Chapter Text
Rain slicked the windows, turning streetlights into bleeding stars. The bus groaned beneath her, tired in the way machines sometimes seemed to be, like it knew it was running on borrowed time. The heater clicked inconsistently, exhaling more noise than warmth, and the fabric of the seat stuck uncomfortably to the back of her thighs. Her phone buzzed once in her pocket. She didn’t check it.
She didn’t want to know if her mom had texted.
She didn’t want to see the message that read, Fine. Stay out then.
Because that would make it real.
Because that would make her the kind of girl who ran away from home over a fight, with a duffel bag full of snacks and clothes she didn’t even fold. The kind of girl who said things she didn’t mean and meant them anyway.
She stared ahead instead. The road stretched endlessly in front of the windshield, painted silver by the rain, and the driver kept muttering something under his breath-low, ragged words, repeating like a prayer.
“God, I’m so tired. So tired.”
She blinked slowly, heavy with exhaustion herself, head lolling against the window.
Maybe things would look better in the morning. Maybe she’d find a cheap hostel. Maybe her mom would cool off and call her back. Maybe this entire night would fold itself into the back pocket of her memory, stupid and soft-edged like all teenage mistakes eventually become.
The maybe never came.
There was a flash-bright and violent—a shape darting into the road.
The driver swore. The brakes screamed.
The world lurched sideways.
And suddenly, everything shattered.
Metal buckled with the sound of bones breaking. Glass exploded. Bodies tumbled like laundry in a dryer. Someone screamed. Someone else didn’t.
She hit the ceiling. Or maybe the window. It didn’t matter. Pain bloomed white-hot across her back, then went strangely numb. Her mouth tasted like blood and ozone. Something heavy pinned her legs.
But her arms still worked.
Her hands still worked.
And her phone—
God.
Her phone.
She fumbled for it, coughing, fingers trembling as she unlocked the screen. Her vision blurred.
Battery: 9%. One bar of signal.
She didn’t hesitate.
She called her mother.
It rang once. Twice. Then her mother picked up.
“Hello?”
The sound of that voice was sharp and startled, unaware of the situation. Something that made her chest split open.
“M-Mom,” she said. “It’s me.”
Silence.
Then: “Where the hell are you? What’s going on?”
“I messed up,” she whispered, tears threading down her face, mixing with blood and rain and smoke. “I was stupid. I shouldn’t’ve left. I—” Her voice caught. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it. I was just so angry, and I didn’t know how to say I was scared.”
A beat of silence.
Then her mother’s voice broke. “Tell me where you are.”
“I love you,” she said. Her throat tightened. “Okay? Just know that,ok mom?”
“Wait—baby, wait, what’s going on, what happened—?”
There was a second crash—distant, muffled. Her head hit something hard. The phone slipped from her hand.
The call ended.
Her mother would try to call back. Again and again. She would scream her daughter’s name into an endless dial tone. She would drive out into the storm. She would tell the police it was wrong, that she knew her daughter, that something had happened.
And she would be right.
Because inside a crumpled bus, among fire and twisted steel and a sky still weeping above, a girl was bleeding and broken and quietly, quietly dying.
But death was not the end.
Not for her.
Not this time.