CHAPTER ONE — The Diary

Hannah’s POV

“Every night I wake up praying, please God, let me be sick.”

I set the diary down. Just for a second. Just to breathe.

Then I picked it up again because I couldn’t not.

The apartment was empty when I got home. That wasn’t unusual. Zara stepped out sometimes, corner store, a walk, nowhere in particular. She never went far. I had learned not to panic at an empty apartment.

But the diary was sitting on the dining table.

Zara’s pink diary. The one she treated like a second heartbeat. Carried everywhere. Slept with it under her pillow some nights. It had no business being on that table. Zara would never leave it out.

Not unless she wanted it to be found.

I stood there for a long moment just looking at it.

Then I sat down and opened it.

I told myself I would just skim. One page. Two at most. Just enough to understand what was happening with my daughter before she got home and I could find a way to start the conversation carefully.

That was the plan.

“Please save me from going to school tomorrow. Please let me sleep and wake up in two years when I already graduate.”

My throat went dry.

I turned the page.

“Death doesn’t scare me anymore. The only thing that still scares me is school.”

I was reading faster now. Hands moving before my brain could catch up. Flipping pages. Scanning lines. Searching desperately for something that would tell me this wasn’t what it looked like.

Then I saw it.

Bold. Certain. Written by someone who had already made up their mind.

“I have to end it all. I love you mum.”

The diary hit the floor.

I don’t remember dropping it. I just remember the sound  that flat slap against the tile,  and my hands shaking in front of me like they belonged to someone else entirely.

“Zara please don’t do this.”

A voice from outside. Then another calling her name.

My legs moved before I told them to.

I don’t remember the stairs.

I remember hitting outside air and finding the crowd, already gathered, already looking up, and making myself follow their eyes even though something deep in me already knew and didn’t want to confirm it.

Last floor. Rooftop ledge.

My daughter. Standing at the edge like she had already decided.

The shaking started in my hands and moved through my whole body until there was nothing of me that wasn’t trembling. I pressed my right hand flat against my chest just trying to hold something in place that felt like it was coming loose.

“Zara.” It came out wrong. Too small. “My Zara.”

My knees hit the ground. Not a choice. Just gravity finding me.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

I almost ignored it. Every instinct I had was screaming to ignore it. But I squinted up at Zara and noticed something small in her ear.

I pulled the phone out with shaking hands.

“Hello mum.”

Her voice came through mixed with tears and it broke me open in a way the sight of her on that ledge hadn’t quite managed. Because the sight was a nightmare but her voice was still my daughter. Still real. Still here.

“Hi.” I swallowed everything. “Hi my princess.”

“Mum, I tried so hard to live.” Quiet. Like a confession. Like she was apologizing to me. “But I don’t think I fit into this world.”

“My child.” I kept my voice steady the way you keep a candle steady in wind cupped hands, held breath, everything focused on that one flame. “We could try again. I would change your school. I promise. We can go somewhere else and start all over.”

“Mum.” Something almost gentle in the way she said it. Like she was the one comforting me. “You keep changing my school. It doesn’t change the fact that I’m an obese kid. They will never stop laughing. They will never stop.”

“Zara…”

“Mum, I know I was the reason you ended up like this. If you hadn’t chosen to keep me you would have finished school. Your parents wouldn’t have disowned you.”

“Hey.” The word came out sharp and certain. “You listen to me. You have nothing to do with any of that. Nothing. Even in my next life I will choose to keep you. Over and over again. I love you. Please don’t leave me like everyone else.”

Silence on the line.

I was running out of air. Running out of words. Running out of everything except the desperate need for my daughter to step back from that edge.

“Then let’s just meet again in our next life mum,” she said softly. “I pray I’ll look like other children. Be happier with you.”

“Zara..”

“Bye mum.”

The line went dead.

A sound from above. The crowd gasped as one body.

I squeezed my eyes shut and screamed, not words, just everything in me coming out at once.

Then silence.

I opened my eyes slowly.

No body. Just a phone on the ground, cracked open, screen shattered.

I looked up. Two men from the building, neighbors whose faces I knew but whose names I had never needed until this moment, and between them, held safe, shaking but breathing, was my daughter.

She was alive.

The relief had no name. Too large for one. It started in my chest and went everywhere at once and I took two steps toward her.

Then the ground came up.

And I didn’t feel anything at all.

She was alive.

That was the last thought I managed before the darkness.

My daughter was alive and somewhere between the relief and the terror and seventeen years of holding everything together completely alone —

My body simply said: enough.