The summer of their fourteenth year had settled over Northwood like a physical presence. It wasn’t a gentle warmth but a thick, suffocating blanket of heat and humidity that pressed down on the rooftops and baked the asphalt roads until they shimmered with a watery haze. The world moved slower, drenched in a golden, syrupy light that seemed to drain the energy from everything. The constant, droning chorus of cicadas was the soundtrack to those long, languid afternoons, a sound that drove most children indoors, seeking sanctuary in the dim, cool caves of their homes. For fourteen-year-old Lily and her inseparable best friend, Jake, the only tolerable refuge was the small, self-contained universe of Lily’s bedroom.

That room was a sacred space, a living museum of their shared childhood and a quiet battleground for the changes that were beginning to stir within them. One wall was still dominated by a faded, sun-bleached unicorn, a relic of a not-so-distant past of make-believe. The opposing wall told a different story, plastered with glossy magazine cutouts of a brooding rock star and a shelf crammed with the dog-eared spines of paperback novels. These were new worlds, filled with heroines who suffered tragic romances and navigated a complex adult landscape. Her bed, a sea of muted lavender and cream, was the centerpiece, its floral pattern worn soft and thin in the middle from years of restless sleep and clandestine reading sessions.

Jake, in stark contrast, was a creature of simple, tangible realities. His world was one of satisfying clicks and logical systems. All lanky limbs and restless energy, he was sprawled on the floor, meticulously constructing a complex, multi-winged spaceship from a chaotic pile of LEGOs. The sharp snap of two bricks connecting was a sound of order and creation, a small victory against the formless, oppressive heat. His world was one of cause and effect, a stark difference from the confusing, formless changes he was beginning to sense in himself, and most acutely, in his best friend.

Lily was perched on the edge of her bed, not reading or drawing, just staring out the window. A strange, heavy cramping had settled low in her belly, a dull, persistent ache that was different from hunger or the stitch in her side from running. It was a deep, internal throb, a feeling of pressure that made her feel bloated and strangely hollow. She kept shifting her weight, trying to find a position that would ease the discomfort, but it was a stubborn, unwelcome guest.

“You gonna just sit there and sigh all day?” Jake asked, not looking up from his work.

“I don’t feel good, Jake,” Lily mumbled, her voice lacking its usual energy. “It’s not my stomach. It’s ... lower down. And I feel ... weird.”

He finally looked up, his blue eyes focusing on her with genuine concern. “Maybe you’re getting sick. Like, a stomach bug or something.”

“Maybe,” she said, but the word lacked conviction. It didn’t feel like a cold. This felt more ... internal. More fundamental.

She stood up, intending to go to the bathroom for the fourth time that hour. As she took a step, a peculiar sensation registered, a slick, unexpected wetness between her legs that had nothing to do with sweat. She froze. It wasn’t the feeling of needing to urinate. It was just ... there. A silent, seeping presence.

She walked stiffly to the small bathroom and closed the door, the soft click of the latch sounding unnaturally loud. Inside, she pulled down her shorts and underwear with trembling hands. What she saw made her heart seize in her chest. There, in the center of the white cotton, was a smear of dark, shocking rust-red. A small, thick clot of it was nestled in the fibers. Blood. She was bleeding. From there.

Panic, sharp and metallic, flooded her mouth. She was hurt. Something inside her was broken. Torn. Was she dying? Her mind, a fertile ground for dramatic plots, immediately leaped to the most catastrophic conclusion. She frantically wiped, but the paper came away stained. She stuffed a thick wad of toilet paper into her underwear, a makeshift plug, and pulled her shorts back up, her movements jerky.

When she emerged from the bathroom, it was as if she were a different person. The girl who had gone in, merely annoyed and uncomfortable, had been replaced by a pale, trembling specter. The color had drained completely from her face, leaving her skin the ashen, waxy hue of old candle wax. Her eyes, normally a bright, curious hazel, were now wide and dark with a terror so profound it seemed to swallow the light in the room. Her movements were stiff, robotic, as if she were a marionette with its strings cut. She stood just inside the doorway, one hand clutching the opposite elbow, a gesture of self-preservation that was both instinctual and heartbreaking.

