All Chapters of SIR: Chapter 201 - Chapter 210

The alarm goes off at six and Elias is already awake.He lies there for a moment listening to it, then reaches over and turns it off, and then lies there for another moment while the habit of the morning reassembles itself in his body.His eyes open to the familiar crack in the ceiling of his old apartment, and for a moment everything feels normal. Then the weight of the last few weeks crashes down on him. No uniform hanging on the chair. No early bus to catch. No Lucia waiting at the end of the hallway with that flirty look she gives him when no one’s looking. He was expelled yesterday and for the first time in a while, his life holds no purpose.He sits up slowly, careful of the healing wound in his chest, swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands, moving through the small space on autopilot.His mother’s door is still shut. She sleeps late on the days after her bad nights, and last night was a bad night, he heard her through the wall at two in the morning, moving ar

Eli stands in front of the small mirror in his room, buttoning a clean shirt he has not worn since his last day at Westbridge. The fabric feels stiff against his skin after weeks of old t-shirts and gym clothes. He runs a hand through his hair and checks the time on his phone. The woman on the phone yesterday had introduced herself simply as Selene and asked to meet at a quiet café across town. She had not given many details, but something in her voice made him agree. Now he wonders if he should have said no. A ragged cough echoes from his mother’s room down the short hallway. He pauses with his fingers on the last button. The sound comes again, deeper this time, like it hurts and continues for a while as he counts the seconds. When they finally stop, Eli walks to her door and pushes it open gently. His mother is lying in bed, propped against thin pillows, her face pale and drawn as the room smells of stale air and the faint medicinal tang of the pills on her nightstand. “Mom,” he sa

The cab drops me two blocks away because I asked it to, which is a habit I have apparently developed, arriving places on foot from a distance so I can think myself into whatever comes next.What comes next is knocking on a stranger’s door and introducing myself as the daughter of the man she believes destroyed her life. I have thought through several versions of how this conversation might begin, and none of them are comfortable, but I keep arriving at the same conclusion, which is that Emilia Arden has been carrying a version of this story for twenty-two years and I need to hear it from her before I decide what I think about any of it.What I have not fully thought through is what happens if Eli is home.That possibility stops me halfway down the block, and I stand on the pavement with my school bag on one shoulder and consider it properly. If he answers the door, I don’t know what my heart will do.I have spent the past week trying to scrub the existence of Elias Arden from my

We walk in silence for the first few minutes after the gunshot sound or whatever it was. My neck still aches from Emilia’s grip and my head throbs where it hit the ground. I keep my eyes on the pavement ahead with my phone in my hand and my pride entirely intact, which is the only one of those three things I have full control over right now.Every step feels heavier than the last. I am embarrassed. I am heartbroken. I am furious that I’m stuck here with the one person I hate most and yet is still the only one who make me feel safe in the middle of all this mess. I am ashamed that I almost died on his porch and he had to pull his own mother off me. I am confused after meeting Emilia. I am beginning to doubt my father. I am exhausted.And most of all… I am very fucking angry.“Keep holding your phone that hard and you might crack the screen,” Eli says from beside me.“I’m getting a ride.”“You said that four minutes ago.”“Well, that’s cause I haven’t been able to find one yet,

The flat is quiet when Elias gets back, which could mean his mother is asleep or could mean she is sitting in the dark being angry, and the difference matters. He knocks on her door. Nothing. He pushes it open. His mother is sitting up in bed with a glass in her hand and the bottle on the nightstand, and the glass is not full, which means it has not been full recently. Elias crosses the room in four steps and takes it from her hand before she can argue about it. “Give me back–” “The doctor told you specifically,” he interrupts sternly, setting the glass on the dresser well out of reach and turning back to her. “He said it twice. Your kidneys are already damaged and mixing alcohol with the medication will accelerate it. I was there for that conversation, Mom, I heard it.” She makes a dismissive sound with her breath. “Doesn’t matter.” “It matters.” “It doesn’t,” she says, “because I’m not taking the medication anyway, so the mixing issue is your problem, not mine.” He cl