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#8: Hoping And Praying
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2026-04-30 06:53:10I sit very still for approximately four seconds, which is the amount of time it takes my brain to process what Eli just said. I’m just here, hoping and praying this is one of his cruel pranks.
“Try not to look too excited,” Elias says, wearing a smile so bright that means he’s genuinely enjoying himself and that tells me the most brutal truth of all. It isn’t a joke. “Shut up,” I snap. “Five minutes ago you were mad at me for not tal
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SIR #11: For Your Father
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SIR #10: Old Debts
The first thing I see when I walk into the kitchen Monday morning is Eli at my family’s breakfast table, sittng where Zeke used to seat, and eating Maria’s rosemary bread. The second thing I see is my eleven-year-old brother Lucas sitting directly across from him, leaning forward with both elbows on the table and the expression he gets during particularly riveting episodes of whatever documentary series he’s currently obsessed with, which apparently this morning is Elias Arden in the flesh. “But what’s the difference between a hook and a cross?” Lucas is saying, with the intensity of someone who needs this answered before they can continue with their day. “Setup versus power,” Eli says, and he gestures with his fork in a way that somehow communicates the mechanics of it. “Hook comes from the side, shorter range, more snap. Cross goes straight with full rotation behind it, that’s where the real damage is.” “Which one did you use on those guys in the alley?” “Lucas,” I say, from th
SIR #9. Call Me David
Eli’s POV The numbers won’t change no matter how many times he looks at them. This is a thing Eli has known since he was old enough to understand what numbers meant, that staring at them longer doesn’t produce different results, that the math is the math and wishing it were otherwise is a luxury that costs more than he has. He knows this. He still opens the banking app and closes it and opens it again, because the alternative is sitting at the kitchen table at seven in the morning with nothing to do but listen to the apartment breathe. He lays it out the way he does every two weeks, Notepad, pen, phone face-up for the calculator. Rent on the left column. Utilities. Groceries, estimated. His mother’s kidney medication, which is not estimated because it doesn’t vary and cannot be reduced and is, by itself, more than their combined food costs for the month. Then a gap for the boxing money on the right column, which should be there and isn’t, because last night he didn’t make it to
SIR #8: Hoping And Praying
I sit very still for approximately four seconds, which is the amount of time it takes my brain to process what Eli just said. I’m just here, hoping and praying this is one of his cruel pranks. “Try not to look too excited,” Elias says, wearing a smile so bright that means he’s genuinely enjoying himself and that tells me the most brutal truth of all. It isn’t a joke. “Shut up,” I snap. “Five minutes ago you were mad at me for not talking to you, now you want me quiet,” he shrugs a shoulder and picks up his pen. “You’re gonna have to start being much clearer if we’re gonna be besties.” It takes everything in me not to punch him, meanwhile he just returns to writing. My new bodyguard. Elias Arden. Who has spent the better part of two years finding increasingly creative ways to get under my skin. That person is going to be living in my house, following me to school, standing outside my bedroom doo
SIR #7: Whole Lot Of Time
Three days is apparently how long my parents need to decide that the world is safe enough for me to eat breakfast in it again. I spent Saturday mostly in bed, which I allowed because my body requested it in terms I couldn’t argue with, and Sunday I spent on the window seat in my room with a sketchbook I barely touched and a cup of tea that went cold three times. My mother came in and out with things, food, extra blankets, the kind of gentle hovering she does when she’s worried but knows that smothering me will produce the opposite of the intended effect. My father I heard mostly through walls, the low register of his voice on phone calls that he took in his office with the door closed, which is how I knew they were about something he didn’t want echoing through the house. I didn’t ask what it was yet. I was picking my moments. Monday morning I come downstairs dressed and ready for school, because lying in that room for one more day with n
SIR #6: Go To Bed
The ceiling of Mount Sinai’s third floor is a particular shade of off-white that I have now spent enough time staring at to have opinions about, and my opinion is that whoever chose this color has never had to look at it from a hospital bed while their face throbs and their palms sting and the events of the last three hours replay on a loop they haven’t figured out how to stop yet. I’m fine. That’s what I’ve decided. I decided it somewhere between the cab and the admissions desk and the examination room where a very kind nurse cleaned the gravel out of my palms with a gentleness that almost made me cry, which I did not do, because I was fine. My cheek has been treated. My knees are bandaged. Nothing is broken. Physically, by every available medical metric, I am fine, and I am going to keep being fine, and the fact that my hands won’t stop trembling slightly is just adrenaline and adrenaline fades and I am going to be completely fine. Zeke is sitting in the chair beside my bed like
SIR #20: Someone Else Does Too
Vincent is still asleep beside me when I slip out of bed at six the next morning. Lucy is curled against his chest, her small hand fisted in his T-shirt, breathing slow and even. The sight of them together usually steadies me. This morning it only makes the knot in my stomach tighten.
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Lucy kicks off her sneakers the moment we cross the threshold, leaving them in a haphazard pile by the coat closet. She’s already halfway down the hall before I can remind her to hang her coat. “Daddy!” she calls, sprinting toward him with her arms wide. Vincent is in the livi
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The next day, the call comes in while Vincent and I are at work, reviewing a procurement report I have already flagged twice. I know it is bad news the second I see the school’s number on my screen. I stare at it for half a second too long before answering. “This is Nora Calder.”
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Elaine arrived with flowers and that alone should have told me everything. They were white lilies, arranged carefully, tasteful and expensive, the kind that stained everything they touched if you were not careful. I opened the door and she smiled warmly, already ste
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