Chapter 1- The Loudest Mornings
Selene hated Sundays.
Not because they were quiet, but because they were never quiet.
Sunday was the day her parents remembered they were still married and used their voices like weapons to prove why they shouldn't be.
The kettle was screaming in the kitchen.
The radio played two songs at once, one from her father's phone, the other from her mother’s ancient speaker.
Someone dropped a glass.
Someone cursed.
And Selene, as always, stood in the middle of it all, too old to pretend she didn’t understand, too young to be anyone’s savior.
---
"Stop yelling in front of her!"
"Then stop lying in front of her!"
She couldn’t remember the last Sunday that didn’t start with those words.
Selene clutched her notebook tighter, her fingers smudging the ink of a poem she’d started writing in bed.
“They keep asking me to pick a side,
but I was born standing in the middle.”
She tried to read her own lines again.
But the noise bled through the walls of her thoughts, staining everything she tried to keep clean inside her head.
---
"Selene, tell your father he’s being ridiculous."
"No, tell your mother she’s acting like a victim again."
They didn’t look at her when they said it.
Just hurled her name like a baton tossed between boxers in a ring.
She wanted to disappear.
No—
She wanted to be seen.
Not as a messenger or a peacekeeper.
But as a girl. A daughter. A whole person with her own bruises from loving them both.
---
By the time the shouting faded, the house was still trembling.
Selene didn’t cry. She rarely did anymore.
She just stood in the hallway, barefoot, blinking at the cracked family photo on the shelf, her parents on either side of her, all three smiling like strangers.
---
Out in the world, she seemed fine.
People called her mature. Balanced. The “good girl.”
But inside, she was unraveling.
Piece by piece.
Quietly.
Loudly.
Just like her Sundays.
