Chapter 1
If she ever decided to disappear, she would do it somewhere beautiful.
A place with mountains.
Or the ocean.
Somewhere the sky was big enough to make a person feel small in a comforting way rather than a humiliating one. Where the wind gave no care to who felt it's embrace.
Instead, she was sitting on the cold floor of her bathroom with her back against the bathtub, staring at a crack in the ceiling. The coldness bit into her skin, and the silence wrapped around her, echoing each breath she took.
It seemed appropriate.
If she was going to ruin her life, she might as well do it somewhere that already looked slightly broken.
Like her.
A laugh escaped her, too small and tired. She covered her mouth. The weight of the world clutched behind her eye sockets.
"Still making jokes," she whispered.
That was what Mara did when she was embarrassed, angry, hurt, or had run out of reasons to pretend she was okay.
The bathroom light buzzed above her.
One flicker.
Two.
Three.
"Of course," she muttered. "Even the light wants to give up. What a way to make me feel less alone."
She almost smiled, but it vanished.
She didn't want to think about how she had gotten there. Thinking about it meant admitting she had reached the edge.
For years, Mara had imagined that people who reached their breaking point knew exactly when it happened: a dramatic moment, a final argument, a devastating phone call.
But there hadn't been one moment. There had been hundreds.
A comment in a school hallway.
A laugh behind her.
A photograph she hated.
A dress that didn't fit.
A boy who looked at her, then at his friends, as though they had shared a joke without words.
Her mother's sigh when Mara asked for something new.
The scale.
Always the scale.
The endless promises.
I'll start Monday.
I'll eat better.
I'll exercise tomorrow.
I'll lose ten pounds.
I'll become someone people want to look at.
Monday drowned into Tuesday, then next week... next month. Every failed attempt became another piece of evidence against herself.
Maybe they were right.
Maybe she was lazy, lacked discipline, or had something fundamentally wrong with her.
She had spent so many years trying to become smaller that she had forgotten how to feel like a person. Always more painfully aware of how her body rolls squished under her oversized clothes than where she took her next step.
Mara closed her eyes and imagined what everyone would say if she were gone.
Her family would cry. Her classmates would pretend they had always liked her. People who had never spoken to her would post photographs and write about how beautiful her soul had been.
Someone would probably say she had been "too young."
She almost laughed.
Too young.
That sounded like something people only said after it was too late.
Her chest heaved, the wind in her lungs fighting it's way through her stuffy nose. She pressed her palms against the cold, solid floor, supporting her weight.
She had imagined this moment so many times, pictured herself being brave enough to do what she had decided.
But now that she was here, she couldn't.
Her heart hammered, the moth dancing around the light bulb fluttered in different patterns then settled on the ceiling.
Her body refused to cooperate.
Then.
"I'm such a coward," Mara whispered.
The words came out bitter, then softer, choked.
She waited for relief.
It didn't come.
Instead, she cried-not quietly or prettily, but until her face hurt.
She cried for the girl who had hated herself in mirrors, laughed along when people mocked her, searched online for ways to change, and believed losing enough weight would make everything easier.
She cried for the woman she might never become.
Underneath all that pain was a tiny, stubborn thought.
I don't want to die.
Mara froze.
The thought didn't arrive like hope. It was smaller and more complicated than that. It was the sudden awareness of everything she would be leaving unfinished: the designs hidden on her laptop, the taste of coffee in the morning, the possibility that one day she might look back on this night and understand it as something she had survived.
She didn't want to die.
She wanted the pain to stop. She wanted to stop waking up already ashamed of herself. She wanted one ordinary day that didn't feel like a punishment.
The distinction was frighteningly clear.
Her hand trembled as she moved away from the decision she had been so certain about. One inch, then another, until she sat with her knees against her chest.
She buried her face in her arms.
"I can't," she whispered.
The words were not a promise. It was barely an agreement with the next few minutes.
She didn't know what came next or whether tomorrow would feel better. She didn't even know if she believed in tomorrow.
But some part of her, quiet and exhausted and still there, wanted the chance to find out.
So she stayed on the bathroom floor, her breathing slowed, matching with the erratic pulse in her veins. Then she reached for her phone, not because she had solved anything, but because she understood she could not carry the night by herself.
There was going to be a tomorrow.
It might be ugly. It might be difficult. It might ask more of her than she knew how to give.
But it was hers.
For tonight, that had to be enough.
