📖 CHAPTER ONE
The Boy in the Corner
The song had hand motions. Daniel didn't know them.
He sat on the grimy blue carpet in the corner of Room 2-B, knees drawn up so tightly his chin balanced on them like a paperweight. The other children were clapping, slapping their palms on their thighs in strange rhythms that didn't quite line up. Someone was off-key. A girl near the front screamed the lyrics like it was a contest. Daniel didn't look up. He didn't know the words.
His fingers worked a stubby red crayon into the paper of his battered composition notebook. The crayon was dull and waxy, worn down from use, and it smeared more than it colored. He didn't care. He pressed harder. The red bled through the thin page and into the next. He liked that.
On the page: a man's face with a child's body. No mouth. One eye. Fingers too long. The arms were bending in a way arms didn't bend. He couldn't get the head right. It kept coming out too big, like it might topple off.
Behind him, Mrs. Habersham's shoes squeaked softly on the linoleum. Beige flats with the little bows. He hated those shoes. They always moved toward him like searchlights in a prison movie.
"Daniel?" she chirped, still clapping in rhythm with the rest of the class. "Come on, honey. We're singing 'Mr. Sun.' You know this one."
He didn't look up. Just pressed harder. The crayon cracked in his hand with a soft pop. The tip broke off and rolled under a shelf. He didn't reach for it. His fingers smeared the wax now, smudging it into shadows under the boy-man's eyes.
Mrs. Habersham crouched next to him. Her knees cracked. She always smelled like laundry detergent and hand sanitizer, sharp and sweet and fake. Her voice was soft now, but too bright, the kind of voice you use on someone who might snap.
"Why don't you come join the group, Daniel? Look, everyone's having so much fun."
The clapping behind her grew louder, like the children were trying to prove her point.
He looked at her. Just briefly.
His eyes were too still. Too blank. Too much like a grown-up trying not to cry.
She gave him a thin smile and patted his shoulder with fingers that barely touched. "Okay," she said, straightening up again. "Okay then."
She walked back to the center of the room, her claps louder than before. Almost desperate. As if noise could drown the quiet Daniel carried with him like fog.
The boy nearest him twisted to stare.
"Why's he always drawing freaky stuff?" he whispered. Not to anyone in particular.
Daniel heard. His hand kept moving.
He added another eye to the man. Another finger. Maybe eight now. Nine? He'd lost count.
Outside, wind scraped the bare tree branches against the windows like fingernails on glass.
The classroom was a blur of sound and color—children's squeals, plastic bins rattling, the sticky smell of apple juice and sweat—but Daniel sat still, half-shadowed behind a cabinet full of board games with missing pieces and dust on the lids. Something cold had soaked into the carpet under him. He thought it might be juice. Or maybe pee. Didn't matter.
He added the mouth. Or the space where the mouth should've been. A long, empty gash.
The man on the page was monstrous.
But Daniel wasn't drawing a monster.
He was drawing himself.
At circle time, they were forced to sit cross-legged. Daniel hated it. The position made him feel exposed. Like his body was folded in all the wrong ways. His jeans were too small again. His knee itched where the denim had frayed.
Mrs. Habersham handed out rhythm sticks. Everyone got a pair. Daniel didn't take his. They clacked around him anyway—sticks against carpet, sticks against sticks, one boy pretending they were swords.
Next to him, the same boy—Jacob, maybe—sidled closer.
"Hey," the boy whispered.
Daniel kept staring at his drawing, which now had another page—this one more abstract. Just red. Spirals and zigzags and angry slashes.
"Hey, lemme see," the boy said, leaning over.
Daniel moved the notebook slightly, tilting it away. He didn't want to share. It wasn't a picture. It was a hiding place.
The boy reached out.
Daniel didn't think. His body acted.
He jerked his elbow sharply. It caught the boy's wrist and knocked it sideways. Not hard. Not even enough to leave a mark. But loud enough to be seen.
"Ow! He hit me!"
The class fell silent.
Mrs. Habersham froze mid-verse. Her head snapped toward them.
"Daniel?"
Daniel sat motionless. His hand hovered over the paper, crayon still in his grip. He looked up at her, not blinking.
The boy whimpered. "He elbowed me! I was just trying to see his drawing and he hit me!"
Mrs. Habersham marched over, her face pinched, voice tight.
"Daniel Elijah Reed, what happened?"
He said nothing.
He never said anything when it counted. Words got twisted in the air. Better to stay quiet.
"Hands are not for hurting," she said automatically, the phrase worn from repetition. "You know that."
He stared at her chest. Not her face. There was a pen clipped to her blouse. It was leaking slightly. He stared at the ink stain instead of her eyes.
She bent to retrieve his notebook, then paused when she saw the page. Her face stiffened. Something flickered there—disgust? Fear? She closed it quickly and handed it back.
"To the nurse's office," she said. "Now."
The hallway was empty. The linoleum hummed beneath his sneakers. Daniel walked slowly, scuffing one foot now and then just to hear the sound. The walls were plastered with construction paper suns and inspirational slogans in bubble letters.
He didn't look at them. He stared straight ahead, the notebook tucked under his arm like a secret.
At the nurse's office, the light was off. He knocked once, then turned the knob and stepped inside.
The room smelled like bleach and fake lemon. Ms. Talley, the nurse, sat at her desk with a crossword puzzle. Her glasses were low on her nose. She looked up, startled.
