You’d think I would be used to the silence. Growing up, there were long stretches where Mom would disappear into her room for days, and I’d perform for an empty audience in the living room, perfecting the art of making myself invisible.
But this was a new kind of silence: active, buzzing, the kind that vibrates with everything you don’t want to say.
I glanced at Caiden’s profile. It was hard to reconcile the memory of his hands on me—rough, needy, and almost gentle—with the rigid, statue-like boy driving this car.
The GPS miles whizzed by in a blurry, erratic mess; every blink caused the numbers to jump and reset, making it impossible to track my progress. My head felt thick and jittery.
When I was eight, after Mom vanished for two days during a snowstorm, I made a habit of counting things: the cracks in the living room ceiling, the seconds between thunder and lightning, the cigarette butts Mom left half-smoked beside the sink.
It was a way of organizing chaos, of believing I could quantify the emptiness and, in tallying it, make it less.
My thoughts spiraled, gathering speed. I wondered what I’d say to the funeral director, if my mom would look like a stranger in the casket, if I’d cry at all.
What if I laughed? Sometimes that happened, when things got too heavy, I’d burst out in a weird snort I couldn’t control, and then people would stare like I’d ruined everything.
I’d be the girl who laughed at her own mom’s funeral, the girl who couldn’t even pull off grief the right way.
A curve in the road jolted me back to the present. Caiden braked a little too hard, and the tires squealed.
I could tell he was trying to hold himself together for my sake, but I didn’t want him to. I wanted him to come undone so I wouldn’t have to be the only one.
We drove past a gas station; its windows smeared with condensation and streaked with grime. There was a kid smoking outside, feet scuffing the wet pavement.
He watched our car crawl by with a blank, predatory gaze, like he already knew every bad thing that had ever happened and nothing surprised him anymore. I felt like that kid sometimes.
Sometimes, I felt like I could be that kid.
The road narrowed, trees crowding in closer, branches scratching at the sky with their black, splintered fingers. I let myself slip into the sensory details: the chill of the air leaking through the vent, the scent of wet pine, and the sound of Caiden’s controlled breaths.
It was after nine when we crossed another state line, and from there, the road turned smaller. The old maples and oaks pressed close, branches scraping the roof like fingernails. The road narrowed, then broke apart into pothole clusters.
Caiden swore under his breath a few times, more out of habit than frustration, but it felt like the words lingered longer, echoed off the frostbitten air.
I lost track of time. It was easy to do, especially at night on back roads, where every mile looked like the one before.
I found myself staring at my reflection in the passenger window, the ghost of my face flickering over the blur of trees. My own eyes looked haunted, hollowed out, and rimmed in red.
Mom would have said I looked like her after a bad night. I could almost hear her voice, slurred and trailing off, like a record player running out of juice:“You got my eyes, babe. My whole damn curse.”Sometimes she’d laugh at that. Sometimes she’d cry.
My chest ached. It felt like there wasn’t enough space inside me for all of it. The grief, the fear, the stupid, choking guilt that burrowed in somewhere behind my ribs and just stayed there, gnawing.
I remembered Mom’s hands, shaking as she lit her cigarettes, even at the kitchen table in the morning. She’d try to hide it, but her knuckles would knock against the lighter.
I blinked hard, vision swimming with the memory of those hands, the little burns on her fingers from when she smoked in bed.
I could never decide which was worse: the months when she was on a bender, gone and lightless, or the months when she was clean and every minute a slow-motion apology for things she’d never be able to name, let alone undo.
Waiting for her inevitable relapse, where it would all reset.
I’d barely said a word for at least an hour. I wondered if Caiden clocked it, if every minute he tallied up my silence and felt it as a personal failing. I doubted he did.
Boys like him were raised on the myth that shutting up was strength. He’d learned to ration his words, to never let theimportant ones slip out unless he was sure they wouldn’t get thrown back in his face.
I kept waiting for him to drop the act, to say something cruel just to remind us of who he was before everything burned down. But he didn't. The more he tried to keep it together, the more I wanted to rip the seams. Something in me wanted to see him fall apart.
After another hour of driving, Caiden’s voice cut through the hum, thin and scratchy. “I need to pull over. I’m seeing double.”
He eased the car onto a gravel turnout beside a half-collapsed barn, the structure listing toward the road like it, too, was exhausted. He killed the engine and let his head thud back against the seat.
