I scrolled past them without responding.
I didn’t even know how to respond.
Because the truth is, I did care.
I wasn’t doing this to be cold or distant. I wasn’t running away from my family.
I was running toward myself for the first time.
I wasn’t just a shadow in the corner of someone else’s story. I wasn’t the responsible one holding everything up so someone else could feel special.
I was free and it felt unfamiliar in the best way.
I was staying in a coastal town so quiet. You could hear the wind rustle through the olive trees at night.
The neighbors didn’t know my name.
Nobody asked what school I went to, what my sister was doing, or how my parents were.
It was a kind of anonymity that made me feel whole.
I started waking up without that dull weight in my chest, the one that used to come from being needed without being seen.
Each morning, I’d walk to a small familyrun cafe overlooking the sea. I’d sip bitter coffee and read actual books, not the emails I used to write for dad or the bills I used to sort for mom.
I even began journaling, something I hadn’t done since middle school, filling pages with quiet reflections and sometimes the kinds of angry truths I’d never had the courage to say aloud.
But as much as I was enjoying the distance, part of me couldn’t stop checking in, not directly, but through Alec.
We had a deal.
He’d keep me updated on anything major back home, and I’d send him food pics and sunrises in return.
I trusted him. He knew the whole story. He’d seen it all firsthand.
The way my parents brush me aside at gatherings. The way Bianca always took and took and took and how they never noticed what that did to me.
Alex sent me a photo one afternoon that stopped me cold.
It was our front porch.
Except it wasn’t our porch anymore.