm in a house. But it's not mine. It's like… this decaying, rotting place. The walls are bleeding. There's no furniture. Just a bathtub filled with black water."
Jesus Christ.
"And there's always something in the mirror," she added. "But I never see it. I just… know it's there. Watching."
My skin crawled. "Okay, that's fucking terrifying."
She smirked, just a little. "Yeah. It's been happening since I was ten."
"That's… comforting."
"You?"
I snorted. "Do I have dreams of haunted bathtubs? No. I just don't sleep much."
She looked at me then. Really looked.
"How come?"
And there it was.
The question.
I kicked a rock and watched it skitter into the gutter. "Because my brain's a raging dumpster fire that won't shut the fuck up."
She chuckled, but it wasn't mocking. It was… understanding.
"Seriously, though," I said. "It's like, the second I close my eyes, every memory I've tried to bury comes crawling out like they were just waiting for me to be defenseless."
"Sounds familiar."
We walked in silence for a bit more. But it wasn't as heavy now. Still weird, still charged but less suffocating. The sun was dipping lower. The air smelled like woodsmoke and frost. My hoodie wasn't thick enough, but I didn't care. Her shoulder brushed mine once, and neither of us flinched.Then she said, "You ever feel like you're two people? Like, one that exists, and one that's just watching, judging everything you do?"
My stomach twisted. "Yeah. All the fucking time."
She didn't say anything right away. Just nodded, slowly. Like we were both in on some cosmic joke nobody else got.
"I almost said something in class," she murmured.
"What?"
"When you looked at me. When you didn't say anything either."
"What were you gonna say?"
She hesitated. "I don't know. Something honest. Something stupid."
I swallowed hard. "Same."
She looked over at me. Her eyes weren't guarded like usual. They were just… tired. Tired in that way people get when they've seen too much, felt too much, and are still standing anyway. "Sometimes I think we're not meant to get better," she said. "Like, what if healing's just some fake-ass promise people dangle in front of us so we don't jump off bridges?"
"Well shit," I said. "That's the most romantic thing anyone's ever said to me."
She laughed actually laughed and I swear something loosened in my chest.
We turned down my street. The trees here were all dead or dying. The pavement cracked. Mailboxes leaned like they were drunk. It was ugly. Familiar. Home.
As we passed the edge of my yard, Raven pointed at the old shed out back.
"What's that?"
"Storage," I said. "For junk. Childhood stuff. Probably rats."
She tilted her head. "Can we go in?"
I blinked. "What?"
"C'mon. I'm curious."
"I'm not even sure it opens anymore—"
She was already moving toward it.
And like a fucking idiot, I followed.
The door groaned like it hadn't been touched since 2009. Rust clung to the hinges like trauma clings to teenagers, and I had to shoulder it open while praying it didn't collapse on us and add "death by tetanus" to my obituary.
Inside smelled like dust, wood rot, and regret.
Raven stepped in first, nose wrinkling. "This is disgusting. I love it."
"Yeah, well, it's basically a graveyard for everything I used to give a shit about."
Old boxes were stacked crooked against the walls. Broken furniture leaned like exhausted ghosts. A warped mirror leaned in one corner, its surface foggy and cracked like it had seen things and didn't want to reflect them anymore.
She walked around slowly, dragging her fingers across forgotten toys, yellowing sketchbooks, and a busted tricycle I hadn't thought about in years.
"You were a weird kid," she said.
"Still am."
She picked up a sketchbook and flipped it open. I watched her eyes scan the pages—shitty pencil drawings of monsters, superheroes, dreamscapes I never showed anyone. I waited for her to laugh or roll her eyes.
She didn't.
"These are actually good," she said.
I scoffed. "They're cringy as hell."
"Cringe is honest."
That shut me the fuck up.
She sat down on the splintered wooden floor like she belonged there. Like this little rotting universe didn't scare her at all. I hesitated, then dropped beside her, knees cracking in protest like an 80-year-old's. For a minute, neither of us said anything. The wind outside creaked against the siding. Something small skittered in the rafters. Probably some haunted squirrel.
Then Raven spoke.
"My mom used to scream in her sleep," she said. "I'd wake up and just… sit outside her door. Listening. Too scared to go in. Too scared to not."
I didn't breathe.
"She told me it was nothing. Always nothing. Until the day she stopped waking up at all."
Silence.
Heavy, awful silence.
"She OD'd," she added, matter-of-fact. "Two years ago. Fentanyl. It was laced. Or maybe she knew. I don't even know what's worse."
I stared down at my hands. They looked alien. Wrong.
"I spent three months in a psych ward," I said. Voice flat. "After the thing that happened."
She didn't ask what the thing was. She didn't press. She just listened.
"It wasn't like the movies," I continued. "No padded rooms. Just cold hallways, bad lighting, and people who looked like their souls got repossessed."
"What happened?"
I hesitated. Then: "I stopped eating. Talking. Existing, basically. I just… checked out. My brain went dark mode."
She nodded like she knew the feeling. Maybe she fucking did.
We sat like that for a long time. Two ghosts squatting in a mausoleum of childhood dreams.
At one point, her shoulder brushed mine.
She didn't move away.
Neither did I.
Her head leaned against me slowly, hesitantly like she was testing if I'd flinch.
I didn't.
And she stayed.
Just long enough for it to feel dangerous. Just short enough to pretend it didn't mean shit.
