Throughline: Rising Fractures

The Garden stilled, and Chloe was left standing in a darkness so complete it felt deliberate. There was no moon, no exterior neon, just the dim core of a desk lamp that cast a single sad circle across the battered surface of a worktable. Dust motes hung in the air, thick and slow, moving only when the heating unit kicked on with a dying wheeze.

The apartment was neither large nor especially squalid, but it had the flavor of long neglect: takeout containers stacked on the kitchen counter, a dead plant in the window, and books—hundreds, probably—piled along the wall as if waiting for a fire or a flood to erase them all. There were no photos, no signs of decoration. Even the bed was stripped, a thin mattress with an unwashed sheet pulled taut over nothing.

In the chair, hunched so far forward his chest nearly touched his thighs, sat Andy. Not the Andy of recent weeks—no trace of the gentle kindness, the barely concealed longing, not even the awkward, toothy smile that occasionally broke through his gloom. This Andy was younger, maybe twenty-four, a shade, gray at the edges, his shoulders curved around some invisible point of collapse. His hands tangled in his hair, fingers white with the effort of holding his head up.

Chloe watched him for a long minute, measuring the pace of his breathing, the slow, almost imperceptible rise and fall. She recognized the signs: the way he stared at a spot on the desk without seeing it, the faint tremor in his arms, the raw, chemical stench of someone who hadn’t eaten or slept enough in days. She had seen this before—once in her own mirror, many times in the mirrors of her mother, and in the rare, unguarded moments of her father’s Sunday afternoons.

She wanted to move. She wanted to scream. The urge to fix was animal, a low-grade panic that ran from the base of her skull to the tips of her fingers. She wanted to shake him, to drag him out of the chair, to make him remember that there was a world outside the shell of his own despair. But the Garden held her still.

There was a mug on the desk, half-full of black coffee gone viscous with age. There were lists, written on scraps of paper, and a scatter of highlighters in every color except yellow. The overhead bulb had burned out; the only light came from that one lamp, which seemed to amplify the darkness around it, rather than chase it away.

Chloe’s own hands began to tremble, a mirror of Andy’s. She remembered, with perfect clarity, the day she’d learned for certain she would never have children. The doctor’s office had been so bright, so aggressively cheery, but the world had gone silent around her, sound and color both fading until only the dull ache in her chest remained. She’d gone home, locked herself in the bathroom, and sat on the cold tile for hours, hands pressed so hard to her stomach it left bruises.

It was the same posture: the curl of the body around a wound that wasn’t ever going to close.

She **** herself forward, closing the gap between them inch by inch. She didn’t make a sound, didn’t even let her feet scuff the floor. When she reached his side, she crouched down, so her face was level with his shoulder.

Andy didn’t look up. He exhaled, a sigh so defeated it seemed to suck the air from the room.

Chloe hesitated, then placed her hand—very gently, barely more than a feather—on his upper arm. The heat there was shocking, almost feverish. He tensed, at first, but didn’t pull away.

“You don’t have to carry this alone,” she said, her voice barely more than a whisper. The words tasted foreign, as if they belonged to someone braver, more whole than she was.

For a while, nothing changed. She waited, half-expecting him to shatter, to yell, to hurl her away with the **** of his pain.

But slowly, as the seconds ticked by, Andy’s shoulders relaxed by a fraction. His head came up, just a little, and for the first time she saw his eyes: red-rimmed, bleak, but aware. He looked at her—not directly, but enough to let her know he’d heard.

He managed a noise, halfway between a sigh and a laugh. “I’m sorry,” he said, and the words broke her heart all over again.

Chloe shook her head. “You don’t have to be.”

The silence that followed was the longest she’d ever known, but it was not empty. There was a warmth to it, a sense of shared burden that felt, if not hopeful, at least less impossible.

Eventually, she let her hand fall away. Andy’s gaze dropped back to the desk, but the set of his shoulders was different, less hunched, less ready to splinter.

