Chapter 1

My father’s words echoed, flat and final, as I stood at the threshold of my own bedroom, backpack dangling from my hand like an anchor. The air was thick with the scent of his cologne—sharp, almost medicinal, but beneath it lingered something sour I wanted to scrub out of my lungs. With his eyes fixed on the television, he didn’t even bother to look at me. Only his voice, all steel edges, was enough to pin me in place.

Across the room, my sister Anastacy’s glare caught mine. She sat curled up on the old tartan armchair, her thumb rubbing circles into the armrest, burning a hole into my resolve. “Just do as you’re told, Luna,” she muttered. “Don’t make things worse.”

I wanted to scream. Instead, I hid behind silence, the way you fold up a secret and tuck it somewhere deep inside. I retreated, letting the door click shut behind me, and pressed my forehead to the cool wood until the muffled hum of voices downstairs blurred into nothing. I thought about Sarah’s words from earlier that day: "You’ve got to try, Luna. Be normal. Just once. Come to the café with us, please?" As if normalcy was a sweater I could put on and take off whenever it suited me.

Normal. Like I hadn’t already memorized every path in this house to avoid the places where his shadow fell longest. Like I hadn’t learned to smile at the right times, swallow my protests, and fake well enough that even my own reflection almost believed it.

My phone buzzed, a brittle little sound. For a second, I hoped it would be Sarah, or Thelma with a meme, or Calvin with one of his cryptic late-night playlists—anything that would draw me out of the black water swirling around my ankles.

Instead, a single message slipped across the screen, from an unknown number:

YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM THE TRUTH FOREVER

My heart skipped, then hammered. A chill crept up my spine, curling in my stomach. I scrolled up, looking for more—nothing. No name, no history, just that single line, as if someone had peeled the thought from my own nightmares and set it there to rot.

I locked the phone, then unlocked it again, staring at the words until my vision blurred. I wanted to talk to someone, tell them, but every face I imagined twisted away: Sarah’s wide, worried eyes, the brittle edge in her voice lately—she’d been drifting, her support like a rope that kept slipping loose. Sameyel’s last message bubbled at the top of the chat: "You’ve changed. I can’t do this anymore." I wondered if I’d ever been enough for anyone, or if I’d always been made to break.

A knock at the door, soft. "Luna? Dinner," my mother called, the word already fraying at the edges. I waited until her footsteps faded, then sat on the bed staring at the mess of papers and half-read books scattered across the blanket. I ran my fingers along the edge of my favorite notebook—Frankeinsteina’s gift, still smelling faintly of coffee and some sweet, impossible perfume. It grounded me, barely. My stomach twisted as I forced myself up, phone clutched tight, and padded down the hall.

At the table, everyone was already seated. The places felt wrong: Calvin hunched over his plate, silent as a ghost; Anastacy pointedly ignoring me. My father dominated the head of the table, hands folded, smile thin and too white. My mother shuffled dishes, pausing only to glance at me, her expression unreadable—resigned, maybe, or just tired past the point of caring.

I ate in silence, every scrape of fork on plate a countdown. Each time the conversation dipped, my father filled it with bland questions about my classes, my future, his voice tightening whenever my answers strayed from script. He reached over, squeezing my wrist too hard—a warning no one else noticed. "You’ll thank me one day, Luna. Trust me."

Something in me snapped, invisible but sharp as glass. After dinner, I slipped back to my room, heart thudding in my throat. My phone buzzed again. A second message, just as stark:

REMEMBER RICHARD

I dropped the phone as if it had burned me. The name—Richard—hung in the air like a curse, dredging up flashes of family arguments, whispered accusations, the sick weight of what they believed I’d done. I pressed my back to the wall, squeezing my eyes shut as the panic clawed its way up my throat.

I fumbled for my notebook, flipping through pages stained with ink and old tears. I found a slip of paper, half-crumpled, tucked between lists and quotes. I didn’t remember putting it there. On it, a phrase in a jagged, unfamiliar hand:

THEY KNOW MORE THAN YOU THINK. TRUST NO ONE.

The words blurred. My hands shook as I stared at the paper, pulse roaring in my ears. I wanted to run—to the café with Sarah, to Frankeinsteina’s apartment, to anywhere that wasn’t here—but I could already hear my father’s voice, calm but coiled around me like barbed wire. My feet stayed rooted, trembling.

A choice flickered before me: pretend nothing had changed, keep stumbling through days like a sleepwalker, or finally peel back the scabs and face the rot beneath. I looked at the slip of paper, then tucked it deep into the pocket of my jeans, letting the edges prick my palm.

Someone was watching. Someone knew. And this—these messages, these accusations—was only the beginning.

I stood there in the glow of my desk lamp, the silence pressing in. I couldn’t keep hiding. Tonight, I’d make a choice. Even if it meant shattering what little I had left.