I felt her breath, warm and slow. My heart was a grenade with the pin halfway out.
"This feels fake," she whispered. "Like we're not supposed to be here."
"We're not."
"I like it anyway."
And god help me, I fucking did too.
We didn't kiss.
We didn't even look at each other.
We just sat there, broken in all the wrong places, pretending we weren't bleeding.
We didn't leave the shed right away.
The light filtering through the slats turned gold and dusty, like some divine spotlight was trying to make our emotional breakdowns cinematic.
Raven shifted beside me, arms wrapped around her knees. "You ever feel like… you're not the person people think you are?"
I huffed. "I feel like a glitch in the simulation, if that counts."
She half-smiled. "No, I mean like everyone keeps waiting for me to get better. Like I'm some sad art project that just needs the right brushstroke or whatever. But what if this is it? What if this version of me is the best it's gonna get?"
That hit harder than expected. Like a fucking truck.
I picked at a splinter in the floor. "Yeah. People always say stuff like, 'you'll feel better eventually,' or 'this too shall pass,' like they've got a fuckin' crystal ball or something. Like the pain's on a timer."
She snorted. "Spoiler: it's not."
We both laughed, but it sounded wrong. Hollow. Like laughter dressed in funeral clothes.
Then I said it. Quietly. Honestly. "I don't think I'm built for forever."
She turned to me, and I could feel her eyes even though I couldn't look at her. "What do you mean?"
I swallowed. "Like… I can't picture myself in the future. Not really. Everyone else talks about college and marriage and careers and whatever. I can't even imagine myself turning twenty."
That silence came back. The kind that settles in your lungs and makes it hard to breathe.
She didn't try to fix it. Didn't feed me some bullshit therapy quote.
Instead, she said: "When I was younger, I used to imagine dying in really elaborate ways. Like… poetic ones. Drowning in a lake. Falling from a cliff. That kind of thing."
"Dramatic much?"
"Art kid shit."
I cracked a smile. "I used to picture mine being quiet. Like just disappearing. Not a bang, not a cry for help. Just… fade."
She was quiet for a second. "It's fucked up that we're sixteen and already thinking about endings."
"Yeah, well… some stories feel short from the start."
We sat there, marinating in everything we hadn't said out loud before. Every crack in the walls of our heads.
Then she shifted again, knees bumping mine.
"I don't want to be saved," she said. "I hate that word. Like I'm some drowning puppy. I just want someone to see me and not look away."
I finally looked at her.
Dead-on. No flinching.
"I see you."
Her breath hitched, just barely.
For a second, everything felt too loud. My heartbeat, the wind, the echo of my own damn thoughts.
She didn't say anything back. She didn't have to.
That moment was thick enough to drown in.
We stayed like that. Quiet again. But it wasn't hollow this time. It was full. Heavy with things we couldn't name yet.
And it was enough.
Not romantic. Not safe.
Just… real.
The kind of moment that settles in your bones and doesn't leave.
And I knew, right then, she was going to ruin me.
And I was going to let her.
That night, I didn't even try to sleep.
I lay on my bed, hoodie pulled over my head like armor, staring at the ceiling like it owed me answers. Everything felt like static. My brain wouldn't shut up. My thoughts looped like a scratched record her laugh, her voice, her eyes in that dim, dusty light.
I didn't know what the hell we were. Strangers? Friends? Trauma buddies? Emotional hostages?
All I knew was I couldn't stop thinking about her.
I grabbed my phone, stared at her contact name—just Raven with a black heart emoji she made me add when we met. I'd rolled my eyes, but I kept it.
I typed: "You okay?"
Simple. Safe.
Instant regret. I hovered over the send button like it was a nuclear launch code.
Then I hit it.
And waited.
And waited.
Fucking hell.
I threw my phone across the bed and flopped back down, preparing for another night of existential dread.
Buzz.
I scrambled like a cracked-out raccoon.
Her reply: "Define okay."
Goddamn her.
I smirked. "Still breathing?"
A pause.
Then: "Barely. But the moon looks kind of beautiful tonight. It's got that 'watch me spiral' energy."
I stared at that message for a while. Something about it gutted me.
I replied: "You always poetic at midnight or is this just your brand of insomnia?"
She didn't answer right away. When she did, it felt like a knife wrapped in silk.
"I don't know how to talk about what hurts, so I dress it up in metaphors. Makes the bleeding prettier."
I sat with that one. Tried to find something clever to say.
Failed.
So I said what felt real: "You don't need to dress it up for me."
Her typing bubble popped up. Then disappeared. Came back. Disappeared again.
Finally, she sent: "You scare me sometimes."
I blinked.
"Why?" I asked.
Another pause.
"Because you see things in me I don't want to admit are there. And that makes them real."
It felt like my chest was folding in on itself.
I typed and erased about five different responses before settling on: "You scare me too."
Then, the message that cracked something open and didn't bother to close it:
"You're not supposed to matter this much."
I read it three times.
Then again.
And again.
That line hit harder than anything she'd said face-to-face.
Because I felt the same. And I didn't know what the fuck to do about it.
I didn't reply.
There was nothing else to say.
I just lay there, phone on my chest, heart doing that thing where it felt too full and too empty at the same time.
Staring at the ceiling.
Wondering how the hell I got here.
Wondering what the fuck happens now.