Chloe stood, her knees unsteady, and looked once more around the apartment. She saw it all: the evidence of dreams deferred, the inertia of grief, the small tokens of resilience (a crossword puzzle folded in half, a grocery list in the shape of a smiley face). It hurt to see, but she was glad for it.

She wanted to say more, but words stuck in her throat. She glanced at the mug, then at his hands, then at the lists. At some point, someone had started a spreadsheet on the legal pad, but the columns bled into one another, numbers swirling in no discernible pattern. She wondered how long he’d been in this cave. Weeks? Months?

Andy stirred, as if remembering there was a body attached to his mind. He scrubbed at his face with his palms, coming away with the shine of tears, and cleared his throat. The sound was ragged but determined. He reached for something in the detritus—a slip of paper, folded and refolded until the edges curled.

“I… had an idea,” he said, not looking at her. His voice was raw from disuse, and each syllable clung to his tongue like it might never leave. “For a… safety thing. An app, I guess, but different.” He unfolded the paper, smoothing it with reflexive care. There were doodles in the margins: empty circles, a tree, a little boat. “You know how sometimes, when things go bad, you don’t have time to call for help? Or you’re too…” He trailed off. The next words needed to be cut out with a scalpel. “…too scared, or ashamed?”

Chloe nodded, even though she knew he wasn’t looking for confirmation, just a place to let the thought land.

He swallowed. “I wanted to call it Aural. Like… so you could just say a word, and it would listen.” The word hung there, a shard of something fragile and precious. “But also… after someone. Someone who’s gone.”

Chloe felt her breath catch. The name thudded in her stomach, a bell struck far below the surface. “Laura,” she said, as gently as she could.

Andy flinched like he’d been struck, then nodded, slow and deliberate. “I thought if…” He exhaled, then tried again. “If I could make something that listened, really listened, then maybe—” He bit down on the rest, as if afraid to let it out. “Maybe people wouldn’t have to go through what she did. Or what I did to her.”

The room felt even smaller, the air honey-thick with memory and regret. Chloe took the slip of paper, brushing his knuckles in the exchange. She looked at the design—a blank screen, a single red dot, nothing else. It was so simple it hurt.

“I think she would have liked it,” Chloe said, voice trembling just enough to betray her. “I know I do.”

Andy’s face twisted, but he didn’t cry. Instead, he let out a sound—a sort of snort, a noise that might have been a laugh in a different room. “She’d probably tell me to get out more,” he said, wiping at his eye with the heel of his palm.

Chloe smiled, despite herself. “She probably would.”

The apartment dissolved into fog—walls fading to grey, furniture becoming suggestion, Andy's hunched form scattering like smoke. Chloe blinked, and the Garden of Glass solidified around her, its transformed surface announcing itself in gentle pulses.

She emerged unsteady, her legs still remembering the weight of kneeling beside him, her chest still holding the shape of his collapsed shoulders. The tremor in her hands had transferred to her breath.

The garden had changed. The mirrors were larger now, some of them whole and round like expecting eyes, and they tilted toward her as she passed—attentive, present in a way the shattered ones had never been. The humming of the glass pillars had become rhythmic, almost a heartbeat, and they glowed softly from within, arranged now in a slow spiral that seemed to guide her footsteps. The floor beneath her made sounds like chimes with each careful step, and she could see her reflection in the fragments, but the reflections lagged by half a second, as if hesitating to follow her.

The darkness had lifted just enough to feel less suffocating. The fog was warm now, and warmer still where blue light occasionally refracted through it—as if someone far away was walking with a lantern she couldn't quite see. Condensation beaded the pillars' thin surfaces, and in the larger mirrors, she caught faint shadows moving within them, shapes that weren't hers.

A girl's voice whispered from somewhere in the depths: "I had to say it."

Another, older: "I will always remember."

And beneath those, so faint she almost missed it, someone crying quietly somewhere in the distance.

Chloe's breathing had steadied, but only barely. She moved deeper into the garden, her body moving on instinct while her mind stayed half-buried in that grey apartment, in the rawness of Andy's voice saying Laura's name like a prayer. The glass shards on the floor arranged themselves into a path before her, and one larger fragment ahead flashed—a threshold, waiting.

