Rena
I hold my brother as his world falls apart. My own grief is a distant roaring in my ears, a storm on a far horizon. The only thing that feels real is the sharp jut of his shoulder blades under my hands, the damp heat of his tears soaking my shirt.
He doesn’t speak for a long time. The house around us is unnaturally quiet, filled with the ghosts of footsteps and conversations that will never happen again. My aunt is downstairs, her voice a low murmur on the phone, making calls I can’t bear to think about.
“They’re not coming back,” Leo finally whispers, his voice muffled against my shoulder. “Are they?”
“No,” I say. The word is a shard of glass in my throat. “They’re not.”
He pulls back, his face blotchy and pale, his eyes searching mine. He’s looking for a lie. He’s looking for the comfort an older sister is supposed to give.
“What are we going to do?” he asks. His voice is the sound of a fourteen-year-old boy trying to be a man.
I look at him, at this child who I almost abandoned to grieve alone for the second time. A fierce, protective vow solidifies in my chest, stronger than concrete, stronger than steel. I failed my parents. I will not fail him.
“You’re going to stay with Aunt Carol for a few days,” I say, my voice steady, surprising myself. “I have to go back to school to arrange some things. Then I’m coming back for the funeral. And after that… you and I are going to figure it out. Together.”
“You’re not going to leave?” he asks, a tremor in his voice.
“I am never leaving you again, Leo. I promise.”
***
The campus feels like a foreign country when I return two days later. The students laughing on the green, the buzz of activity, it all seems impossibly loud and frivolous. I walk through it like a ghost, wrapped in a silence only I can hear.
I go straight to my dorm room. Alina is there, sitting on her bed, painting her nails a violent shade of pink. She looks up when I enter, her expression a practiced mask of sorrow.
“Oh my God, Rena. I heard. I am so, so sorry.” She puts the nail polish bottle down, preparing to stand.
“Don’t get up,” I say. I pull my largest suitcase out from under my bed and open it on the floor.
Her carefully sculpted eyebrows draw together. “What are you doing?”
“I’m packing,” I say, opening my closet and pulling out an armful of clothes.
“Packing? Now? Rena, you just went through a horrible trauma. You need to rest. You need your friends around you.”
“No,” I say, not looking at her. I fold a sweater and place it in the case. “I need a single room. I already spoke to residential life. They have an opening in Northwood Hall.”
“Northwood?” she scoffs, the sympathy in her voice vanishing. “That’s where all the weird art kids live. It’s social suicide.”
“I think I’ll survive.”
“You can’t be serious.” She stands up now, her voice rising. “You’re just going to leave? What about me? What am I supposed to tell people?”
I finally stop packing and look at her. Really look at her. And I feel nothing. No anger, no resentment. Just a vast, empty distance.
“Tell them whatever you want, Alina. It doesn’t matter to me anymore.”
Her face twists into a mask of ugly fury. “After everything I’ve done for you? I made you relevant. Before me, you were a nobody who just sat in the back of the class and doodled in her notebook.”
“Maybe I liked being a nobody,” I say, turning back to my suitcase. “I’m done.”
“Fine,” she spits, her voice trembling with rage. “Go. Run off to your sad little room with your sad little life. But when you come crawling back, don’t expect me to be here for you.”
“I won’t,” I say, and I snap the suitcase shut. The sound is final. Like a door closing on a life I will never live again.
***
Northwood Hall is quiet. The hallways smell of turpentine and coffee. My new room is small, spartan, but it’s mine. The silence is a relief. I unpack and head straight for the architecture studio.
Work is the only thing that makes sense. The precise lines, the cold logic of physics, the challenge of creating form out of empty space. It’s a language I understand. I sit at an empty drafting table and lose myself in the plans for a theoretical project, something to keep my hands and mind busy.
Hours pass. The studio empties out until it’s just me and two other students at a table across the room. I recognize them from my materials science class. Chloe, a girl with short, choppy black hair and paint stains on her jeans, and Sam, a tall, lanky guy with kind eyes and a mess of curly brown hair.
