Chapter 15 – The Anatomy of Distance
She didn't cry.
Not that night. Not the one after. Not the one after that.
Instead, Amelia sat in the corner of her room, cross-legged, arms wrapped around her knees, watching the stars fight through her curtains. The silence wasn't peaceful—it was heavy. Like it was pressing down on her ribs, daring her to break the stillness.
She didn't.
Because the moment she let it crack, she knew it'd all come spilling out.
And she couldn't afford to feel too much.
That was the curse, wasn't it?
Her entire life had been a series of taught limitations. Emotions had rules. Laughter had costs. Joy had consequences. And the cruelest part? No one could see them but her.
To everyone else, she was the happy one. The "oh my god you're always smiling" girl. The sunshine friend. The low-maintenance classmate. The girl who didn't need saving.
No one asked why.
No one ever asked why.
Until David.
And then he read the answer in ink, not words.
Her heart still clenched when she remembered the look on his face. That quiet, wide-eyed horror. Like he'd peeked behind the curtain and found rot where there should've been glitter. She hadn't even yelled when he confessed. She didn't need to.
He'd betrayed something sacred.
Not just her privacy—but her choice.
And for someone like her, choice was everything.
---
Ms. Parker noticed immediately.
She didn't say much, of course. She rarely did. But that next day in drama class, her eyes lingered a little longer. She placed Amelia's script on her desk instead of handing it to her. She changed the staging for the day to limit interactions with David.
It was a kindness dressed as direction.
Amelia appreciated that.
Still, she hated how she couldn't stop scanning the room for him. Hated that she knew the angle of his posture even when she wasn't looking. Hated that part of her kept asking: Did he mean to hurt me? And the answer—the terrible, infuriating answer—was no.
That somehow made it worse.
She could have managed cruelty.
But David hadn't been cruel.
He'd been curious.
Desperate. Kind. Scared.
And that's what terrified her.
Because when good people hurt you, you stop trusting good things.
---
The walk home was slow that day.
Autumn had started to push summer out of the air, crisp edges curling the leaves. Amelia liked this part of the year—the transition. The in-between. She felt like that most of the time. Something half-formed. Half-here. A person suspended in the pause between two lives.
When she reached her street, she didn't go inside right away.
She sat on the porch and pulled out her phone. Her thumb hovered over David's contact.
He hadn't texted.
She hadn't either.
Some part of her wanted to call. To scream. To cry. To ask him why he would take something so fragile and treat it like a riddle to be solved. But another part… the bigger part… knew that it wasn't about David anymore.
It was about her.
For the first time in weeks, she wasn't hiding her sadness. She wasn't forcing a smile. She was letting herself feel it.
The ache.
The betrayal.
The grief of being seen and misunderstood.
She opened the Notes app and started typing—not for anyone else, just to get the words out before they choked her.
> _I wanted you to know me.
I really did.
But not like this.
Not because you stole the truth.
You looked at the cracks in the glass and thought it meant the mirror was broken.
But I was whole in a way you didn't understand.
I wasn't asking to be fixed.
I was asking to be believed._
---
Later that night, she stood in front of the mirror brushing her teeth and paused. Her reflection stared back—hair messy, eyes tired, lips curled in that automatic smile she didn't even remember putting on.
She wiped it off.
Literally. She took her palm and dragged it down her face like it was makeup, smudging the grin until her mouth sat in a neutral line.
There.
That was better.
No more pretending.
Her mother knocked softly on the door. "You okay, sweetie?"
Amelia didn't answer right away. She looked at her own eyes, dark and steady.
"I'm fine," she said finally.
The lie didn't even sting anymore.
---
That weekend, she skipped their usual script rehearsal. Ms. Parker sent her a text:
"Take what you need. The stage will wait."
She wanted to cry at how kind that was. How undeserved it felt.
Instead, she curled up under the covers and reached for a box of letters she hadn't touched in years. Inside were fragments of her younger self—letters she'd written to no one. Birthday cards she never gave her father. Pieces of poetry about things she couldn't name. A folded drawing she did at ten of a girl holding a balloon with scissors in the other hand.
She held that one a long time.
So much of her life had been about holding joy at a distance. Loving it like it was a dangerous pet. Wanting it so badly but knowing it could tear her apart if she let it too close.
And then David.
He hadn't just stepped into her orbit.
He'd sat in it. Made himself comfortable. Asked questions no one else dared to ask. He gave her space—and then he took it away.
That contradiction hurt most.
Because she saw herself in him. The guilt. The longing. The loneliness.
That first time he looked at her like she wasn't just another girl with a carefully rehearsed personality? It had scared her. Not because of what he saw. But because he made her want to be seen again.
That was the cruelest part.
She still wanted him.
Even now.
Even after everything.
---
The next week at school, Amelia walked into drama class a few minutes late. Ms. Parker raised an eyebrow but said nothing.
David looked up when she entered.
Their eyes met.
For the first time in days.
And in that second, a thousand things passed between them that neither had the language for.
He didn't smile.
She didn't nod.
But something unspoken softened the tension between them.
A fracture. Not a healing. But the start of something gentler.
Ms. Parker clapped her hands. "Today we're trying something new. No scripts. Just expressions. No words—just movement. Trust your partner. Trust the silence."
Of course she paired them.
Of course she did.
David stepped forward slowly, uncertain. Amelia didn't move. She just looked at him. He held out a hand—not demanding. Not even inviting.
Just… open.
She stared at it.
Breathed.
And for the first time in days, she took it.
They moved slowly. No music. No choreography. Just a simple mirroring of gestures. A hand to a cheek. A tilt of the head. A pause that said more than a monologue ever could.
She could feel the apology in his fingertips.
And maybe—just maybe—he could feel the forgiveness in her grip.
---
That night, she walked home alone again. But the sky looked less gray. The air bit less cold.
She wasn't healed.
Not even close.
But healing wasn't linear. It was a mess of half-steps and backslides. Of standing still just long enough to gather the courage to try again.
Amelia looked up at the stars and whispered into the night like he could hear her:
"I'm not ready. But I'm not running."
Then she let herself smile—small. Honest. Private.
Not for the world.
Not for David.
Just for herself.
And for once, it didn't feel like dying.