She reached toward it, her hand steady despite everything, and touched the cool surface.

The room was smaller than Emi remembered, but then everything shrank in memory except the pain. The walls pressed in, papered with curling corners and pinhole constellations where Laura had tacked up magazine cutouts of horses and moons and women in old wedding dresses. The single window was stuck half open; afternoon light filtered through the slats and washed the clutter of the floor in a sepia haze. Even the air felt crowded—every inhale wrapped in dust, bedspread detergent, the deep, furred undertone of cat.

Laura was on her bed, knees crossed, hunched in on herself so tightly Emi worried she’d never uncoil. The mattress was old, its blue print faded to a stubborn gray, and Laura’s bare feet left pale depressions wherever she pressed them. She looked twelve, maybe thirteen. On Laura’s lap, a letter: yellow-ruled, bent at the corners, the kind you bought in bulk at Walgreens because it was always on sale. Her hand shook as she read it, thumb smudging a pencil line until it turned to shadow.

Emi didn’t want to interrupt. She stood in the doorway, keeping herself narrow, like a careful edit in a crowded paragraph. Laura’s head was bowed, hair falling in a black curtain that barely reached her jaw, one hand curled so tight around the letter it left fingernail arcs in the margin. Her lips moved—silent, looping—re-reading the words over and over, as if repetition could conjure a different ending.

Princess’s voice drifted up from the kitchen. Not a yell, not even the defeat Emi remembered, but a soft apology, barely audible over the sound of a running faucet. A second later, the father’s reply: heavier, clipped at the end, a percussion of authority that made Laura flinch before Emi even heard it.

Laura’s hand went flat on the page. The other clutched her thigh, nails digging into skin. Her whole body seemed to cinch tighter, each vertebra pulling the rest into a knot. Emi watched, counting the slow seconds as Laura’s eyes closed, then opened, blinking twice so fast the tears didn’t have time to fall.

The calendar above the desk was stuck on October. The days were X’d out through the 28th, and there was a star drawn next to the 31st with a note: “Costume.” Laura had written it in purple pen, looping the letters so dramatically Emi could still see the shape of the E from across the room.

Five days. Emi's stomach clenched. Five days before the bridge, before the river took her.

Emi entered, making herself slow and deliberate. The floor creaked, a single plank betraying her weight. Laura didn’t look up, but Emi felt the shift: a small tension in the muscles of her shoulder, the barest inclination toward the side of the bed where Emi hovered. This girl, alive and breathing, with no idea how little time remained.

She sat. The mattress dipped under her, and for a second Emi worried the sudden change would break the silence completely, send Laura scattering into the cracks between memory and wish. But Laura just held the letter closer, clutching it in both hands now, breathing so shallow the skin at her collarbone fluttered.

Emi glanced at the page. The first line was visible:

Dear Mom,
I love you so much it makes my chest hurt.

Below, more writing, cramped and hurried, the pencil pressing so hard it dented the next sheet beneath.

I heard the glass break downstairs. I heard you tell him you were sorry. You say sorry so much I’m afraid you’re going to apologize yourself into nothing, just so he stops looking at you.
Please don’t disappear. I know you’re scared—I’m scared too—but you can’t let him make you small. You have to remember who you were before this house got so loud.

I am writing this to promise you that we aren't going to be stuck here forever. I’m going to study harder than anyone else, and I’m going to become a scientist, and the second I am strong enough, I am going to take you away from here. We are going to go somewhere where the only sounds are quiet ones, and where you never have to shake when you hear a car pull into the driveway.

I am going to save us. Just hold on until I’m big enough to do it.

I love you,

Laura

Laura read it three more times. Each repetition smoothed a little of the panic from her face, until it became only sorrow, wide and unblinking.

From below, the sound of a cabinet slammed shut. Princess's voice followed, then another, lower—a conversation that flattened itself into wallpaper by the time it reached the bedroom.

