Amy's POV

The final bell was the best sound I had heard all day.

I packed up my things faster than everyone else, keeping my head down as the classroom filled with the scraping of chairs and the noise of students spilling into the corridors. I didn't want to talk to anyone. I didn't want to be looked at. I just wanted to get out.

"Hey, wait up!" Lia's voice caught me just as I stepped into the hallway. She jogged to my side, slightly out of breath, her bag bouncing on her shoulder. "You move fast for someone so small."

"I'm not that small," I muttered.

"You're tiny, and that's okay." She linked her arm through mine before I could protest. "Come on. We're taking the bus together."

I opened my mouth to say I was fine on my own, but she was already pulling me along and honestly I didn't have the energy to argue.

Mia caught up with us at the front gate, slightly out of breath and carrying what looked like three textbooks she hadn't bothered to put in her bag.

"You two were really going to leave without me," she said flatly.

"We literally waited two minutes," Lia replied.

"Two minutes is a long time, Lia."

I found myself smiling without meaning to.

We said goodbye to Mia at the bus stop closest to her street, and then it was just Lia and me for the rest of the ride. She talked the whole way, about Mrs Rodriguez, about how Marcus had somehow charmed his way out of a second detention, about a series she had been watching that she was convinced I needed to see. I mostly listened, giving short answers when she asked me things directly, and she didn't seem to mind. She just kept going, filling the silence like it was second nature to her.

It was strange being around someone who didn't need me to perform or explain myself. Who just talked, and let me exist beside her without making it a big deal.

Strange, but not unwelcome.

We got off at our stop and walked the short distance to our street. The evening air was cooler than I expected and I pulled my hoodie tighter around myself.

"Same time tomorrow?" Lia asked when we reached the point where our paths split.

"Sure," I said, and I almost meant it.

She grinned like I had said something far more exciting than sure, waved, and disappeared through her front door.

I stood on the pavement for a moment longer than necessary, staring at nothing in particular. Then I turned and walked into the house.

.......

Mark wasn't home yet.

The house was quiet in that heavy way it got when he was absent not peaceful, just waiting. I dropped my bag by the stairs, went to the kitchen and started on dinner without being asked. It was better to have it ready. Less to answer for.

I was halfway through chopping onions when the doorbell rang.

I froze.

Mark had told me more than once not to open the door to anyone. I wiped my hands on a dish towel and went to the window first, pulling the curtain back just enough to see the front step.

Lia. And beside her, a woman I didn't recognise warm-faced, with Lia's same blonde hair and a foil-covered dish balanced in both hands. And behind them, hands in his pockets, looking like he'd rather be anywhere else on earth, Leo.

I let the curtain fall.

The doorbell rang again.

I stood there for a second, weighing my options. Mark wasn't back yet. They were just neighbours. Lia had been nothing but kind to me. And that woman was carrying food.

I opened the door.

"Amy!" Lia's face broke into a wide smile. "I told you she'd answer," she said to no one in particular.

"Hi, sweetheart." The woman beside her smiled, warm and unhurried, like she had all the time in the world. "I'm Sandra, Lia's mom. I wanted to come say welcome to the neighbourhood properly." She held out the dish. "I made cookies. They're still warm."

I looked at the dish, then at her face. There was something about her a kind of steadiness that made it hard to stay guarded.

"Thank you," I said, taking it carefully. "Please, come in."

Sandra stepped inside first, then Lia. Leo followed last, ducking slightly as he came through the doorway even though he didn't need to, his eyes doing a slow sweep of the room like he was cataloguing it.

"Lovely place," Sandra said, settling onto the sofa like she'd been invited a hundred times before.

Leo dropped into an armchair and said nothing. He was looking at the wall.

"Sorry about him," Lia whispered, appearing at my elbow.

I nodded and set the cookies on the table, my eyes drifting to the front window every few minutes without meaning to. Mark. If he came back and found people in the house.

"Are you okay?" Lia asked quietly.

"Fine," I said. "Just... my brother should be home soon. I wasn't expecting."

"We won't stay long," Sandra said from the sofa, as if she had heard. "I just wanted to put a face to the neighbours."

Ten minutes passed. Then fifteen. The conversation moved easily between Sandra and Lia about the neighbourhood, about school, about a neighbour down the road who apparently had the best garden on the street. I answered when spoken to and kept half an eye on the front door.

