Chapter Text
“The dead do not come back. That is the first lesson of grief. But sometimes the lesson is wrong.”
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The girl walked too close to the hedges. Her sleeve caught on wet leaves, and she didn’t notice until the damp had already seeped through to her wrist.
She always did that along Combs Ford—kept herself narrow. Less of her on the pavement. Less of her for anyone to notice.
The houses glowed, curtains half-drawn. A television laughed somewhere behind glass. She didn’t look to see which window.
Her school bag hung off one shoulder. Light. Mostly empty. Her notebook stayed tucked under the other arm—not hugged, just held there, like something she might need later and didn’t want to admit.
The air was colder than it looked. Each breath left a mark in front of her face, then nothing.
She counted steps between the streetlights. Fourteen, thirteen—she forgot and started again. Fourteen. She should have left earlier.
Her shoe caught on a crack in the pavement. She stumbled, corrected, annoyed. Her sister always said she walked like she was apologising, and she’d never figured out how to stop.
Footsteps.
They didn’t rush at first. That’s what made her stop.
The sound came again—heavier, uneven. Following, not chasing. She slowed, one foot angling toward the kerb.
“Oi.”
The word bounced off the parked cars and came back thin.
She turned.
The older girl was already there. Blonde hair loose, coat hanging open even though it was freezing. Her face looked tight, pulled into a shape it couldn’t quite hold—eyes too bright, mouth trembling with something that wasn’t fear.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
The girl searched for an answer. None fit.
“I’m going home.”
The older girl laughed. It wasn’t a real laugh. She stepped forward and the space between them disappeared. The smaller girl leaned back without meaning to, the kerb pressing against her heel.
“After today? You think you can just—” The older girl’s voice caught, jaw clenching. “No. You don’t get to walk off like that.”
“I didn’t—” The sentence broke. “I wasn’t trying to—”
“Bullshit.”
A hand came up, palm out. Not touching. Close enough that the smaller girl could smell her perfume—something sweet and too heavy, wrong for the cold.
“You fucked everything. You know that? Everything.”
The girl’s elbow hit the car behind her. Cold metal bled through her sleeve. She leaned back harder—half hoping the alarm would go off, half afraid it would.
“I just wanted to help.”
The words came out wrong before she’d even finished them.
The older girl’s face twisted. “Help? You—” A ragged breath. “You humiliated me. You made me look like— like I was the problem. And you just— you walked away like you’d fixed something.”
“I didn’t mean—”
“You don’t get to decide what you meant.” The older girl was shouting now, voice splintering. “You don’t get to waltz in and fix things and then—” Her hands balled into fists at her sides. “You don’t get to be the good guy. Not after what you did.”
A light flicked on in one of the houses. A gate banged shut somewhere down the street.
The older girl glanced toward the sound, then back, chest heaving.
“My parents grounded me. Suspended.” Her voice scraped raw. “Like I’m some kind of psycho. You think I won’t make you pay for that?”
The shove came without warning. Not hard—careless.
The girl stumbled sideways, her shoulder hitting the car door with a hollow clang that sounded far too loud. Something slipped from under her arm.
The notebook hit the pavement.
It landed open. A page lifted. Then another.
She watched the paper move, hesitant, like it was deciding whether to leave.
She bent down too fast. Her fingers didn’t work properly. The notebook scraped against concrete. She shoved it into her bag without checking the pages.
“Don’t you fucking run from me.”
She ran anyway.
Trainers skidding on wet ground. The street tilted, lights stretching into long orange smears. Her breathing came wrong—too quick, too shallow—and she couldn’t remember how to fix it.
Behind her, footsteps, faster now.
“STOP!”
The shout broke halfway through. That surprised her more than the volume.
She crossed the road without looking.
A roar—low, rising fast, too loud. White light spilled across the pavement, flooding everything the streetlamps couldn’t reach. For a second the world was just light, bleached and unreal.
She thought of ice.
A hand grabbed her sleeve and yanked.
She spun, the world snapping back.
“LOOK AT ME!”
The older girl’s face filled everything. Her grip hurt. Not badly, but enough.