Emi's throat tightened as she watched Laura fold the letter, aligning the corners with such precision that her fingertips trembled. This girl who wanted to be a scientist, who promised to save her mother, would be gone in five days. Princess would find this letter someday—after the funeral, maybe while packing Laura's things—and the weight of those unfulfilled promises would crush what little remained of her. Laura tucked the paper under the mattress, then wrapped her arms around herself, squeezing her own biceps as if holding herself together. Her chin dipped, and for a moment Emi thought she might fold entirely.

But she didn't. She just sat, silent, watching the line of sunlight crawl up the opposite wall.

"Did you ever show her?" Emi asked, her voice barely audible over the ache in her chest. "Did you ever give her the letter?"

Laura shook her head, hair moving just enough to reveal the edge of her ear. “She wouldn’t read it. She never reads anything I give her.” The words came out flat, but there was a hitch behind them, a tremble Emi knew by heart.

“You wrote it anyway,” Emi said. She shifted on the bed, turning so her knees faced Laura’s. “That counts for something. It counts for a lot.”

Laura’s lips pulled tight. “I had to. It was like—if I didn’t, it’d eat me alive.” She pressed the heel of her hand to her chest, the gesture almost automatic. “I used to think I could save her. Like, if I just found the right words, or acted better, or hid from him long enough, it would fix her. But she always lets him back in. Every time.”

Emi nodded. “That’s not your fault. You know that, right?”

Laura looked away, eyes tracing the line of light across the ceiling. “It feels like it is.”

Emi let the silence grow. She watched the way Laura’s shoulders rose and fell, the micro-tics in her jaw, the deep lines under her eyes. Laura was thirteen, but she looked ancient. Not old—just… used up, like she’d burned all her years in a single, endless night.

“She’ll read it someday,” Emi said. “Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow. But she’ll find it, and she’ll know you tried.”

The floorboards groaned as someone passed in the hallway. Laura went still, even her breath pausing. When the footsteps faded, she released it, a long exhale that almost became a laugh.

“She won’t,” Laura said. “He’ll throw it away. Or she’ll read it and pretend she didn’t.” She curled forward, arms wrapped so tight it looked painful. “But I had to say it. Even if nobody ever heard me.”

Emi reached out, letting her hand rest on the blanket between them. She didn’t try to touch Laura—just stayed close, her palm open, waiting.

“Sometimes saying it is enough,” she said. “Sometimes it’s the only thing we get.”

Laura looked at her then. Really looked, blue eyes sharp and red-rimmed, burning with something that was not quite anger and not quite hope. “I just want it to stop,” she whispered. “I want to stop caring so much.”

Emi smiled, the kind of smile that tasted bitter. “I don’t think you can. I don’t think you ever will.”

Laura laughed, wet and shaky. “Figures.”

A new sound drifted up—Princess calling, her voice thin and frayed: “Dinner.” It was barely louder than the hum of the fridge, but Laura heard it. She wiped her eyes on the back of her hand, then unfolded, feet flat on the floor, head up.

“I should go,” she said, but didn’t move.

Emi squeezed her own knee, grounding herself. “You’re the bravest person I know,” she said, careful not to let her own voice break. “You could disappear like her. You could go quiet, or small, or just let it all happen. But you don’t. You write letters, and you hide them, and you keep loving her, even when it hurts.”

Laura’s face twisted, the ache visible in every line. “I’m not brave. I’m just… loud.”

“It’s the same thing,” Emi said, and in that moment she meant it.

Laura let her hands drop to her sides, fingers shaking. She looked at the bed, at the lump under the mattress where the letter waited, then at Emi. “Thank you,” she said, the words small but so true they lit the whole room.

Emi wanted to hug her. She wanted to fold Laura into her arms and keep her safe forever. But she didn’t move. She just stayed, sitting on the bed, two girls lost in the fog of afternoon, holding each other up with words.

Below, the voices started again. The father barked something, Princess answered, and the whole house seemed to contract around the sound. But in the bedroom, for a moment, there was quiet.

Laura stood, wobbling a little as she did. She crossed to the window and pulled it shut, then turned back, arms crossed. Her eyes landed on the calendar.

“Three more days,” she said. “Then Halloween.”

