My childhood bedroom was a museum of a girl who no longer existed.
Participation trophies from softball lined the shelf above my desk – the sport I'd quit at fifteen when Dad died and everything that wasn't survival stopped mattering. A cork board above my bed still pinned with movie tickets and photo booth strips and a picture of me and Caleb at summer camp, fourteen years old, sunburnt and grinning, his arm slung around my shoulder like he owned the world and I was happy to live in it. The universe had a specific, targeted sense of humour and I was not laughing.
I called Rhys every night.
The calls were long. Mostly silent. Just breathing and the ambient sound of his apartment – the fridge humming, a siren somewhere outside, the creak of his couch when he shifted positions. Occasional
