Chapter 7:

They called her.

Of course they did. I knew the moment Grandma ducked into the hallway, voice low and steady like she was trying not to spill boiling water. She only sounded like that when she was either praying or lying. Grandpa didn't say much, just leaned forward in his chair like the silence tasted bitter. I sat in the living room, staring at the dim TV screen while a laugh track played over a joke I didn't hear.

I could still smell the cake. Sweet, too sweet, like it didn't belong.

Eventually, Grandma stepped back into the room with that practiced smile of hers, the kind people wear at open-casket funerals.

"She said you can stay the night," Grandma said. "Said you're a big boy now."

I nodded. Didn't need her to say more. The words already told me everything. Big boy now, that meant she didn't want to come get me. Or maybe she couldn't. Too busy getting railed by Jace to care. I guess I was right on the dot. At least intuition, unlike humans, never fails.

They didn't let it show, but I could feel the anger radiating off them. Grandpa's hands clenched just a little too tightly around his mug, his wrinkles forming inward, like he was burning through wood. Grandma's eyes flicked toward the hallway like she wanted to say something, but swallowed it down.

Later, I overheard her whispering to Grandpa in the kitchen. "There's a bruise on his ribs. Deep one. I saw it when he stretched."

I didn't confront them. Didn't need to. I already knew. Grown-ups never say things to your face, they just talk around you like ghosts. I went outside.

The night in Georgia doesn't get cold so much as it gets thin. Like the warmth's just decided to step back a little, but it's not gone. The sky was scattered with weak stars, pale and flickering behind a hazy curtain of town light. Light pollution, they call it. Pollution. Ruining the stars, just like everything else. We messed up the skies so badly that we forgot how to look up. I climbed onto the roof anyway, found the old spot where the shingles were still warm from the sun.

The stars barely showed themselves. Just a handful, scattered and half-choked behind the glow from the neighborhood a few miles off. It wasn't bright enough to call it a city, but it was loud enough to ruin the sky. Everything felt washed out, like the night had been bleached and hung up to dry. But if I stared long enough, past the blinking red lights on the radio towers and the orange streetlamps humming down the hill, I could still make them out. Faint. Flickering. Holding on.

It annoyed me, honestly. The stars used to mean something. People used to look up and see a map, or hope, or maybe even God. Now they were just background noise. Another part of the world we smothered with wires and concrete and fake light. They didn't shine anymore, not as much as they used to, but they were still there. Maybe that was the best they could do.

I sat there, listening to the night buzz, crickets, distant cars, maybe a siren somewhere. My fingers fidgeted with the fletching of an arrow I'd brought up with me from the old set in the garage. I carried my bow too. Just for something to hold.

I don't know why I shot it.

Maybe I was angry. At the lights. In the sky. At my mom. At the world. Possibly all of the above, that would make sense too.

The string thrummed, and the arrow vanished into the dark, a silver blur against a dim backdrop of trees.

Then a sound. A thunk, followed by a scuffle.

I slid off the roof and dropped down, landing with a crunch in the dried leaves. The arrow had lodged itself into the bark of an old oak. Just below it, a squirrel lay on its side, twitching. Its breathing was shallow, rapid. It had been nicked pretty badly, tearing off all of the skin on its side. Blood stained the leaves.

I quit walking and stared down, watching its matted fur struggle for another breath.

My face was still blank, I didn't really have an emotion to feel.

Then I knelt down and scooped it into my hands. It didn't fight. Just looked at me with those dark, beady eyes like it didn't understand what was happening. I didn't either.

"Sorry," I said, flat as always. My hand slowly moved over its head, brushing the fur.

It stopped breathing not long after that.

I sat there for a while, holding it. And something tightened in my chest. Like a fist curling in my lungs. I placed one hand against my ribs, fingers spread wide.

"What… is that?" I murmured.

Was I sick? Maybe a disease?

It felt wrong. Like something had crawled inside me and made a nest, as if something just punched me where my heart was. I buried the squirrel under a small pile of leaves and dirt, pressing the soil down with my knuckles. The feeling didn't leave, not fully, but it loosened. Just a little.

Anxiety, I think that was what it was called. Not that I understood as well as I could have, the disadvantages of not feeling much for your entire childhood.

I blinked up at the sky and frowned. "This feeling kinda sucks. Is this all I get?"

I sat by the grave until morning, knees pulled up, arms draped across them. I started humming something; a lullaby, maybe. I don't know what song. My voice was blank, quiet. But I sang anyway.

When the sun rose, brushing everything gold like it was pretending to make the world beautiful again, I climbed back onto the roof and slipped in through the window. The squirrel stayed with me, its memory clawing at the edge of my mind. I sat down at the computer and started typing:

"What does anxiety feel like?"

A dozen search results popped up. None of them helped.

I tried to smile in the mirror. Nothing happened. My mouth twitched once, then settled back into its usual line. The same, empty stare, even when I tried, I couldn't fix it. 

Mom picked me up around one in the afternoon. The drive was pretty boring, and she never bothered to speak to me. 

I walked into the house to find Jace kicking over a stool in the kitchen.

"Lost another hundred," he snapped.

My mom sighed like she was being asked to donate money to homeless pets. Jace turned to her, eyes wide with fake regret, and started to plead.

"Just give me a bit more," he said. "I'm really close. Real close this time. Just need a little more to hit big."

She didn't even hesitate and gave him almost three hundred dollars.

I stared at her.

Then I looked at him. Hard. Like I could burn a hole through his skull if I tried hard enough.

He spit on my shoe and walked back toward the living room.

"Hell yeah," he said. "I'm gonna win it all back."

I watched her as she gazed into his eyes, staring at him. Not in a glaring way, more in a 'Oh yeah, this is the man I want to live the rest of my life with.' And she wore a smile, gazing at him.

And then I thought of the squirrel.

Animals don't lie, animals don't cheat or beg or ruin the sky, animals don't ruin the world and leave future animals to clean it up.

People do. Humans do. Scum does. Humans are scum, and maybe the worst part is that they don't even notice anymore.

I opened my window that night and looked up at the stars again. They didn't look the same, not that I could see them. Just one dim light, far off in the distance, fading into the sounds of sirens and lights turning on around the city.

Left to be wiped out by the filth of society like the other stars before it. What a shitty fate.