“Got your costume?” Emi asked, the question reflexive, but gentle.

Laura snorted. “I’ll make one. I always do.”

Emi nodded. “You’ll be amazing.”

“Yeah.” Laura blinked, the wetness gone but the shine in her eyes still there. “I will.”

They didn’t say goodbye. It wasn’t that kind of visit.

Emi waited until Laura had left, the sound of her steps echoing down the hall. Then she crossed to the bed, reached under the mattress, and pulled the letter free. The paper felt warm against her palm, impossibly real. She folded it carefully and slipped it into her pocket, knowing she shouldn't—knowing she couldn't—but unable to leave those words buried forever in a house that would never hear them.

When she left, the light had faded. The familiar pull of the Garden tugged at her edges, but the weight in her pocket remained. She glanced back once at the small room where a girl had tried to save her mother with words.

The Garden materialized around her in fragments. Emi pressed her hand to her pocket, felt the crisp edge of paper that shouldn't exist here, and realized with a start she had pockets: she was no longer wearing the gossamer wrap. She watched as the brilliant landscape faded to ash and shadow around her.

The house pulsed, every wall vibrating with the drone of pop music and the staccato screams of fifth graders gone feral on birthday sugar. Norah lingered at the edge of the living room, weighed down by a party favor bag and the knowledge that nothing about this scene was new, except maybe the brand of cupcake and the flavor of humiliation. The place was decorated within an inch of its life: ribbons in the chandelier, posterboard letters spelling out “HAPPY BIRTHDAY KAITLYN,” a table sagging under the weight of chips and neon cheese dip.

Young Claire sat on the edge of the couch, back ramrod straight, hands pressed white to her thighs. She wore a long-sleeved t-shirt with kittens in glasses and a denim skirt that hit just above her knees. The skirt kept riding up, and every time it did, she tugged it down with the exact same gesture, a metronome of anxiety. Her eyes didn’t blink much. Instead, she tracked the movement of the room, face calm but eyes huge, as if the entire party were one big algebra problem and she just needed to solve for X to make it stop.

It was impossible, at first, to tell if Claire’s stillness was a strategy or a side effect. The rest of the party seemed to orbit around her: clusters of shrieking preteens crowded the snack table, someone’s little brother used a Nerf dart as a Q-tip, and three girls had already formed a circle around the karaoke machine, plotting social ascension through synchronized dance. Norah clocked all of this with a practiced scan and returned her attention to the couch, where Claire perched like a human post-it—visible, ignorable, and impossible to relocate once stuck.

Every few seconds, Claire’s eyes flicked toward the kitchen, then the window, then the front door, as if searching for exits. Her lips didn’t move. Norah watched her for a full minute before noticing that Claire’s nostrils flared each time the decibel count went up. It was a subtle rhythm, like an internal metronome fighting to impose order on chaos.

The birthday girl herself—Kaitlyn, apparently—swept through the room in a haze of glitter and effortless volume. She stopped at every group, dropped a joke, and left each cluster marginally louder than before, as if she were stoking a series of small, controlled burns. At the snack table, she performed a perfect, one-handed pirouette with a juice box and landed in the arms of a lanky boy wearing a Bulls jersey over his dress shirt. At karaoke, she grabbed the mic and killed a verse of “Stronger,” her voice veering off-key but never off-beat. At the far end of the room, she air-kissed her mom, who smiled like she’d just won the lottery.

In contrast, Claire barely seemed to breathe.

Norah recognized the posture—hands braced on thighs, knuckles white, eyes wide as brake lights. It was the look of someone who’d read the whole party’s playbook and found her own role cut in the first draft. Norah had worn that look herself at thirteen, but by fifteen she’d traded it for a kind of weaponized boredom that kept her above the fray. It wasn’t an improvement. Just a different way to drown.

The music crept up in volume. First, a Cardi B remix, then a three-minute TikTok megamix that bled into a playlist of pop-punk anthems. The room’s air thickened: voices layered over music, then laughter layered over voices, then, somehow, a dog barking in the backyard layered over everything else. Norah saw the change in Claire’s face—the nostrils flaring harder, the hands curling tighter, a tiny pulse hammering at her jawline.