Jake looked up from his LEGO Zorgon destroyer, the half-finished wing clutched in his hand. He saw her, and the world of plastic spaceships and imaginary battles instantly evaporated. The plastic piece fell from his fingers, clattering onto the rug with a sound like brittle bones. “Lily? What is it?” he asked, his voice tight with sudden alarm. “You look like you saw a ghost.”

She couldn’t say it. The words were too big, too ugly, too monstrous to be set loose in the familiar, safe space of her bedroom. They felt like they would burn her tongue if she even tried to form them. She just shook her head, a frantic, jerky motion, her lower lip trembling violently, a betrayal of the composure she was desperately trying to hold onto.

He was on his feet in an instant, crossing the room in three long, lanky strides. He stopped in front of her, his own concern growing exponentially in the face of her silent, shaking dread. “Seriously, what’s wrong? Did you cut yourself? Did you fall?” His eyes scanned her body, looking for the familiar evidence of an injury a scrape on her knee, a cut on her hand, a bump on her head. Something he could see, something he could understand, something he could fix.

She hesitated, her gaze dropping from his face and locking onto the worn floorboards as if they held the only answer she could give. “Inside,” she whispered, the word a choked, broken thing.

Jake’s brow furrowed in complete confusion. “Inside? What do you mean, inside? You have a cut in your mouth? Did you bite your cheek while you were in there?”

She shook her head again, more forcefully this time, her cheeks burning with a mortification that was almost as powerful as her fear. She couldn’t form the words. How could she possibly explain this to him? To anyone? It was a secret shame, a brokenness that felt too private and too horrifying to share.

Seeing her utter distress, the sheer, unadulterated panic in her eyes, Jake’s tone softened. His own fear for her was eclipsed by a fierce, protective empathy that welled up from deep inside him. He was her best friend. They had shared everything since they were five scraped knees patched with cartoon band-aids, broken toys mourned and buried in the backyard with solemn ceremony, secrets whispered under a blanket fort with a flashlight as their only sun. He wasn’t going to let this new, terrifying thing come between them. “Hey,” he said gently, his voice low and steady as he reached out and touched her arm. His touch was warm, grounding. “It’s okay. You can tell me. Whatever it is. I promise.”

The simple, unwavering promise was her undoing. It was the key that unlocked the dam of her terror. Tears welled in her eyes, spilling over and tracking hot, salty paths down her pale cheeks. The dam broke. “I’m bleeding, Jake,” she sobbed, the words tumbling out in a rush of shame and fear. “I’m bleeding from my ... my vagina. And I don’t know why. Am I sick? Am I ... am I going to die?”

Jake stared, his mind reeling, trying to process the information. He was fourteen. He knew the basic, sanitized version of the birds and the bees from a strained, awkward conversation with his dad a year ago a talk that had involved a lot of hemming and hawing and a vague reference to “when a man and a woman love each other very much.” He’d also sat through a clinical, diagram-filled health class at school, where sterile drawings of reproductive systems were projected onto a screen. But this was real. This was Lily, his Lily, and she was crying and scared and convinced she was dying. The clinical diagrams and his dad’s awkward explanations felt utterly useless, like trying to put out a forest fire with a teacup.

He remembered his mom complaining sometimes, being irritable and retreating to her bedroom with a hot water bottle. He remembered seeing a box in the bathroom closet. “Like ... a period?” he repeated, trying to connect the dots in his panicked brain.

Lily looked at him, her tear-streaked face a mask of confusion and terror. “A what?”

“A period,” he said, a little more confidently now that he had a label for it, a word from the adult world that might explain this madness. “My mom gets them. Sometimes she gets ... cranky. And she has these ... things.” He struggled to remember the word his mom had used. “Pads? Tampons? They’re in the bathroom cabinet. She says it’s a ‘girl thing’ and I should just leave her alone.”

The phrase “girl thing” didn’t bring much comfort. It sounded like an exclusionary club she hadn’t asked to join and didn’t understand the rules for. “But why?” she whispered, the question full of genuine, desperate bewilderment. “Why would girls just ... bleed? For no reason? It doesn’t make any sense. It’s broken.”