I ignored them in my first life. Alina had labeled them “art freaks.”
“Burning the midnight oil?”
I look up. Sam is standing by my table, holding out a steaming paper cup. “We made a fresh pot of coffee. You look like you could use some.”
“Oh. Thanks.” I take the cup, my fingers wrapping around its warmth.
“That’s a complex truss system,” Chloe says, walking over. She points a pencil at my sketch. “You’re getting a lot of lateral support without compromising the aesthetic. It’s nice.”
“I’m just trying to work through some ideas,” I say.
“We heard about your parents,” Sam says, his voice soft. “A friend of ours is a resident assistant in your old dorm. We just wanted to say we’re really sorry.”
There’s no pity in his voice. Just simple, human kindness. It almost undoes me.
“Thank you,” I manage to say.
“If you need someone to take notes for you in Finch’s class, just let us know,” Chloe offers. “We sit in the front. His slides are impossible to read from the back.”
I look at them, at their open, friendly faces. This is what a friendship is supposed to feel like. Not a transaction. Not a power play.
“I’d like that,” I say, and a genuine, small smile touches my lips for the first time in days. “My name is Rena.”
“We know,” Chloe smiles back. “Everyone knows who you are after that Vexler Atrium takedown.”
***
I’m walking back from the studio later that night, the cold air a welcome shock to my system. The campus is quiet, bathed in the orange glow of the streetlights. My grief is a heavy coat, but for the first time, it doesn’t feel like it’s suffocating me.
“Morris.”
The voice stops me in my tracks. It’s low, familiar. I turn.
Travis Dane is leaning against one of the old stone arches that mark the entrance to the main quad. He pushes himself off the wall and walks toward me. He’s not smiling. His face is serious, his eyes dark with an emotion I can’t read.
“Dane,” I say, my voice neutral.
“I heard about your parents,” he says, stopping a few feet from me. He doesn’t offer empty platitudes. He just says the words like a fact. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Thank you.” My reply is automatic, the same one I’ve given a dozen times.
He nods, his gaze direct. “I don’t know what to say that helps. I know words don’t really do anything right now.”
“No,” I agree. “They don’t.”
We stand in an awkward silence for a moment. He’s not trying to fix it. He’s just letting the silence exist, a shared space of respect for a grief he can’t understand but is willing to witness.
“But I did want to say,” he continues, his voice quieter now, “that I hope you don’t stop. Speaking up in class. Arguing with Finch.”
My head snaps up. That’s the last thing I expected him to say.
“Why would I stop?”
“Some people… after something like this, they pull back. They disappear for a while. It’s understandable.” He shoves his hands in his pockets. “But that analysis you gave… I haven’t stopped thinking about it. About how you see things. It’s like you’re looking at a blueprint everyone else has, but you can see a completely different building.”
My heart gives a painful throb. He’s not talking to me like I’m a broken thing. He’s talking to me like I’m a colleague. An equal.
“The building was always there,” I say. “People just weren’t looking at it from the right angle.”
A small, sad smile touches his lips. “Right. The architect’s trap.”
He looks at me, and his gaze is intense, searching. It’s the same look he gave me in the lecture hall, but now it’s different. It’s not just curiosity. It’s something deeper.
“You’ve changed, Rena Morris,” he says softly.
“A lot of things have changed.”
“I know.” He takes a small step closer. The air between us feels charged, heavy with unspoken things. “For what it’s worth, I think it’s… captivating.”
He holds my gaze for another second, a silent promise of conversations yet to come. Then he gives a slight nod.
“I’ll see you in class.”
He turns and walks away, his silhouette disappearing into the campus shadows. I stand there, motionless, the heavy coat of my grief feeling just a little bit lighter. The old foundations of my life are gone, shattered into dust. But here, in the cold night air, under the watchful eyes of a boy I’m destined to save, I feel the first, tentative lines of a new blueprint being drawn.
