Dead Letter

5:47 AM. Cal opened her eyes and immediately counted the time left. Thirteen minutes before she had to leave for school.

Why did she have to go?

No one cared about her there. Her friends ignored her, her family was too busy with their own lives, and none of them seemed to mind when Cal stayed alone in Lewisham.

Her family still had their place in Kensington a spacious flat with quiet hallways, large windows, and furniture that always looked brand new. There, even the city noise felt distant.

Cal's flat was different.

Her room was small. The walls were thin. The morning air carried sounds from the flat next door, from the hallway, from the street below her window. There was no luxury to maintain because there was barely anything left to break.

And maybe that was why Cal never really called this place home.

She turned to her left.

The kitchen tap was dripping again. The broken radiator made a short noise before falling silent again. From the flat next door, Mr. Thompson's television was already blaring. The man was drunk almost every morning and always found a new reason to yell at anyone passing by his door.

Cal took a breath.

"I have to hold on. At least for now."

She looked at the clock beside her bed.

"Come on, Cal. You can do this."

Yes. Cal could. She definitely could.

With whatever resolve she could muster, Cal got out of bed and headed to the bathroom. Her hand turned the shower handle.

No water. She turned it again.

Once. Twice.

Still nothing.

Cal slapped the handle with her palm. The anger familiar and close rose to her throat, but she swallowed it back. Anger wouldn't make the shower work.

The small bucket in the corner of the bathroom was her only option. She carried it to the kitchen and placed it under the tap which also never really stopped dripping.

If that damn shower wouldn't give her water, at least this tap could still be forced to work.

While waiting for the bucket to fill, Cal opened the old fridge. Two packets of instant noodles remained.

Two.

That meant she'd have to ration again. She took one packet, turned on the kettle, and poured the seasoning into a bowl. As she waited for the water to boil, her mind drifted to breakfast at her family's home; cheese sandwiches, cold milk, ham, and an oak dining table big enough for twelve people.

And her? Instant noodles in a bowl that was starting to lose its colour.

So unfair.

Cal still remembered her family's words clearly when they'd dropped her off at this flat.

"You have to learn from the bottom, Callista. If you want to be a successful businesswoman like your father, your mentality must be trained," her mother had said back then.

Her tone was light and cheerful. As if she were dropping her child off at school not exiling her to the other side of the city.

Dominic, her brother, stood beside them and nodded.

He was the only person Cal still trusted.

"Yeah, Cal. Prove you can live without the Dolores name. You have to be my toughest little sister. I know you can do it." Dominic smiled. "Besides, you only have to survive three years."

Three years.

The first year hadn't been too bad. Her family still paid the rent, the bills, and her daily needs. Cal didn't even have to think about where her next meal would come from.

They just wanted her to learn to live alone.

At least, that's what Cal believed.

Until the second year began.

The payments stopped.

No long notice. No reasonable explanation. The allowance that usually came into her account never arrived again. Bills started piling up. Food supplies ran low. The small damages in the flat that she used to ignore turned into problems she couldn't afford to fix.

And for the first time, Cal truly understood the meaning of Dominic's words.

You only have to survive three years.

Cal scoffed.

Five months had passed since her family had left her in this flat.

The first two months had been the worst.

Cal cried almost every night. She didn't know how to fix a broken radiator, didn't know who to call when the kitchen tap wouldn't stop dripping, and didn't have the money to pay anyone. She'd even tried sealing the tap with duct tape hoping it would be strong enough to stop the leak. It didn't work.

The sound of dripping water eventually became part of her nights. So did Mr. Thompson's voice.

The man often shouted from his flat, sometimes over things Cal didn't even understand. Some nights, Cal woke from nightmares just from hearing his voice through the walls.

The next three months didn't give her time to cry. What little money she had left went to rent. One by one, her belongings were sold. Clothes. Electronics. Anything that still held value.

Cal had even tried to go home.

She still remembered that day. She walked without a clear direction just knowing she wanted to go back. But after several wrong turns, the streets began to look unfamiliar. She got lost before Dominic finally found her.

Dominic brought her back.

"I'll come get you again," he'd said then. "I promise."

Cal had believed him. But Dominic never returned.

No one came.

No one asked.

Slowly, Cal stopped waiting.

She learned that crying wouldn't fix the radiator. Waiting wouldn't pay the rent. Begging wouldn't make her family knock on her door. So she learned to survive in silence.

The bucket in the bathroom was only half full. Not enough to fill it but enough to wash herself. Cal took it, showered as quickly as possible, and returned to the kitchen to eat the noodles she'd prepared.

She ate standing up.

After that, she put on her worn blazer and made sure every part was properly fastened.

The blazer was second-hand. Cal had found it at a charity shop in Peckham a few weeks earlier. It was almost twice her size. She didn't know how to sew so she learned. With a needle, cheap thread from a corner shop, and a few YouTube tutorials played over and over, until her stitching looked decent enough. Not perfect but wearable.

She'd sold her old blazer weeks earlier when her rent money hadn't been enough.

Cal stared at her reflection in the mirror.

She used to cry seeing all of this.

