WREN
Grief is supposed to be loud. It's supposed to be shattered glass and sobbing on bathroom floors. But the grief of breaking your own heart to save someone else is entirely silent. It just sits in your chest, a heavy, calcified stone that makes it difficult to draw a full breath.
By the second week of December, I had perfected the art of shallow breathing.
I poured every ounce of my suppressed, freezing agony into the brick wall of the abandoned Millhaven train depot. The town council had approved my proposal for a community mural—a massive, sprawling piece depicting the industrial history of the town. It was the cornerstone of my Columbia University early-decision portfolio. It was my ticket out.
Every afternoon, I stood in the freezing wind, my fingers numb and stained with cadmium red and cobalt blue, painting until the sun went down. The physical exhaustion was the only thing that kept me from thinking about the Fall Formal. It was the only thing that kept me from thinking about the devastating finality in Hayes Callahan's eyes when I walked away from him on the dance floor.
I had asked for this. I had demanded to be left alone.
I just hadn't expected him to be so terrifyingly good at following instructions.
It started on a Tuesday in the cafeteria.
I was sitting at the corner table with Ezra, mechanically chewing a piece of dry toast while he debated the geopolitical consequences of the Treaty of Versailles. The ambient noise of four hundred high school students was a dull roar I usually tuned out.
Then, the noise shifted. It didn't quiet down; it escalated, buzzing with a sudden, electric current of fresh gossip.
I looked up.
Hayes was walking through the double doors. He was wearing his heavy varsity jacket, his dark blonde hair slightly damp from a morning workout. But it wasn't his presence that shifted the room. It was the girl walking next to him.
Chloe.
She was a junior, a varsity cheerleader, and the human embodiment of a golden retriever. She was sweet, uncomplicated, and possessed the kind of safe, small-town pedigree that Tom Callahan probably dreamed of for his son.
She was laughing at something Hayes had said, her hand resting casually on his bicep.
My stomach plummeted, a violent, sickening free-fall.
"Don't look," Ezra murmured, not even glancing up from his history textbook. "It's a tactical maneuver, Wren. Ignore it."
But I couldn't. I watched as they navigated the crowded aisles. Hayes didn't look angry. He didn't look miserable. He looked... perfect. The All-State quarterback with the beautiful cheerleader. He had rebuilt the golden boy facade I had spent two months dismantling, and he had bolted it securely into place.
They walked past our table.
I braced myself for the glare, for the angry, betrayed look I deserved.
Instead, Hayes glanced down at me. His pale blue eyes were entirely devoid of weather. No storm clouds. No heat. Just a flat, polite acknowledgment.
"Calloway," he said, his voice a smooth, even baritone. He nodded at Ezra. "Nakamura"
"Callahan," I managed to say, my throat tight, the word tasting like ash.
Chloe offered me a bright, oblivious smile, and then they were gone, sliding into a booth with the rest of the football team.
I stared at the empty space they had just occupied. My hands were shaking so badly I had to put them under my thighs to hide the tremor.
*This is what you wanted,* I screamed at myself, the internal monologue a frantic, desperate loop. *You are safe. He is safe. *
But the logic did nothing to thaw the absolute, localized frostbite spreading through my veins.
For the next week, it was a masterclass in psychological torture.
He didn't flaunt her. He didn't make a grand spectacle. It was in the quiet, devastating details. It was seeing his truck parked in the junior lot so he could walk her to her car. It was catching the briefest glimpse of him leaning against her locker, his head tilted down to listen to her.
He was treating her with the exact same slow, deliberate attention he used to give me. And it was killing me.
By Friday, the temperature in Millhaven dropped to a biting twenty-eight degrees.
The school emptied out quickly after the final bell. The football team was in the film room prepping for the state championship, and everyone else was rushing home to beat the impending winter storm.
I drove my beat-up Honda Civic to the abandoned depot.
The wind whipping off the nearby river was brutal. I pulled my oversized scarf up over my nose, put on two pairs of cheap knit gloves, and set up my floodlights.
I needed to finish the centerpiece of the mural—a massive, churning depiction of the old textile mill's waterwheel. The dark, aggressive strokes required a violent energy that matched the storm inside my chest.
For two hours, I painted in a manic, desperate frenzy. I mixed blacks and deep indigos, splashing the colors onto the brick, letting the paint drip like dark tears. I didn't feel the cold. I didn't feel my muscles cramping. I just let the grief pour out of my hands.
*Why isn't it enough?* I thought, swiping a harsh streak of gray across the brick. *I am safe. I am invisible. I am going to Columbia. Why does it feel like I'm dead?*
The sun finally dipped below the tree line, plunging the lot into darkness, leaving only the harsh, artificial glare of my dual floodlights.
I stepped back, panting slightly, my breath pluming white in the freezing air. I dropped my brush into a jar of turpentine.
As the clatter of the brush faded, I realized the lot wasn't entirely silent.
Beneath the howling wind, there was the low, steady rumble of a V8 engine.
I froze.
Slowly, I turned around, squinting past the blinding glare of my work lights.
Parked at the far edge of the dirt lot, half-swallowed by the shadows of the decaying depot, was a silver F-150. The headlights were off, but the engine was idling, the exhaust billowing in the cold air.
My heart executed a slow, heavy thud.
I couldn't see through the tinted windshield, but I didn't need to. I knew the exact dimensions of that truck. I knew the way the leather interior smelled.
He hadn't gone home with Chloe. He wasn't at the diner with the team.
He was sitting in the freezing dark, in an abandoned lot, watching me paint.
I took a step toward the edge of the light. The urge to run to the truck, to rip open the passenger door and demand to know why he was torturing both of us, was a physical ache in my bones.
The truck shifted into gear.
Before I could take another step, the F-150 slowly backed out of the shadows, its tires crunching heavily on the frozen dirt. The headlights flicked on, blinding me for a second, before the truck turned and drove away, its red taillights disappearing into the Connecticut night.
I stood alone in the freezing wind, staring at the empty dirt lot.
The golden boy act was a lie. The detachment was a lie.
He wasn't moving on. He was just waiting in the dark.