“I didn’t mean to.” She wasn’t sure what that meant anymore.
“You—” The older girl’s voice cracked, her whole body trembling. “You always— you think you’re so—” She couldn’t finish. The words kept breaking apart. “You just— you never—”
Her hand swung.
The blow caught the girl across the face—hard, deliberate, nothing like the earlier shove. Pain exploded behind her eye, white and blinding. Her legs buckled. The pavement surged upward and then vanished.
She didn’t feel herself hit the ground.
---
A breath tore out of her.
She jolted upright, palms scraping against rough pavement. Pain flared across her cheek—hot and immediate—and her ribs refused to expand. She sucked in another breath anyway.
She was on the pavement, half-curled against the kerb. Not in the road.
Her heart slammed against her ribs.
“I don’t...” She swallowed. “I don’t know how I got here.”
The street was quiet. Houses stared back, windows dark, curtains drawn. A streetlamp buzzed overhead.
She pushed herself up on shaking arms. Her backpack was gone. She turned, checking the pavement, the gutter, the edge of the road—nothing. Her phone, her inhaler, her notebook, all missing.
Her breath went shallow. She pressed a hand flat against her chest and waited, counting without numbers, until the worst of it passed.
“She took it.”
The thought lodged hard. Not the violence—that she could almost understand—but Lexi’s hands on her things. On the notebook.
She stood. The ground felt tilted, but she walked anyway, slow at first. Her breathing followed, thin and uneven and too loud in her ears.
She glanced back once. Empty street.
She kept going.
The fence on the corner caught her attention, paint peeling in long curls. She frowned. She was sure that fence had been solid blue. The colour underneath looked sun-bleached, old.
A hanging basket sagged above a porch, soil grey and cracked, dead stems rattling against brick.
She didn’t comment this time. Just walked faster.
Her shoes sounded wrong on the pavement—quieter than they should’ve been. She lifted one foot, then the other, watching them land.
A fox burst from behind a bin. She gasped, hand flying to her chest. The fox was already gone.
The streetlamp flickered, buzzing louder.
She broke into a half-run, then slowed when her chest protested sharply. She pressed her sleeve to her cheek, wincing. Her fingers trembled, so she rubbed them together—small movements, the way Alice had taught her.
Just get home. Just get inside.
At the bend where the road dipped toward the footbridge, the river should’ve been louder. It always was.
Tonight it sounded far away, like something wrapped in cloth.
The houses thinned, the pavement narrowed. One window on the left was boarded up.
She stopped.
She tried to place it—last week? last month?—and couldn’t. The board looked old, edges splintered, like it hadn’t been touched in years.
Her head ached.
Don’t think about it.
When she turned onto her street, the cold dug in deeper, settling somewhere behind her sternum. Her breathing had shrunk to small, careful puffs. Everything felt off-centre, like she was walking through a version of the road that had been left out too long.
Her house waited under the streetlamp.
The walls looked greyer. The front garden had gone wild, brambles creeping across the path, thorny and unchecked. She stopped at the gate.
“...That’s not right.”
She didn’t know what scared her more—that it looked wrong, or that part of her wondered if it had always looked like this and she’d just never noticed.
She pushed through the overgrowth. A thorn scraped her sleeve. She fumbled the key into the lock. The door resisted, as always. She leaned her shoulder into it until it groaned open.
Warm air spilled out. She stepped inside.
The streetlamp buzzed once more, then silence.
---
The hallway smelled wrong.
Not awful—just heavy. Stale laundry mixed with something sweet, old fruit maybe, the kind of smell that made her want to breathe through her mouth.
She closed the door. The click sounded too soft.
“I’m home!”
Her voice bounced, like the house was emptier than it should be.
She kicked off her shoes. One hit a stack of magazines beside the radiator—magazines she didn’t remember being there—and she nearly tripped.
The kitchen light was on but dim, an old yellow bulb that flickered in an uneven rhythm. The room was a mess: plates stacked in the sink, newspapers piled on a chair, a half-empty bottle on the counter, crumbs scattered across the worktop like snow.
She tried to swallow the wrongness, but it stuck in her throat.