Someone screamed about a game in the hallway. Someone else shouted, “No running!” but that only made the stampede louder. A bowl of chips upended. The Nerf gun fired off a wild shot that whizzed past Claire’s ear, missing by less than an inch. She didn’t flinch. She just pressed her palms to her knees and blinked, slow, like a lizard recalibrating its brain after an eclipse.

“Hey, Claire,” said one of the passing girls, voice sharp as a box cutter, “Are you alive over there or just, like, doing your little robot thing?”

A boy laughed. Claire’s lips parted, then pressed shut.

Norah felt the urge to intervene—a flicker of solidarity with the outnumbered—but something told her she shouldn’t, yet. Instead she waited, watching for the moment when Claire would break. It didn’t take long.

The karaoke group started up again, this time a chorus of “Shut Up and Dance” that devolved, by the second chorus, into open shouting. The birthday girl, using the wireless mic as a scepter, orchestrated a conga line that barreled straight through the living room. Claire, in the direct path, tensed, but made no move to flee. The line swerved at the last second, and for a split second, Claire was alone on the couch, the sole survivor of some suburban disaster.

Then a younger kid, maybe six, tripped and landed on the couch next to her. Claire’s hands jerked up, palms open, like a ref signaling touchdown. The boy bounced off, unfazed, and Claire’s arms slowly drifted back to her thighs. The fingers were trembling now. Norah could see it, even from across the room.

“Claire!” someone called from the kitchen, “C’mere, there’s cupcakes!”

Claire didn’t move. The music, louder now, smothered any further attempts at conversation. Kaitlyn’s conga line doubled back, trailing streamers and crumbs. The TV flashed a disco ball screen saver. The dog barked again, this time with the wild intensity of a smoke alarm.

Then, as if her body had simply had enough, Claire made a single, terrible sound.

It wasn’t a word, or even a scream, but a howl so raw it stripped the room of all air. Every head turned. Even the adults—gathered in the next room with their wineglasses and parental commiseration—fell silent.

Claire clamped her own hands over her ears, eyes bulging, breath heaving like she’d been punched in the gut. She bolted from the couch, crashing through the empty space between the coffee table and the TV, and disappeared down the hallway with the sound of the scream still echoing.

For a second, nobody moved.

Then a wave of laughter rolled through the party, ugly and sharp. “What was that?” someone snorted. “Did she just, like, explode?” another said, and the air filled with a new layer of noise: the sound of people delighted to have witnessed a real, live malfunction.

Norah felt her heart twist. She set down her paper plate and followed, stepping through the thicket of sticky wrappers and crumpled napkins. She ignored the laughter, the smirks, the quick glances that said “Why are you even here?” She didn’t bother to explain. She just kept going, tracking Claire by the tremor of sobs that vibrated down the hall like the aftershock of a sonic boom.

The bathroom door was closed, but not locked. Norah pushed it open gently, expecting resistance. Instead, she found Claire on the tile, knees to chest, hands over her ears, head bowed so low her hair brushed the floor.

Norah crouched in the doorway, careful not to get too close. She’d learned, over years of babysitting little sisters and surviving her own migraines, that you didn’t crowd a person in meltdown. You let them be an island until the tide receded.

For a long time, neither of them spoke. Norah counted the tile patterns, the clumps of dust behind the trash can, the way the fluorescent bulb flickered overhead like a Morse code signal for help. Claire’s shoulders hitched with each breath, but the sobs grew softer, settling into a kind of defeated, hiccuping rhythm.

Three girls appeared in the hallway, led by the same one who’d cut at Claire earlier. They stopped at the threshold, peering in with the exaggerated curiosity of kids who have never known real shame. One whispered, not very quietly, “She’s totally lost it.” The others giggled, then flinched as Norah shot them a glare that could’ve dropped a poodle at fifty yards.

The girls didn’t leave, though. They stayed, arms crossed, feet tapping, waiting for the show to get interesting.

