Chapter 1
Ashton
“And how did this week go, Ashton?”
The voice was soft, intentionally level, but it still felt like a hook catching in my ribs. I didn’t look up immediately. Instead, I focused on the blurred edges of my black sneakers against the plush rug of the office. The rug was a deep, clinical navy, the kind of color designed to be calming but which always felt like a heavy shroud to me.
Black. The color of my shoes. The color of shadows. The color of things that aren’t meant to be seen.
I finally dragged my gaze up to meet Dr. Hillroy’s. He’d been my shadow-bearer for two years now. Two years of Wednesdays at 4:00 PM. Long enough that the walls of this room didn’t feel like they were closing in to crush the air out of my lungs the second the door clicked shut. Long enough that my heart stayed at a steady rhythm instead of hammering a frantic SOS against my sternum.
Dr. Hillroy—Felix, as he’d been trying to get me to call him for six months—was perched in his leather chair. He was spinning a Rubik’s Cube between his fingers. He didn’t just turn the sides; he danced with it. It was a blur of plastic clicks—clack, slide, snap—that filled the silence I was so prone to creating. It was a language we both spoke. When the words wouldn’t come, the plastic gears did the talking for me.
He didn’t look like a doctor. He looked like a guy who had just stepped off a basketball court or out of a tech startup. Blue Nike hoodie, scruffy beard that never quite met a razor, and those hazel-brown eyes that shifted toward green when the sunlight hit them through the window. Those eyes were the problem. They didn’t just look at me; they dismantled me. They saw the cracks. I spent the last few years of my life trying to spackle over with silence and oversized hoodies.
I forced a breath out, trying to loosen the knot in my throat. “I was all good, Dr. Hillroy.”
The lie tasted like copper, sharp and metallic on the back of my tongue. I wasn’t “all good.” I was a frantic mess of nerves held together by a thin layer of skin and a very specific, rigid routine.
He chuckled, a low, warm sound that didn’t feel like a mockery. “After two years, Ashton, I think we’re past the formalities. It’s Felix.”
I nodded, my hand twitching toward the wooden side table. There was another cube there. My anchor. During the first three months of therapy, I hadn’t spoken a single word. Not one. I’d just sat there, my body revolting—chest tight, nausea crawling up my throat like a physical hand, palms so slick with sweat I could barely hold a pen. Felix hadn’t pushed. He hadn’t demanded the story of the incident or asked me to point to where it hurt. He’d just pushed a puzzle toward me.
Predictable. Logical. Safe.
I grabbed the cube now, the familiar texture grounding me. Right face clockwise. Upper face counter-clockwise. My fingers moved on instinct, the muscle memory overriding the static in my brain.
“Well,” I said, my voice sounding thin even to my own ears. “I start university next week. Boston U.”
Felix hummed, a small sound of encouragement. He knew what that meant. He knew the weight of it, the sheer gravity of stepping out from behind the fortress of my all-boys high school.
“My parents are… they’re thrilled,” I whispered, staring at a patch of blue plastic on the cube. “In their heads, this is the finish line. They think I’ve crossed over some invisible border. That I’m finally normal again.”
The word normal felt like a slap. I’d never be normal. You don’t go through what I went through and come out the other side the same person. You come out haunted by your own life, inhabiting a shell that everyone else expects to function perfectly.
“And what do you think, Ashton?”
“I think I’m terrified,” I admitted, the honesty bleeding out of me before I could stop it. The honesty was usually what got me in trouble. “I’m going to be around… girls. Women.” I paused, the embarrassment burning hot in my cheeks, making my skin feel two sizes too small. My voice dipped, losing its edge. “I checked the faculty list. Most of my instructors are male. I spent three hours yesterday cross-referencing the engineering department’s staff photos against their LinkedIn profiles. Just to be sure. Just to know whose voice I’ll be hearing.”
Felix watched me, his expression softening into that look of professional empathy that usually made me want to bolt for the door. “That’s a heavy load to carry into a first week, Ashton. But it makes sense. After everything, the all-boys school was your fortress. It was a controlled environment. Moving back into the co-ed world feels like taking down the walls while the storm is still blowing.”
“The walls are the only thing keeping me upright,” I muttered. I finished the cube. Six solid faces of color. Order restored. Only, I couldn’t solve the mess inside my own head that easily. “I know my strategies. I have my noise-canceling headphones. I have my devices. I know how to stay in the back of the room to avoid people.”
“You don’t lose your progress just because the scenery changes,” Felix said gently. “You’re allowed to take up space, Ashton. Even in a room full of people who don’t know your story. You’re a student. You’re an engineer. You aren’t just a survivor.”
I nodded, though I didn’t believe him. To the world, if they ever found out, I’d always be the “Incident.”
The session ended like they all did—quietly. No dramatic breakthroughs, no sobbing on the floor. Just a steady, low-level hum of survival.
When I stepped out onto the streets of Boston, the city hit me like a physical blow to the chest. It was too loud. Too bright. The afternoon sun reflected off the glass skyscrapers, stabbing at my eyes. The air smelled of exhaust, expensive coffee, and the overwhelming scent of too many people crowded into one space. I pulled my hood up instinctively, the heavy fleece acting like a shield, and ducked my head. I walked with my shoulders hunched, counting my steps, making myself as small as humanly possible so I wouldn’t brush against a stranger.
