Elowen

Since I can remember, there are parts of my life that… I don’t have.

I know, it sounds contradictory. But it’s true.

There are days when I’m not sure if I was actually a happy child or if someone just told me that so many times I ended up believing it. Sometimes my mind goes blank when I try to remember anything before fourteen, as if a thick veil covered my childhood and only let me see just enough to keep me from asking questions.

But I always asked them.

Always…

I was always that annoying kid who wanted to know why the sky was blue, why nobody talked about my father, why there were torn-out pages in the photo albums. They told me I was imaginative. That I had vivid dreams. That I should stop digging where I shouldn’t.

And yet, something inside me kept insisting that something was missing. Like a song I recognize even though I’ve never heard it before. Like a borrowed memory from someone else.

The strange thing is that everyone seems to know more about me than I do.

My mother says I’m sensitive. My teachers think I’m smart, though sometimes distracted. My friends believe I’m the typical girl who hides too much in her own world, as if she were waiting for something to happen.

And maybe they’re right.

Because yes, I am waiting.

For him.

Kael…

My neighbor. The boy at the end of the street. The one who doesn’t talk to anyone, who always keeps his hair pushed back, the one with the mole beneath his lip, the one who looks at me with those pitch-black eyes like no one else. He doesn’t belong to this town. Not like the rest. And that’s why I can’t stop watching him. Because he seems out of place too… just like me.

He doesn’t talk to anyone, ever. He has no social media, doesn’t go to parties. He never smiles.

And I can’t stop looking at him.

I don’t know if I like him or if I’m just obsessed.

I only know that when I look at him, something in me wants to scream at him to tell me the truth. Even though I don’t know which truth. Or why my chest trembles when our eyes meet.

Once, when we were fifteen, in class, I heard him say my name under his breath. He didn’t talk to me. He just whispered it. As if testing how it sounded in his mouth. I remember it with a clarity that scares me. Since then, I haven’t been able to stop thinking about him.

Maybe I am obsessed.

Maybe I’m desperate to find something real.

Because lately everything in my life feels like a well-told lie.

Sometimes I dream that I’m someone else. That I have a different name. That I’m running from something. That I run, hide, scream names I don’t recognize. And when I wake up… my reflection seems to be waiting for me to remember.

No one believes me when I talk about it. So I stopped telling anyone.

But I think about it every day.

I know something is coming. Something that will change everything.

I feel it in my bones, in my skin.

And when it happens…

When the pieces fall, when the voices return, when the mirror no longer reflects only Elara

I’ll have the answers I’ve been searching for.