Page 21

I squeezed my eyes shut and swallowed a thousand tears, telling myself I could hold it together just a little longer. Just until I saw her face.
When the car door opened, I barely remember my legs carrying me forward. But I remember Mia’s voice. The way it cracked on my name like a splintering bone.
“Maxine?”
And then she was there — arms around me, pulling me in, gripping me so tightly I thought we might fuse back into the two little girls we once were.
I sobbed into her shoulder, my body shaking, every inch of me unraveling at once.
“I’m here,” I choked out, the words barely making it past my teeth. “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.”
Her hands were in my hair, on my back, cupping my face — like she needed to feel every part of me just to believe I was real. We sank to our knees in the foyer, our arms wrapped around each other, two survivors clawing their way back to life.
But something was wrong. I felt it. In the way Mia’s breath hitched. In the way her hands froze. In the way her body went stiff just as I said the words that shattered everything inside me.
“Where’s Sophia?”
For a heartbeat, she didn’t answer. And in that silence, I felt the floor open under me. Mia pulled back slowly, her hands trembling as they cupped my cheeks. Her eyes were wide and wet andterrified. Like she was trying to find a way to tell me without breaking me in half. But there was no way. No soft landing.
Her lips parted, and her voice came out in a whisper so small, so shattered, I almost didn’t hear it.
“She’s gone, Maxine.”
At first, I didn’t understand. Gone? Gone where? I stared at her, waiting for the rest, for the laugh, for the explanation. But it never came. Instead, the words hit me like a freight train, slamming into my chest and hollowing me out from the inside.
I let out a sound — a sharp, strangled wail — and crumpled forward, my fists clenched against my stomach, as though holding the pain back. My scream tore through the house, raw and feral, ripping through my throat like it wanted to kill me.
“She can’t be!” I sobbed, my hands clawing at my scalp, at my skin, at the world. “She can’t be gone, Mia — no, no, no, NO!”
I rocked back on my heels, curling into myself, slamming my fists into my own chest because I didn’t know where else to put the pain. I screamed until my throat burned, until my ribs ached, until Mia wrapped herself around me, holding me down, begging me to stop, whispering through her own tears,
“I’m sorry, Maxxie, I’m so sorry.”
There aresome kinds of grief you can’t soothe. Some kinds of agony that have to burn their way out of you. And I burned.
By the time my sobs turned to dry, heaving gasps, by the time Mia and Mason half-carried me to the couch, I was hollowed out. My arms hung limp at my sides, my body heavy, my face wet and raw.
Sophia was gone. Not missing. Not waiting to be rescued. Not a phone call away. Gone. And I hadn’t been there. I hadn’t saved her. I hadn’t said goodbye. The twin I’d shared a face with, a life with, a soul with — gone. And I was here. Alive.
That night, I lay in Mia’s guest room, staring at the ceiling, feeling the weight of every breath like it was a punishment.
I wondered if Sophia would’ve been stronger. If she would’ve survived the things I hadn’t. And I knew, with a hollow, aching certainty, that the fight wasn’t over. I’d been rescued. But survival?That was a war I was going to have to wage every day for the rest of my life.
10
MAXINE - FOUR MONTHS AGO
The chairs in the trauma circle creaked if you shifted too much. That was something I had learned over the last few months—be still. Don’t draw attention. Don’t let your discomfort become someone else’s trigger. We all had enough of our own.
Tayana’s voice drifted across the room, steady as always. She was the only person who could sayyou’re not brokenand make it feel like maybe that was true. Like maybe survival hadn’t turned me into a shell in my own skin.
I stared at the floor as she spoke. The carpet was the color of dust. Worn flat. Standard issue in institutions and halfway houses, meant to endure damage. Nothing about the room felt like healing. But then again, maybe healing didn’t give a shit about aesthetics. Maybe it just happened in the cracks.
It had been seven months since I got out. Seven months of trying to remind myself I was safe. That I didn’t have to count the seconds between footsteps or brace for hands that didn’t ask. Seven months of trying to reclaim a body that still flinched when someone shut a door too hard. Seven months ofpretending I was home when I still felt like I belonged to someone else.
After group, Tayana met me by the vending machine. She handed me a bottle of water and that soft, steady smile of hers.
“You did good today,” she said, like it was that simple.