Leo, for his part, said almost nothing. He had picked up a small decorative stone from the side table and was turning it over in his hand absentmindedly, looking thoroughly bored.

Mark. If he came home...

Then the front door opened.

My stomach dropped.

Mark stepped in, loosening his tie, and stopped when he saw the room full of people he had never met.

For a terrible second, nobody spoke.

Then Mark smiled.

It didn't reach his eyes.

"I didn't know we had company," he said, his voice smooth and pleasant. He looked at me just for a moment, just a flicker and in that look was everything he wasn't saying. Every single word of it.

My throat tightened.

"I'm Sandra, your neighbour," Sandra said, standing to shake his hand. "I hope you don't mind I wanted to welcome you both to the street. I brought cookies."

"Of course," Mark said, shaking her hand with a warmth that would have fooled anyone who didn't know him. "That's very kind. I'm Mark, Amy's brother." He turned the same easy smile on Lia, then on Leo. "Friends from school?"

"My daughter and nephew," Sandra said. "Lia and Leo."

Mark nodded pleasantly. He sat down, crossed one leg over the other, and joined the conversation like he had been there all along. Asked Sandra how long she had lived on the street. Laughed at the right moments. Said all the right things.

I sat across from him and could barely breathe.

Every time his eyes passed over me casually, briefly, the way you glance at a piece of furniture, I felt the weight of what was coming settle a little heavier on my chest.

Leo was watching me.

I noticed it without meaning to the way his gaze had shifted from bored indifference to something quieter, more focused. Like he had caught something in my face that didn't add up. I looked away before he could decide what to do with it.

When Sandra finally announced they were leaving, Mark stood and walked them to the door himself, charming and gracious to the very end. Lia squeezed my arm on the way past and mouthed see you tomorrow. Leo said nothing, but at the threshold he glanced back at me, it was quick, and unreadable before following his aunt outside.

Mark closed the door.

The smile dropped off his face like it had never been there.

I stood very still.

He looked at me for a long moment. Then he said, "I'm ordering food. You don't need to cook tonight," and walked upstairs.

Just like that.

No raised voice, no belt pulled from its loops. Nothing.

I stayed rooted to the spot long after his footsteps had faded down the hallway above me. I didn't trust it. I didn't trust the quiet, or his even tone, or the fact that nothing had happened. With Mark, nothing happening was sometimes worse than something happening. At least when I knew what was coming, I could prepare myself.

This.... this I didn't know what to do with.

I went back to the kitchen, turned off the stove, and sat at the table. I peeled back the foil on Sandra's cookies.

They were still warm. Soft in the middle, slightly crisp at the edges the kind that took actual effort to make.

I ate one slowly, alone in the quiet kitchen, and tried not to think about how long it had been since anyone had brought me something just to be kind.

I had almost fallen asleep when the knock came.

Three raps. Slow and deliberate.

I was already sitting up before the second one landed, my heart slamming against my ribs. The room was dark. The takeout boxes were still on the counter downstairs. Everything was quiet in the way that meant nothing good.

"Amy."

I pulled my knees to my chest and said nothing.

The handle turned, then the door swung open.

I had locked it this time. I was sure I had locked it. But the lock on my door had never been something Mark couldn't get around when he decided he wanted to.

He stepped inside.

"No," I said. The word came out small and cracked but it came out. "Please. No."

For a moment he just looked at me in the dark. Then something shifted in his face.

He crossed the room in three steps.

I fought. I always fought even though I knew it only ever made things worse because the alternative was lying still, and pretending I was somewhere else and I couldn't do that tonight, not after Sandra's cookies and Lia's arm linked through mine and the strange, dangerous feeling that maybe something in my life could be different.

So I fought.

Trigger Warning***

Amy's POV

He made me pay for it, for fighting.

The belt came off with a sound I had memorised without meaning to that particular snap of leather pulling free from the loops. I curled into myself and took it, counting the seconds the way I always did, the way that made time feel like something I had control over even when everything else had been stripped from me.

When it was over he left without a word.

I lay on my side in the dark and breathed through the pain, slow and deliberate, until my heartbeat came back down to something manageable. The welts across my back and legs burned. I didn't cry. I had stopped crying a long time ago, tears only ever made me feel worse and they changed nothing.