I made it to my car—a dark gray sedan that was the automotive equivalent of a beige wall. My parents had offered me a Corvette for my eighteenth. A bright, screaming red ‘look at me’ car. I’d almost had a panic attack just looking at the keys. Why would I want to be a target? I didn’t want to be looked at. I wanted to fade into the asphalt, to be hidden in the machine.
The drive home was a blur of traffic and the heavy, rhythmic beat of a lo-fi playlist designed to drown out the noise of my own thoughts.
I pulled into the long, gated driveway of the house I grew up in—a sprawling estate that was too big, too cold, and far too empty most of the time. My parents were likely at some event or corporate meeting, performing the role of the perfect, successful couple.
But today, the smell hit me the second I pushed through the heavy oak front door.
Spice. Warmth. Home.
“Hey, Aunty Simi!” I called out, my voice finally finding some real strength now that the door was locked behind me.
She was at the stove in the kitchen, a space that usually looked like a sterile showroom but now felt like a living thing. Simi was a whirlwind of color—a bright, patterned apron tied over her clothes, her box braids swinging as she stirred a pot that looked big enough to feed a small army. She’d been our house manager since I was six, but she was more than that. She was the one who held me when I couldn’t stop shaking after the police left. She was the one who didn’t ask questions.
She turned around, her face breaking into a wide, gap-toothed beam that could light up the entire dark house. “Hey, my boy! Look at you. You look like you need a bowl of this gumbo before the wind blows you away. You’re getting thin again, Ashton.”
Simi was from Barbados, and her accent was thick and comforting, a rhythmic melody that always calmed the static in my brain.
I walked over and wrapped my arms around her. It was a calculated risk, a physical contact I only allowed with her. She smelled like thyme and garlic and laundry detergent. Safety. She was one of the few women in the world I could touch without my skin crawling, without the phantom memory of her hands making me want to scrub my flesh raw with steel wool.
“Thanks, Simi,” I whispered into her shoulder, letting the tension drain out of my neck for a split second.
“I know, I know,” she patted my arm with a heavy, steady hand. “Sit. Eat. You start that big school soon, you need your strength for all that brainwork. You can’t build bridges on an empty stomach.”
I ate in the kitchen, listening to her talk about the neighborhood gossip and the rising price of okra, letting her voice wash over me like a balm. She didn’t expect me to be “normal.” She just expected me to eat. But eventually, the social battery drained, the flickering light of human interaction dying out. I retreated to my room.
My room was my sanctuary, located in the quietest wing of the house. The walls weren’t painted; they were covered. Every square inch was draped in graphic art, architectural sketches, and charcoal doodles I’d done over the years. There were bridges that defied gravity and cities made of geometric shapes. Lines and colors overlapped in a chaotic, beautiful mess. It was my internal world laid bare—the only place where I didn’t have to be “solved.”
My mother hated it. She thought it was “cluttered” and “unrefined.” She wanted me to have a room that looked like a magazine spread—clean lines, minimalist furniture, no personality. To her, the art was a mess to be cleaned. To me, it was the only thing keeping my soul anchored to the ground.
I collapsed onto my bed, the silence of the room finally allowing my heart rate to settle into a resting rhythm. I pulled out my phone, scrolling mindlessly until a notification light blinked at the top of the screen.
Subject: Boston University – Engineering Orientation Details
My stomach did a slow, sickening roll. I opened it, my eyes scanning the text so fast they blurred into a white haze.
...Welcome to the Department of Civil and Technical Engineering...
I read it three times. The reality of it started to sink in. I wasn’t just Ashton, the kid who stayed in his room. I was a student. I was going to build things. I wanted to create digital frameworks, AI databases—systems that were logical and followed rules. Systems that helped people without needing to touch them.
It was a prestigious program. Brutal. Competitive. And I’d earned it. No legacy admission, no parental bribes to clear the way. Just me and my brain.
I set the phone down on my chest and stared up at the ceiling, at a particular sketch I’d pinned there of a bridge that seemed to lead into a bank of clouds. It was a bridge to nowhere. Or maybe it was a bridge to everywhere.
The fear was there, a cold, heavy weight in my gut. But for the first time in two years, there was something else underneath it. A tiny, flickering spark of something I hadn’t felt since before the headlines broke my world apart.
Hope.
Maybe I wouldn’t be the “broken” kid there. Maybe, in a sea of thousands of students, I could just be another guy with a backpack and a dream. Maybe I’d find people who were wired differently, too. People who didn’t see a victim when they looked at me.
The “incident” had stolen my voice, my confidence, and my sense of safety. But as I lay there in the quiet of my art-covered walls, I realized it hadn’t stolen my future.
Not yet.
I closed my eyes, the smell of Simi’s gumbo still clinging to my hoodie, and for the first time in a long time, I didn’t dream of the dark. I dreamt of the city and my future in changing the world.
It felt like a lie. But it was a beautiful one. And for tonight, that was enough.