Norah felt a familiar heat rise in her chest—the urge to throw herself between the bullies and the wounded, to snarl and bite if necessary. But instead, she turned her focus to Claire, who still hadn’t moved, and spoke in the lowest, calmest voice she could muster.

“Hey,” she said. “You okay?”

It was a stupid question, but it was something. Claire didn’t look up, but her hands eased away from her ears, just a little. Her hair fell across her face, hiding the worst of the tears.

Norah scooted a little closer, enough that their knees were almost touching. She didn’t reach out. She just stayed there, letting her own breathing slow until it matched the rhythm of Claire’s. After a few seconds, the sobs faded to shivers, and then to silence.

“You want me to get your mom?” Norah asked, voice still soft.

Claire shook her head, so violently a bead of snot flicked onto the tile. One of the girls at the door gasped, then made a show of covering her mouth.

Norah ignored her. “You want to just sit here for a while?”

Claire nodded, then wiped her nose on the back of her sleeve.

Norah glanced at the girls in the doorway. “Y’all need something, or are you just here to gawk?”

The leader rolled her eyes. “Why are you even talking to her? She’s crazy.” The word landed with the weight of a brick. “She’s a freak.”

Norah smiled, baring her teeth. “Better a freak than a bitch,” she said, loud enough that one of the girls’ jaws actually dropped. “Maybe if you spent less time running your mouth and more time learning to use it for good, people wouldn’t cross the street when they see you coming.”

The leader blushed, then scowled. “Whatever. You’re just as weird as she is.” But she backed away, and the other two followed, shoving each other and whispering as they went.

When the hallway was clear, Norah let out a breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. She looked at Claire, who had uncurled a little, her arms now hugging her shins.

“People suck,” Norah said, shrugging. “You don’t.”

Claire sniffled, still not meeting her gaze.

“You know,” Norah continued, “some people’s brains are just built different. It’s like… they have a different operating system. The rest of the world is running Windows 98, and you’re already on quantum Linux or something.”

Claire blinked. “There is no quantum Linux.”

Norah grinned. “Exactly my point.”

They sat in silence for a few more minutes, listening to the distant echo of the party reassemble itself. At one point, a new wave of laughter rippled down the hall, but neither of them flinched.

“You’re not broken,” Norah said, finally. “You just feel things bigger than other people. And that’s not a problem, no matter what anyone says.”

Claire looked at her then, her eyes red but steady. “It doesn’t feel good.”

Norah shook her head. “It sucks. A lot of the time it sucks.” She picked at a fraying spot on her jeans, thinking how best to phrase what came next. “But it won’t always be like this. One day, you’ll have people who get you. Maybe not a whole army, but at least a few. And they’ll think you’re the best thing that ever happened to them.”

Claire’s mouth twitched. “How do you know?”

“Because you’re already the best thing in this bathroom,” Norah said, deadpan. “And I’ve seen a lot of bathrooms.”

It worked. Claire gave her a laugh—a wet, shaky sound, but real. For the first time, her hands dropped to her sides, palms flat on the floor.

“I want to go home,” she whispered.

Norah nodded. “I can walk you, if you want. Or we can just hide out here until the party’s over.”

Claire thought about it, then shrugged. “I guess we could wait.”

“Cool.” Norah shifted until she was leaning against the wall, legs stretched out, hands behind her head. She let the silence settle, comfortable now, as if the tile was the softest place in the universe.

“Thanks,” Claire said, after a while. She didn’t look at Norah, but the words hung in the air, warm and unexpected.

“Anytime,” Norah replied. “And next time, maybe we’ll bring earplugs. Or a Nerf gun.”

Claire nodded, unapologetic, and for a moment the world didn’t seem so impossible.

They stayed there, two misfits on the bathroom floor, listening as the party wound down. Eventually, the noise faded, the lights dimmed, and the only sound was their breathing and the distant hum of the house settling in for the night.

Norah blinked, and found herself back in the Garden. A cold wind was blowing, and she barely had time to regain her bearings and realize she wore her old clothes again, before everything turned to gray.