I stared at the ceiling until the darkness outside the window began to soften into grey.

Then I got up.

.......

Getting dressed took longer than usual. I moved carefully, choosing a loose hoodie and the baggiest pair of sweatpants I owned coverage, always coverage, and pulled my hair into a knot without looking in the mirror. I already knew what I would see and I didn't need the reminder.

I went downstairs.

Mark was already gone. No note, which wasn't unusual. What was unusual was the kitchen counter bare. No lunch money. No bus fare. I went upstairs and opened the drawer where I kept the small amount of savings I had been putting aside for months, loose notes folded inside an old envelope.

It was empty.

I stood there for a moment, staring at the empty drawer, and felt something cold move through me. He had gone through my room. He had found it and taken every single note without leaving so much as a coin.

I closed the drawer carefully, the way you close things when you don't trust yourself to do it with feeling.

Fine, I would walk. Not like I had any other choice.

It wasn't that far. I had done it before. I picked up my bag, ate the last of Sandra's cookies standing at the counter, they were stale now but I ate them anyway and stepped out into the early morning.

.......

I had been walking for about ten minutes, arms folded against the morning chill, eyes on the pavement, when I heard the car slow down beside me.

I didn't look up.

"Amy."

Lia's voice. I looked up.

It was a sleek black car idling at the kerb, window rolled down, Lia leaning across the passenger seat with a small frown on her face. In the driver's seat, expression unreadable as always, was Leo.

Of course it was.

"What are you doing walking?" Lia asked.

"Getting exercise," I said.

"It's seven in the morning and it's cold. Get in."

"I'm fine..."

"Amy. Get in the car."

I looked down the road ahead of me, calculated how much further I had to go, and weighed it against the look on Lia's face. She wasn't going to drive away. I knew that much about her already.

I got in.

The car was warm and smelled faintly of cologne Leo's, that was his scent. I buckled my seatbelt and fixed my eyes on the window.

"Good morning to you too, Clumsy," Leo said from the front, pulling back onto the road.

I said nothing.

"Wow. Not even a glare today? You must be really tired."

I watched a line of houses pass outside the window and kept my mouth shut.

"Leo," Lia said, her voice carrying a warning.

"I'm just saying.."

"I know what you're doing, and I'm asking you to stop."

A beat of silence. Then Leo exhaled through his nose and said nothing more.

Lia turned to look at me from the passenger seat. I could feel her studying my face the way she had started to do quietly, like she was trying to work something out without making it obvious.

"Did you eat breakfast?" she asked.

"Yes," I said. The cookies technically counted.

She looked like she didn't entirely believe me but she let it go.

The rest of the ride passed in silence. When Leo pulled into the school car park I had the door open before he had fully stopped, murmuring a thanks that was aimed somewhere between him and Lia and stepping out into the cold air.

.......

I got through the morning on autopilot.

I sat in my seat. I copied notes. I kept my eyes on whichever teacher was speaking and made sure to look like I was paying attention, which was different from actually paying attention. Every time I shifted in my chair the welts on my back pulled tight, and I had to breathe through it without letting it show on my face.

I was good at that.

"You've said about four words since this morning," Mia said, appearing at my shoulder between second and third period. "And two of them were excuse me."

"I'm just tired," I said.

"You're always tired," Lia said, falling into step on my other side. She and Mia exchanged a look over my head that I pretended not to notice.

"I'm fine," I said, which was the most useless sentence in the English language and I knew it even as I said it.

Neither of them pushed. That was the thing about Lia and Mia, they knew when to pull back, which somehow made it harder to keep them at a distance than if they had just been relentless about it.

.......

By lunchtime I had calculated, for the fourth time, that I had exactly nothing in my bag.

No money. No snacks. Nothing left over from breakfast because there had been nothing at breakfast except two stale cookies.

"Come on," Mia said, grabbing my wrist and steering me toward the cafeteria. "You barely touched anything yesterday either."

"I'm not hungry," I said.

"You're always not hungry," Lia said from behind us. "Funny how that works."

"Lia..."

"We're going to lunch," Mia said simply, in the tone that meant the conversation was already over.

I let them pull me along because fighting it would have taken energy I didn't have.

At the counter I stepped back and let them order, keeping my hands in my hoodie pocket.

"What are you having?" Lia asked, turning to me.

"Nothing. I'm not really..."

