Chapter 18: Breaking

The room had shrunk. The single lamp threw long shadows across the desk where paper lay scattered. Some sheets crumpled into tight balls. Others torn in half, then torn again. The wastebasket had overflowed hours ago.

A hand picked up the pen. Fingers trembled around it, knuckles white from gripping too hard. A cramp was building, shooting up from hand to wrist. Set it down. The plastic clattered against the wood. Picked it up again.

The blank page waited. Pen tip touched paper and the hand shook so violently the first word came out jagged, broken across the white. Then the second. A full sentence before eyes could focus enough to read it back.

Face twisted. The words stared up like a stranger’s handwriting. Wrong. All of it wrong.

Scratched through them with strokes that tore the paper beneath. The sound of pen against paper became something violent. Crumpled it in a fist, the paper making small protests as it compressed. Threw it toward the basket. It bounced off the rim and rolled under the bed to join the others.

New page. Breathing had gone shallow. A memory flashed, unbidden. Laughter at something once said, head thrown back, eyes squeezed shut with joy. A throat closed. Impossible to breathe around it.

Another try. Different words this time.

Worse. Too formal. Like they were strangers. Like they hadn’t grown up in the same house, shared the same bathroom, fought over the remote. A tear fell. Then another. No stopping them.

Tore the page in half. The sound was sharp in the quiet room. Then tore it again. Let the pieces flutter down like snow that would never melt.

A push back from the desk. The chair scraped against the floor. Fell backward onto the bed. The ceiling had a water stain in the corner that might have been a cloud or might have been a face or might have been nothing at all. Stared at it until vision blurred and the edges began to pulse.

The phone sat on the nightstand, screen dark. A rectangle of glass and metal that contained every person who’d been pushed away. A hand reached for it, moving through air that felt thick as water. A thumb scrolled through the contacts. The names blurred together. Stopped at one.

The thumb hovered over the call button. The green icon glowed softly in the dim light.

Put the phone down.

The silence pressed against eardrums.

Picked it up again. Scrolled past that name to someone else. Someone who might actually help.

Pressed call before the brain could catch up and stop it.

It rang once. The sound seemed too loud. Twice. Heart hammered against ribs. Three times.

“Hello?”

“Hey.” The voice came out rough, unused. “It’s me. I need your help. I don’t know what to do.”

The apartment in Brooklyn held its breath.

A few days had passed since that evening with Lola. The spot on the couch where she’d sat looked the same as every other cushion, but Emily could still see her there when she closed her eyes. The coffee table where voices had gotten louder. The door that had slammed so hard the frame had shuddered.

The bedroom curtains were drawn. They’d been drawn for so long Emily had lost count of the days. Time had become something that happened to other people. The room existed in permanent twilight, a gray space where morning and evening blended into one continuous ache.

Emily lay curled on her side in bed, knees drawn up to her chest, Mr. Hoppers pressed against her. The bunny’s fur was matted where she’d been gripping him. She was wearing the same t-shirt she’d worn yesterday. The gray one with the hole near the hem. The fabric had gone soft with washing but now it clung to her skin, damp with sweat she couldn’t seem to shake.

The sheets smelled stale. She knew this. The knowledge sat somewhere in the back of her mind like a fact she’d memorized for a test she’d never take. But the thought of getting up, of moving, of existing in any way that required effort felt like being asked to swim across an ocean while her pockets filled with stones.

Her phone lit up on the nightstand. The screen glowed in the dimness. A message from Sophie. Then another from Sarah. She watched the light without moving her head, without reaching for it. Just watched it fade as the screen went dark again.

In the living room, the easel stood where it had been for four days. The canvas stretched tight over the frame, white and untouched. Pristine. Mocking her with its blankness. Emily’s paints sat beside it in neat rows. Sophie had organized them when she thought Emily wasn’t looking, arranging the tubes by color family. Warm colors on the left. Cool colors on the right. As if order might somehow translate into the ability to care.

It hadn’t.

Emily stared at the wall. The paint was an off-white that the landlord probably called something fancy to make it sound better than it was. There was a small crack near the ceiling that branched outward, spreading like veins under skin.

Lola’s voice played in her head on a loop. The words had worn grooves into her brain from repetition, from being played over and over in the dark.

If this all falls apart, don’t come crying to us.

Maybe if Em had married someone different.

Underneath Lola’s voice, something older lived. A voice Emily thought she’d killed, thought she’d buried when she transitioned. A voice that sounded like her own throat but spoke with someone else’s poison.

You’re nothing. You were nothing then and you’re nothing now.

The voice brought memories with it. Being ten years old in the boys’ locker room, someone laughing at the way Lars moved. Being fourteen and hearing Dad say “my son” and feeling sick. Being sixteen and catching her reflection and not recognizing the person staring back.

You convinced everyone otherwise. You painted over Lars and called it Emily and thought no one would notice the cracks showing through.

Nausea rolled through her stomach. Her chest tightened until breathing hurt. Sophie would leave. Sophie would realize the truth and leave and find someone better, someone who wasn’t broken, someone whose family didn’t say cruel things at weddings. The image of Sophie packing her bags played in Emily’s mind like a scene from a movie she’d already seen.

Mr. Hoppers’ fur was worn thin where she gripped him. One of his button eyes hung loose on its thread. She ran her thumb over it again and again, the small circle of plastic moving under her touch.

The bedroom door opened a crack. Pale light from the hallway cut across the floor like a knife.

“Em?” Sophie’s voice was soft. The careful softness people used around broken things. “I brought you some toast. And tea. The peppermint kind you like.”

Emily didn’t move. Didn’t turn over. The wall in front of her had become her entire world. Just stared at it and the crack that looked like a river delta, spreading outward, going nowhere.

“I’m fine,” she said to the wall. “Just tired.”

Sophie set the plate and mug on the nightstand. Emily could hear her standing there in the doorway, could feel her presence like pressure against her skin. Sophie was trying to decide whether to push or retreat. The hesitation hung in the air between them.

“Do you want me to open the curtains? Just a little?”

“No.”

Silence. Then the soft sound of Sophie backing out. The door closed halfway. Sophie never closed it all the way anymore. Leaving it open meant she could hear if Emily called out. Could get to her fast if something went wrong.

Emily listened to her footsteps fade down the hall. Heard the distant sound of the TV turning on, the murmur of voices from some show Sophie wasn’t watching, was just using for company, for noise to fill the apartment that had gone so quiet.

The tea sat on the nightstand and slowly got cold.

Sophie tried everything.

She made Emily’s favorite foods. Thai takeout from the place on Flatbush that used too much basil and somehow made it work. The smell filled the apartment, spicy and sweet and alive. Pizza from the spot with the coal oven that left char marks on the crust. Chocolate croissants from the French bakery that cost too much but Sophie bought them anyway, brought them home in a white paper bag that she set on the nightstand next to the cold tea from that morning.

Emily took a few bites of each. Thanked Sophie quietly. Her voice small and distant. Left the rest.

Sophie’s hands shook as she cleared the plates later, scraping most of the food into the trash. She pressed her palms flat against the counter to steady them. Another meal rejected. Another attempt failed.

She suggested going for a walk. Just around the block. Just to get some air, to see the sky, to remember there was a world outside these walls.