Page 73 of Jayson
Keira hasn’t left her bedroom since breakfast. No footsteps in the hall, no soft hum of her voice on the phone she thinks I don’t monitor. Just hush. And hush is a lie I can’t tolerate.
So I stand outside her door, knuckles raised. I don’t knock—knocking implies permission. I twist the handle and step inside.
She’s on the window seat, knees to her chest, black jeans and a sweater swallowing her like she’s trying to vanish in plain sight. The glass reflects her face: haunted, hollow-eyed, lips pressed so tight that the color’s gone.
The moment she sees me, her shoulders stiffen. She doesn’t speak. Good. Talking wastes time unless it’s truth, and she hasn’t given me that.
“Up,” I say.
She stays where she is. “I’m fine.”
“That’s not what I asked of you.”
A flicker of annoyance passes her eyes, quick as lightning, but it dies as quickly as it appears. “What do you want, Jayson?”
“The whole story. No edits. No convenient silences.”
She exhales, slow, controlled—like she practiced it in the mirror. “About what?”
“About your friend,” I say. “Start talking.”
I cross the room slowly, each step deliberate, letting the silence stretch like wire between us. She watches me from the window bench—tight-lipped, wide-eyed, braced for whatever comes next.
I sink into the chair beside her desk. It’s delicate, too narrow for my frame, the wood groaning under the weight of me. Still, I plant my elbows on my knees and lean forward, forearms braced, hands clasped like I’m praying—but I’m not.
I’m watching. And waiting.
Every inch of my posture says I’m giving you a choice. But the steel in my jaw says choose fast.
“I’m listening,” I tell her, voice low and level. “Make it count.”
The room holds its breath. So do I. Because whatever she says next? It changes everything.
Keira flinches, knuckles whitening around her knees. For a second I think she might bolt, but there’s nowhere to run. I’m the walls here.
She looks past me to the door, as if weighing whether she can make it. She can’t, and she knows it.
Her throat works. “It was… years ago.”
“Not old enough to be over.” I lean back in the chair, getting comfortable. “Let’s hear it.”
She swallows again, then nods—once, brittle. Words peel from her tongue like old paint.
“Riley lived two streets over,” she says, her voice soft. “It wasn’t far. Just a few blocks. But the distance between our lives… it felt like a continent.”
She stares past me, eyes pinned to something that doesn’t exist in this room. Something buried.
“She was fromthatside of town—the one with saggingporches and broken fences. The kind of place people whisper about but never really see. My father didn’t like me walking there, said it didn’t ‘reflect well.’ But me…” A ghost of a smile flickers. “I didn’t give a damn what anyone thought.”
A pause. Her fingers toy with the edge of the sleeve she’s twisted around her wrist. Like she’s winding herself tighter just to keep speaking.
“She was beautiful,” she murmurs, and there’s something reverent in the way she says it. “Not in that polished, perfect way. She had this wild, sharp energy—like if you got too close, you’d catch fire. Out of all our friends, she was the one people turned to watch when she laughed. Even the adults noticed her. Especially them.”
My stomach tightens, instinct flaring. I don’t interrupt. I just listen. Because I can already feel where this is going, and it tastes like copper on the back of my tongue.
She doesn’t blink. Doesn’t look at me.
“She was the bright thing that didn’t know it was living in the dark.” Her voice cracks, just once. “And we all know what happens to bright things, don’t we?”