She pulled out the bread. Her fingers still trembled. She found the butter—last of it—and spread it onto a slice, the knife scraping louder than she expected.
“Mum? We’re out of butter.”
A crash upstairs.
She flinched so hard the knife slipped and smeared butter across the counter.
“Mum? Are you okay?”
Silence.
“Do you need help?”
No answer.
She took a step toward the hallway and stopped. The air felt thick, like the house was holding its breath.
She went back to the counter. Spread the butter again, slower. Her mind kept drifting to the crash, to the silence, to the way the house felt older.
Footsteps on the stairs. Slow, uneven, soft.
She sagged against the counter and exhaled.
“Good. You scared me.”
She placed a slice of ham on the bread and neatened the crusts with her fingers. Neat things helped.
She didn’t look up until she felt someone in the doorway.
Her mother stood there.
The girl blinked, then blinked again.
Mum looked wrong. Not sick or hurt—just different. Hair tangled, flattened on one side as if she’d been lying on it for hours. An old stretched jumper she never used to wear outside her bedroom. Joggers wrinkled, a tear near the knee. Face pale, the skin under her eyes darker than the girl remembered, her mouth open a little like she was trying to breathe without sound.
She stared at her daughter like she was seeing a ghost.
The girl didn’t notice. She was busy with the sandwich.
“Sorry I’m late. Something happened.”
She touched her cheek.
“Lexi. Lexi Kingsley. She chased me from the bus stop.”
A breath.
“She hit me.”
The silence stretched until it hurt.
“My bag’s gone. My phone.”
Her voice dropped.
“And my notebook.”
She paused, brain catching up.
“Oh. But I think she pulled me off the road when I passed out. Because when I woke up I wasn’t in the middle anymore. So... yeah. That was weird.”
She turned and saw her mother’s face properly.
“...Mum? You look kind of... Are you okay?”
Her mother’s mouth opened. Nothing came out. Her hands trembled, shoulders shaking.
“N-nothing’s wrong, Skye.”
Skye froze.
“You never call me that. You only call me Luke.”
Her mother didn’t answer. She stepped forward—unsteady, like she didn’t trust her own legs—and cupped Skye’s face. Her thumbs brushed over Skye’s cheeks, over the bruise. Her fingers ran through Skye’s hair, down her arms, over her shoulders. Gentle, shaky, almost frantic.
Then she pulled her into a hug. A long one, tight, the kind that felt like someone scared of letting go.
Skye didn’t move at first. Then she melted into it, her cheek against her mother’s shoulder. The fabric smelled like old fabric softener and something underneath it—sharp and sad.
Safe. Warm. Strange.
Her mother didn’t usually hold her like this.
When it ended, Mum wiped her eyes too quickly and stepped back.
Skye lifted the sandwich, took a bite to avoid staring.
“I’m gonna... have a shower. I feel gross.”
Mum nodded too fast.
Skye took another shaky bite and headed for the stairs. The kitchen light hummed behind her like a whisper.
Something wasn’t right. She didn’t know what. She climbed, sandwich in hand, mind a blur. The shower would make everything normal again. It had to.
---
The stairs creaked in all the usual places, louder tonight. Skye dragged her sleeve across her cheek, wincing when it hit the bruise. Her legs ached. Her eyes stung. Everything felt underwater.
Halfway up, she squinted.
Glasses missing.
She touched her face, checked pockets she didn’t have. Must’ve dropped them when Lexi shoved her. Everything would be soft-edged now, and she’d have to squint.
One hand sliding along the banister. The wood felt rougher. A spiderweb brushed her wrist.
“Mum definitely hasn’t cleaned up here.”
At the top of the landing: wallpaper peeling near her mother’s door, worn patches on the carpet, a laundry basket overflowing with clothes she didn’t recognise—shirts that weren’t Mum’s, jeans too big, socks gone greyish.
She shook her head. Later. After the shower.
The bathroom door stuck, then clicked open. Familiar at first—blue tiles, milky light, old-shampoo smell. But the counter was too bare.
Her toothbrush wasn’t in the cup.