Now, she just straightened her collar and adapted.

Adaptation didn't mean things were getting better. Adaptation, for Cal, meant she'd stopped hoping things would change.

The raven emblem on her breast pocket was starting to peel at the wing. Cal briefly thought about fixing it maybe tonight. But the thought quickly faded.

There were more important things. Like surviving, for instance.

She stared at her reflection in the mirror.

Callista Dolores. Seventeen years old. The youngest daughter of the Dolores family a name well-known enough in London to open many doors to success. But those doors were closed to Cal.

That name hadn't helped her at all.

They'd sent her here with reasons that sounded logical if spoken with the right tone.

Training her mentality.

Cal still didn't understand how living alone in a flat with a broken radiator, a leaking tap, and dwindling money was supposed to make someone a better businesswoman.

But arguing was pointless.

Cal didn't like arguing. Especially with her own family people who always made their decisions sound well-considered, even when she couldn't understand the reasoning behind them.

Cal had only ever placed her trust in one person who never made her feel that way Dominic, her brother.

Cal trusted him.

She always had.

It was to Dominic that Cal had told almost everything. About school. About things she couldn't say to anyone else. About her habit of writing quietly at night.

Even about the stories she'd never shown anyone.

Dominic always read the first few pages patiently, then said the words that made Cal smile every time she remembered them.

You're a great writer, Cal. Don't stop writing.

Cal believed that. And now she just had to prove that she could survive. Come home proud. For Dominic. And for her grandfather, whom she deeply respected.

Callista had to hold on.

The commute to school took one hour and forty-three minutes.

Cal knew the exact number because she'd timed it in her first week and never stopped timing it since. Bus to Lewisham station. Train to London Bridge. Tube north. Then a seven-minute uphill walk that left her slightly breathless and always, always late.

She wrote on the bus.

A cheap, soft-cover notebook open on her lap the kind sold in packs of three. A blue pen moving between her fingers. Its cap had long been chewed flat.

The bus was noisy.

Too crowded. The smell of damp jackets mixed with stale air and overlapping conversations.

Cal kept writing because every time the pen touched the paper, the bus felt a little farther away.

She was no longer sitting among people who didn't know her. She didn't have to think about anyone's gaze. Didn't have to be the Dolores family's daughter. Didn't have to be a good student, a strong little sister, or someone who was supposed to handle everything alone.

There, she was just a hand holding a pen and words coming one after another.

For a few minutes, that was enough.

Because in her writing, everything made sense.

And no one needed Cal to be anything other than herself.

This morning, she wrote about a woman who kept a light on in her window for someone who was never coming home.

She didn't know where the idea came from. She just wrote like someone writes when they're too tired to filter their thoughts.

She wrote until she reached the stop, then walked to school. Ravenscroft Academy sat on a hill.

The building was old. Red brick walls with climbing plants that had grown so long they'd cracked the mortar in places. Tall windows that caught the morning light. This old school stood strong and prestigious. Cal couldn't understand why her family had arranged her life like this a prestigious school, but she had to live it in poverty.

What was the point? She couldn't find an answer.

Cal walked up to the gate with her head down. Not because she was ashamed; she'd swallowed that shame long ago. She just didn't like looking up, because when she did, she saw the black sedans. Drivers opening doors. Other students stepping out in blazers that fit perfectly that weren't hemmed with a needle from a corner shop. And if she looked at them, she'd have to think about the difference. And she'd already thought about it this morning. Friends who'd pulled away since she started wearing a second-hand blazer they didn't ask, they just pulled away.

The school corridor smelled like floor polish. Blazers everywhere. Navy and gold. Voices chatting. Laughter the kind that comes from people who don't have to think about rent money.

Cal walked through the corridor. No one saw her. No one said good morning. A group of girls passed close enough for her to smell their perfume. One of them glanced in Cal's direction. Her gaze went right through Cal, then she rolled her eyes and kept walking as if Cal were just a strange creature unworthy of greeting.

Cal went to her locker at the end of the east corridor, next to the noisy radiator. Swapped her notebook for her English Literature textbook and headed to class.

She sat in the fourth row. Third seat from the window.

The seat no one chose because the window let in a draught in winter and glare in summer. Cal chose it because the window meant she could look outside when the room got too loud. Today the sky was grey like it was mocking her miserable life.

Mr. Aldric was already at the front, organising papers. He looked up when Cal sat down.

"Morning, Callista."

"Morning, Mr. Aldric."

Mr. Aldric was the only one who used Cal's full name. Cal had once asked him why, and according to Mr. Aldric, her name was beautiful and he didn't want to shorten something beautiful. Cal never told him what that meant to her.

She opened her notebook. The woman with the light in the window was still there, waiting in blue ink.

Cal uncapped her pen.

And for a moment, she wasn't at Ravenscroft. She wasn't the girl in the second-hand blazer. She wasn't a Dolores who didn't deserve the name. She was just writing just a pen, paper, and the quiet act of pouring out words and designing her own world.

The bell rang.

She capped her pen. Closed the notebook. Held it against her chest one second longer than necessary.

Then the day began.