Page 41 of Burning Daylight

“Anything. Everything. I don’t know, it’s like…these stories pop into my head, and the characters won’t shut up until I get them down on paper.”

“Is that what you went to school for?”

“Yeah, right.” I laugh at the absurdity. My parents would never let me take up anything to do with writing as a degree. “Psychology.”

“Ah.” He clicks his tongue, tapping the pencil against his knee. “The degree you get when you don’t know what to get.”

“Some people love it,” I argue.

“And do you?”

Do I?

“The only thing I’ve ever really wanted to do is tell stories,” I admit.

He leans forward, watching me like I’m a puzzle he’s trying to solve. His voice is low but firm. “So tell stories, Little Rose.”

My stomach sinks.

He doesn’t get it. Or maybe I’m just now realizing how pathetic I sound, pouring out this passion, only to follow it up with the confession that I’ve done absolutely nothing about it.

But what’s the point?

My family will have my future laid out for me the second I go back home. It’salreadyhappening, quietly and strategically, just like it always does. That’s why I’m missing graduation, after all, because when my mother says jump, I don’t ask why. I ask, “How high?”

Fighting it would be pointless.

It’s never worked out for anyone else in my family, and I have no delusions it would work out for me.

Especially not me.

“You don’t get it,” I mutter.

“Then explain it to me.”

“With my family, it’s…” I hesitate, because maybe I’m about to treat him like a therapist, and that’s crazy considering I don’t even know his name. But if I can’t say it to astranger, then I’ll probably never say it at all.

So I take a deep breath in, and I let it all out.

“I’m the girl of the bunch. I’m expected to smile, stay quiet, marry well, and show up when I’m told. It’s all about appearance, you know? Reputation. Optics…”

He hums, something flashing through his gaze. “And writing doesn’t fit in that box.”

I swallow around the knot tightening in my throat.

“Writing doesn’t fit,” I echo. “Is that how it is for you?” I ask, looking at his sketchbook. “You just want to draw, and so you do?”

He nods. “Pretty much.”

I think about the freedom in his answer, and I can relate, I guess. These past four years, away from the suffocating proximity of my mother’s voice and my father’s absence, there’s been…space.

Space to breathe. To think. To write.

And in those moments, when I’ve opened up my journal, or pulled up a blank page on my laptop and let myself fall headfirst into a story, I’ve felt something I hadn’t even realized I was missing.

Freedom.

Not even just from my family, but fromme. From the version of myself that’s shaped around what everyone else needs. The agreeable daughter. The smiling Calloway girl. The one who nods when told, even when my vocal cords ache from holding back a scream.