She stared at the empty space, blinked hard, then shrugged it off. “Mum probably moved it.”
She peeled off her clothes, avoided the mirror, stepped into the shower. The water sputtered, coughed, then warmed. Heat hit her shoulders and her muscles gave. She let her forehead rest against the tile. Steam blurred everything into something almost safe.
Then—the front door slammed.
Her eyes snapped open.
Voices under the water, raised, harsh. Her mother’s.
“No—please—please, Alice, just... let me explain—”
Skye straightened.
Footsteps on the stairs, heavy and fast.
“Mum? Are you okay?”
A knock at the bathroom door. Too quick. Too sharp.
The door opened.
Alice stood there.
Skye blinked. Her sister looked wrong—taller, older, hair longer and dyed at the ends. Clothes Skye had never seen: a cropped black top under an oversized denim jacket, ripped jeans, makeup she’d never have been allowed to wear.
“Alice? Uh... can I borrow a towel? Mine’s damp.”
Alice didn’t speak. Didn’t move. She stared like she was seeing something that shouldn’t exist.
Mum appeared behind her, pale and trembling, hands gripping the doorframe.
“Sweetheart. You okay? Need anything?”
“I’m fine. Just showering.”
Mum nodded too fast and tugged Alice’s arm. “Come on, love.”
Alice didn’t budge. Her mouth moved. No sound came out.
Mum pulled harder. Alice stepped back, eyes still locked on Skye.
The door clicked shut.
Skye stood there, shivering under the warm water. A muffled thud from the next room, then something heavy shifting, then hushed, urgent whispers.
“What is going on?”
She finished quickly. Dried off with Alice’s towel, brushed her teeth with her finger and a smear of toothpaste, rubbed water from her hair.
Her room looked like her room—same posters, same fairy lights, lilac duvet, stuffed rabbit on the pillow with slightly worn ears. But everything felt too placed. Notebooks stacked too neatly. Pen jar without its usual crooked lean. No dust on the shelf. The air smelled faintly of cleaning spray.
That must’ve been the rustling earlier.
She changed into pyjamas slowly, the unease settling deeper, like a stone dropping through water.
A soft knock.
“Skye?”
“Come in.”
Mum entered, followed by Alice. And now, seeing her properly, Skye’s pulse stumbled.
Alice wasn’t different. She was older. Not “bad lighting” older. Not “new hairstyle” older. Older.
Skye stepped back.
“Alice... what happened to you?”
Alice crossed the room in three strides and wrapped Skye in a hug so tight it squeezed the breath out of her. Her shoulders shook, breath trembling against Skye’s neck.
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have—I should’ve been there—”
Skye froze. Alice never hugged like this, never cried like this.
“I love you,” Alice choked out.
Skye lifted her arms slowly and hugged back.
“I love you too, but—Alice, this is weird. You’re acting weird. Mum’s acting weird. And you look... different. Everything looks different.”
Alice pulled back, wiping her face.
Skye’s voice rose. “The street is different. The house is a mess. You look older, Alice. Mum keeps calling me Skye and she never calls me Skye and—what happened? What is going on?”
Silence. Heavy, suffocating.
Alice glanced at Mum.
Mum inhaled, knelt until she was eye level with Skye. Her hands trembled as she reached for Skye’s.
“Sweetheart... there was an accident.”
Skye’s breath caught.
“You and Lexi were running. There was a car. You were both hit. You didn’t...”
Her voice cracked. She tried again, tears gathering at her lashes.
“You didn’t get up.”
Skye stared. The words passed through her without meaning.
“Five years.” Mum’s voice broke completely. “You’ve been gone for five years.”
Alice was crying again behind her.
Skye didn’t move. Didn’t blink. Barely breathed.
Her mother swallowed, choking on the last truth.
“You... you died, Skye.”
The kitchen light flickered down the hall. Skye felt the cold then—not on her skin, but deeper, in the marrow, in the place where certainties were supposed to live.
She couldn’t make the words fit.
She looked at her mother’s face, at Alice’s tears, at the room that was hers and not hers.
And she understood—with a quiet, impossible clarity—that nothing would ever be normal again.