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Chapter Four

Mirella

The house was too quiet.

Not the comforting kind of quiet, like when rain patters against the windows or when you’re curled up under a blanket with a book. This quiet was heavy, suffocating, the kind that pressed into your chest until you could hear your own heartbeat echo inside your skull.

I sat on my bed, knees pulled up to my chest, staring at the pale line of moonlight cutting across the floorboards. My skin still smelled faintly of hospital antiseptic from the nurse’s office earlier. My eyes still felt swollen from crying. My chest still carried that leftover ache, like my lungs hadn’t fully recovered from the panic that clawed me down in the hallway.

Clara’s words replayed. Embarrassing. Exhausting. Always the victim.

My mother’s voice overlapped it. Not pretty enough. Not enough effort. No one will ever want you.

Their voices never stopped. Even when they weren’t here, they were.

I pressed my palms against my ears, but it didn’t matter. They were inside me, buried too deep.

For a moment, I thought about going downstairs, about wandering into the kitchen where the cook sometimes hummed old folk songs while scrubbing pans. Maybe she’d look at me with that quiet pity again, the kind that almost felt like care. Maybe Gabriel would check in tomorrow and smile through the rearview mirror, the way he always did.

But pity wasn’t the same as love. And the tiny scraps of kindness I collected weren’t enough to silence the roaring emptiness.

Not anymore.

I uncurled myself slowly, like my body already knew where this was heading even if my mind hadn’t admitted it yet. My bare feet padded against the cold wood as I crossed the room to my dresser. My hands trembled when I opened the drawer, digging past folded blouses, tights I never wore, perfume bottles my mother shoved at me every birthday.

There it was. The bottle of sleeping pills I’d pocketed months ago. My mother’s prescription, forgotten in her rush to replace it with something newer, stronger. She’d never noticed they’d gone missing. She never noticed anything about me.

The bottle was light when I held it.

I carried it back to the bed, sitting with it balanced on my palm like I was weighing it against my own heartbeat.

It would be easy. Just open, swallow, fade.

No more panic. No more voices. No more trying to twist myself into someone I could never be.

Just nothing.

I'd be free.

The thought didn’t feel scary. It felt… calm.

Like finally laying down a weight I was never strong enough to carry.

My chest rose and fell slowly. My hands stopped trembling.

For once, I didn’t feel like I was drowning.

I unscrewed the cap. The faint rattle of pills against plastic echoed too loudly in the silence.

I tilted the bottle, watching the white tablets tumble into my palm. Small. Harmless-looking. Deadly enough.

A laugh slipped out of me—sharp, bitter, empty. I wondered what my mother would say when they found me. Probably something like, How dare she ruin the sheets? How selfish to make such a scene.

Maybe Clara would roll her eyes and mutter, She finally got what she wanted—attention.

My father wouldn’t say anything. He never did.

And that was the final thought I had before I lifted my hand.

Before the taste of chalk and bitterness coated my tongue.

Before the world blurred.

Before everything went dark.

— ✦ —

I woke to light.

Blinding, sterile, artificial light that burned against my eyelids. My throat ached like sandpaper, and the bitter taste still lingered at the back of my mouth. A steady beep punctured the silence, mechanical and unforgiving.

I was alive.

Alive.

No. No, no, no, no, no.

A sob ripped out of me before I could stop it, half-relief, half-despair.

“Quiet down,” a sharp voice snapped. My mother’s. She sat in the corner of the hospital room, arms crossed, diamonds flashing against the fluorescent lights. Her face was tight, pinched in irritation, not fear.

“You nearly killed yourself, Mirella,” she said, as if scolding me for spilling wine on the carpet. “Do you have any idea what that would have done to this family’s reputation?”

Her words cut through me like glass.

Not we were scared.

Not thank God you’re alive.

Not we love you.

Reputation.

The machine beeped faster, matching my heartbeat.

My father sat beside her, newspaper folded on his lap. He didn’t look at me. He just shifted uncomfortably, as if my existence was too loud, too messy for him to bear.

“You’ll need to get yourself together,” my mother continued, her voice like a blade. “This can’t happen again. Do you understand me? It won’t.”

Tears slid hot down my cheeks. I wanted to scream, to ask why she cared more about appearances than her daughter, why she only saw me as a stain on her perfect life. But the words stuck in my throat, heavy and useless.

Clara appeared in the doorway, leaning against the frame with her perfect hair and perfect smirk. “Couldn’t even do that right, huh?” she said softly, just loud enough for me to hear. Her lips curved into something cruel. “Always so dramatic.”

I turned my face away, staring at the white ceiling. If I didn’t look at them, maybe they’d vanish. Maybe I would.

But I didn’t vanish.

I was still here.

Alive.

And somehow, that hurt more than anything else.

— ✦ —

By the next morning, the decision had been made.

“You’re transferring to the boarding program at Saint Aurelia,” my mother announced as she brushed powder across her cheeks in the hospital’s bathroom mirror. She said it like she was talking about redecorating the living room, not uprooting my life.

“It will give you structure,” she continued. “Discipline. Distance. And most importantly, it will keep people from asking questions about… this little episode.”

Little episode.

I sat stiffly on the hospital bed, the thin gown scratchy against my skin. “I don’t want to go,” I whispered, though my voice cracked halfway through.

She snapped her compact shut and turned, eyes like ice. “No one asked what you wanted, Mirella. You’ve proven you can’t be trusted to handle yourself. This is for your own good—and for the family’s.”

My father stood near the window, gazing out as though the city skyline was far more interesting than his daughter being exiled. “It’s settled,” he said flatly, without turning around.

Clara’s laughter echoed in the hall. I didn’t need to see her face to know what it looked like—smug, victorious. She’d won. They all had.

My chest tightened until I could barely breathe. I wanted to scream, to tear at the sheets, to tell them that locking me away wouldn’t fix anything. But my throat closed, the same way it always did when they cornered me.

The words stayed inside, rotting.

“Pack your things when you’re discharged,” my mother said briskly. “You’ll leave by the end of the week.”

And that was it.

Decision made. Judgment passed.

My life wasn’t mine anymore.

If it ever had been.

— ✦ —

That night, when the nurses dimmed the lights and the ward fell quiet, I lay awake staring at the ceiling. The hospital bed creaked with every shift of my body. My wrist still bore the faint indent from the IV needle.

I should have been dead.

I wanted to be dead.

But I wasn’t.

And now they were sending me away, not because they cared, but because I was an inconvenience.

Hot tears slipped silently into my hair. My body curled in on itself, small, fragile, pathetic.

I hated myself for surviving.

But somewhere, in the raw ache of my chest, a different thought flickered—quiet, dangerous.

If they were going to bury me in Saint Aurelia, if they were going to erase me from their perfect world, maybe it didn’t have to be an ending.

Maybe it could be something else.

I closed my eyes, the darkness pressing against me like a secret.

For the first time, I didn’t dream of disappearing.

I dreamed of what might happen if I didn’t.