"Amy."

The way she said my name not sharp, not frustrated, just very calm and very certain made something in my chest ache.

"I don't have any money on me today," I said quietly, looking somewhere past her shoulder. "Mark forgot to leave me any."

Lia didn't miss a beat. She turned back to the counter. "She'll have the same as me."

"Lia, you don't have to.."

"I know I don't have to," she said easily, picking up her tray. "I want to. There's a difference. Now come on before Mia eats all the good seats."

I followed her to the table, sat down, and stared at the food in front of me.

"Eat," Mia said, without looking up from her own plate.

I ate.

It was the first proper thing I'd had all day and it took everything I had not to let that show on my face.

.......

When the final bell went I was ready.

I had spent the last ten minutes of class quietly working out the logistics. Lia would come to find me. She would want to walk out together, take the bus, do the same thing we had done yesterday. And I couldn't. I couldn't sit in that car with Leo or stand at that bus stop making small talk, and I especially couldn't walk back to our street with Lia and have her see which house I went into and start asking questions I didn't know how to answer.

I slipped out of class before most people had finished packing, took a left instead of a right at the bottom of the stairs, and ducked into the narrow alcove behind the languages block where the old vending machine had been taken out and never replaced. It left a little hollow in the wall deep enough to stand in, hidden enough that you'd have to know it was there.

I pressed my back carefully against the wall away from the bruised side, and waited.

Five minutes. Ten. The noise of the school emptying out gradually thinned.

"Interesting hiding spot."

I startled so hard I knocked my elbow against the wall.

Rio was leaning against the opposite wall, arms crossed, one ankle over the other, watching me with an expression that was more curious than amused. He had a jacket on now dark green, collar turned up, and he looked like someone who had absolutely nowhere to be and no intention of pretending otherwise.

"I'm not hiding," I said.

"You're standing in an alcove behind the languages block," he said. "Alone. After the bell." He tilted his head slightly. "But sure."

I looked away.

"Lia's been looking for you," he said, after a moment.

"I know."

"She's worried."

"She doesn't need to be."

Rio was quiet for a moment. He didn't try to fill the silence the way Lia did, or push through it the way Mia might. He just stood there, easy and unhurried, like he had all the time in the world and wasn't going to use any of it to make me uncomfortable.

"You okay?" he asked eventually. It was simple, no frills.

"I'm fine," I said.

He nodded slowly, like he was filing that away alongside everything else.

"You don't have to tell me anything," he said. "I'm not asking you to. I just..." He paused, chose his words carefully. "You've looked like someone carrying something really heavy all day. And I noticed. That's all."

The back of my throat tightened.

I looked at him, really looked, for a moment and saw nothing in his face except what he had said. No agenda, no angle. Just someone who had noticed and thought it was worth saying.

"I'm fine," I said again, quieter this time.

Rio held my gaze for a second longer, then pushed off from the wall.

"Alright," he said, like he meant it. Like he was actually going to let me have that. "Take care of yourself, Amy."

He walked away without another word, hands in his jacket pockets, disappearing around the corner of the languages block.

I stayed in the alcove for another few minutes, long after his footsteps had faded.

Take care of yourself.

I tried to remember the last time someone had said that to me and meant it.

I couldn't.

I pulled my hoodie tight, stepped out of the alcove, and started the long walk home alone.

Amy's POV

It started the morning after Sandra's visit.

Mark came down to breakfast and sat across from me at the kitchen table, and for a long moment he just watched me eat. Not the cold, distracted way he usually looked at me this was deliberate, and measuring.

"Those people from next door," he said finally.

I kept my eyes on my bowl.

"I don't want you spending time with them."

I said nothing.

"Amy." His voice dropped just slightly the specific register that meant he was not asking. "I said I don't want you near them. Any of them. You don't talk to that girl at school, you don't wave at them on the street, you don't open this door to them. Do you understand me?"

"Yes," I said.

"Good." He picked up his coffee. "Make sure you do."

He left for work twenty minutes later and I sat at the empty table for a long time, staring at the wall.

I understood the instruction. I even understood why he was giving it, Mark had always worked that way, cutting off anything that might give me a foothold, anyone who might notice something they weren't supposed to notice. It was how he kept things tidy.

I understood all of it but understanding didn't make it easier.

.......

The first few days were the hardest.

