37
I'm supposed to go back tomorrow.
Back to the marble hallways and dead-eyed stares.
Back to the private school where money walks louder than people and everyone's breath smells like privilege and peppermint.
I don't want to go.
But Mama says I'm stronger now.
Egypt says they'll come up there with a baseball bat and bad attitudes if anyone breathes near me wrong.
India already printed T-shirts that say "Don't Touch Senna. She's Sacred."
They mean well.
But I still feel like I'm walking back into a place that swallowed me whole once and left nothing but bones behind.
I'm curled up on the worn velvet chair in Luca's sunroom - if you can call it that.
It's the kind of room people in movies have: full of light and soft rugs and books no one actually reads.
It smells like cinnamon and pine. Like him.
He's in the kitchen making tea he doesn't actually know how to make. I can hear him swearing under his breath as the kettle hisses.
I smile for the first time today.
That's when I see it.
His sketchbook.
Open on the coffee table.
I don't mean to look.
Really, I don't.
But I catch a glimpse of curls - and silver - and a profile I know like my own reflection.
I reach for it before I can stop myself.
Page one: me.
Hair wild and soft. Head bent, drawing. The shading on my jaw is too gentle for me to recognize it as my own at first.
Page two: my hands.
One holding a pencil. The other trembling slightly.
Page three: my mouth. Smirking.
Like I'd just said something I didn't mean out loud.
He didn't just draw me.
He saw me.
The twitch of my eye when I'm anxious.
The way I sit on my right leg when I'm pretending to relax.
The way my fingers hover near my lips when I'm about to lie and say I'm fine.
There's one sketch on the back page that doesn't look finished.
It's just my eyes.
And next to it, written in his messy all-caps handwriting:
"She looks like she's about to run. But part of her wants to be caught."
My chest caves in a little.
Because I don't remember ever telling him that.
But somehow... he knew.
I don't hear him come back in.
Not until he says:
"Hey-wait-don't look at that-"
His voice trips over itself.
But it's too late.
I'm already standing.
Sketchbook in one hand.
My heart in the other.
And before he can stammer his way through the panic blooming on his face-
I hug him.
No hesitation.
No flinching.
No fear.
Just me.
Him.
And the space in between finally closing.
He freezes for a second.
Then wraps his arms around me so tight, I forget what loneliness ever felt like.
"You see me," I whisper into his hoodie.
"Always," he says. Quiet. Steady. Like he means it.
"Even when I didn't want to be."
"Especially then."
I cry a little. Again.
But it's not like before.
It's not survival. Or shame.
It's something warmer.
Something like safety.
Tomorrow, I walk back into a building full of eyes that think they already know me.
But tonight, I stood still.
Let someone see me.
And didn't disappear.