Lia fell into step beside me on the way to first period on Monday and started talking about something, a show she had watched, something funny Mia had said, and I kept my eyes forward, and my mouth shut and after a few minutes she trailed off.

"Amy? You okay?"

I turned into the classroom without answering.

The look on her face as I walked away was something I chose not to think about.

By Wednesday she had stopped trying to walk with me between classes. By Thursday Mia had started watching me from across the cafeteria with a small crease between her brows that she hadn't had before. I ate alone near the window, quickly, and left before either of them could cross the room.

I told myself it was fine. That this was how things had always been before them, and that before them I had managed, and that I would manage again.

It was fine. It was fine.

I said it enough times that it started to sound like a different language.

.......

At school I had Leo to deal with on top of everything else.

He noticed the change in me almost immediately or rather, he noticed that his usual taunts weren't landing the way they used to. I wasn't flinching, wasn't cutting back, wasn't doing anything at all. I just looked through him like he wasn't there, and for some reason that seemed to irritate him more than any reaction I could have given.

"Did someone turn you off?" he said one morning, dropping into the seat behind me in biology.

I opened my textbook.

"Clumsy. I'm talking to you."

I turned a page.

He leaned forward. "Okay, this is actually unsettling. Say something. Tell me to leave you alone. Give me the death glare. Something."

I read the same sentence four times and absorbed none of it.

He sat back after a moment, and I could feel him watching the back of my head for the rest of class, trying to work out what had changed.

I didn't give him anything to work with.

Rio was more careful about it. He didn't approach me directly, he just made sure to be somewhere in my general orbit during the day, close enough that I knew he was there, far enough that I couldn't accuse him of pushing. Once, in the corridor between fourth and fifth period, he fell into step beside me for about thirty seconds and didn't say a single word. Then he peeled off at the next junction and was gone.

I didn't know what to do with that either.

.......

A week became two. Two became three.

I got good at the new routine. Eyes down in the hallways. Lunch alone or not at all. Home immediately after the bell, always the long way round so I didn't risk walking into Lia on the street. I kept the house clean and dinner on the stove by six and stayed out of Mark's way as much as the square footage allowed.

Some nights were worse than others. Some nights he didn't come to my door at all and I lay awake waiting for it anyway, which was its own kind of exhaustion. Some nights I heard him on the stairs and my whole body locked up before I remembered to breathe.

I stopped sleeping well. I stopped eating much. I started wearing two hoodies layered over each other because the heating in my room had started going out at night and I couldn't ask Mark to fix it.

I was fine.

I was always fine.

.......

It was a Tuesday afternoon, three weeks after Sandra's visit, when everything cracked.

I came home from school to find Lia sitting on the low wall outside her house, like she had been waiting. She stood up the moment she saw me, and something in the way she moved quick, decided, like she had made up her mind about something and wasn't going to let herself back out made my steps slow.

"Amy."

I kept walking.

"Amy, wait. Please."

Something in her voice made me stop. Not a command, she wasn't the commanding type. It was something quieter than that. Something that sounded a lot like worry.

I turned around slowly.

Lia crossed the short distance between us, and up close I could see that she looked tired too like she hadn't been sleeping either, which felt both terrible and completely unreasonable. She had no reason to lose sleep over me. She barely knew me.

"I'm not going to pretend I don't notice," she said. Her voice was steady but her hands were twisted together in front of her. "You've been avoiding me for three weeks. You won't look at me in school, you cross the street when you see me coming, you-" She stopped. Took a breath. "Did I do something? Did Mia say something that upset you? Because if we did, I need to know so I can fix it."

The knot in my throat pulled tight.

"You didn't do anything," I said.

"Then why..."

"Lia." I made myself look at her. Made myself hold the eye contact even though it cost me something to do it. "I just need some space. That's all. It's nothing you did."

She searched my face. I kept it still.

"Okay," she said finally, quietly. "Okay. But Amy if something is wrong. If there's something going on that you need help with. I'm right there." She gestured at her house. "Literally right there."

"I know," I said. "Thank you."

I turned and walked to my front door before she could say anything else.

I got the key in the lock, pushed the door open, stepped inside, and stopped.

Mark was home.

He was standing in the hallway, jacket still on, keys in his hand, which meant he had just arrived. Which meant he had seen.

I knew from his face that he had seen, and I was going to pay for it.