"Oh. Daniel."
She said it like a question.
He handed her the slip Mrs. Habersham had written. She glanced at it. Her lips tightened. She didn't ask what happened.
"You can sit," she said.
He climbed up onto the padded cot by the window. It squeaked beneath him. He pulled his legs up again, the notebook in his lap.
Ms. Talley went back to her puzzle.
After a long time, she asked, "You feeling sick?"
He shook his head.
She tried again. "Did you get hurt?"
He shook his head again.
"Do you want to lie down?"
He didn't answer.
She sighed and got up. Poured him a little cup of water. Set it on the rolling tray beside him like an offering.
He picked up the red crayon again. Opened to a fresh page.
This time, the drawing was simple.
A boy with a man's face.
A man with a boy's body.
No mouth.
Behind him: a doorway. Just the outline of boots walking away.
Ms. Talley passed behind him and paused. Looked over his shoulder. Didn't speak.
After a moment, she said, "I think I'll call your mom to come get you early."
Daniel didn't respond.
She walked away.
He kept drawing.
The walk home was the longest part of the day.
He passed the corner store where the bars on the windows looked like prison fingers. He passed two dogs behind a fence, both barking without pause. He passed a mailbox with someone's name carved into it and a pile of beer cans flattened into the street like paper. He walked past the dead grass, the broken sidewalk, the old man who always watched from a porch but never spoke.
He thought about his father's boots. Not the man—just the boots. Heavy, brown, the laces frayed at the ends. He remembered them walking across the floor. The sound they made. A thud, a scrape, a thud.
He didn't remember his father's voice. Or his face. Just the back of his head. A coat. The way the door closed behind him and didn't come back.
The wind picked up. He wrapped his arms around his notebook, guarding it.
The door to the apartment was unlocked.
Inside: quiet. The kind of quiet that felt like smoke.
The TV was on, but muted. Static buzzed on the screen.
His mother lay on the couch, one arm draped across her eyes. She wore a stained robe and one slipper. A glass of orange liquid sat half-finished on the floor. It wasn't juice.
Daniel stood in the doorway for a long time, waiting.
She didn't move.
He walked past her and into the kitchen. Took a slice of bread, no butter. Ate it dry. Back to the living room.
He sat beside her on the edge of the couch, gently, so he wouldn't wake her.
He took out the notebook.
He looked at the boy with the man's face.
He didn't draw anymore.
Just sat there, the red crayon in his hand like a weapon he wasn't sure he wanted to use.
📖 CHAPTER TWO
The Sound a Door Doesn't Make
At school, they'd stopped asking Daniel questions out loud.Now they wrote them on little white cards.
The speech therapist, Miss Carrow, had a plastic smile and fingernails painted the color of sidewalk chalk. She sat across from Daniel in a too-small chair, her knees pressed together as if she didn't trust the floor beneath her. A sand timer sat between them on the table, blue grains falling too fast.
She flipped a card.
"What is your favorite food?" it asked, in Comic Sans.
Daniel stared at it.
He counted the flecks in the laminate coating. Thirteen.
"Daniel, if you answer three questions today," Miss Carrow said in her singsong therapist voice, "you'll earn a sticker for your chart."
He didn't look up.
"Remember, we use our words. Your mouth works, sweetie. We just have to be brave and practice."
Daniel blinked once. Slowly.
Miss Carrow sighed. Wrote something on her clipboard. A lot of people had clipboards. He'd learned early that clipboards meant people were trying to fix you without listening.
She tried again.
"Do you have a pet?"
Daniel had ants. In the walls. They came out of the windowsill above his mattress. He left sugar there on purpose sometimes, just to watch them move. But he didn't say this. He didn't say anything.
When the sand ran out, Miss Carrow clapped her hands like a daycare worker announcing snack time.
"Good try today, Daniel. I'll see you Thursday."
She handed him a sticker anyway. A smiling sun.
He stuck it to the bottom of his shoe.
At home, there was a new man.
His name was Lou.
Daniel first saw him standing in the kitchen, barefoot, with one sock tucked in his waistband and a toothpick in his mouth. He had the kind of laugh that came from deep inside the belly and got louder the more people didn't laugh with him.
"Well hey there, sport!" Lou said on that first morning, as if he belonged there.
Daniel didn't answer. He stood by the door in his too-thin jacket, the strap of his backpack fraying in his hand.
Sarah—his mother—was by the stove, trying to light a burner that kept clicking but wouldn't catch. Her hair was pinned up, and she wore eyeliner. Daniel hadn't seen her wear makeup since Christmas two years ago. She was laughing, but it was too loud. The kind of laugh she used when she was pretending to enjoy something painful.
Lou turned back to her and smacked her on the ass. She squealed like it was cute.
Daniel turned away.
They didn't notice.
Lou smelled like wood glue and gasoline. He had big hands that always touched—shoulders, knees, the tops of heads. Not in a violent way. Just too much.
He did small repairs around the apartment. Re-hung a cabinet door that had been broken for a year. Tightened a pipe under the sink. "I'm handy," he said. "I make myself useful."
At night, Daniel heard them in the next room. The walls were thin. Not the sounds of sex—though he sometimes heard those, too—but arguments. Short ones, cut off in the middle. The sound of someone trying to stay quiet while furious. Furniture shifting. Drawers slammed.
One night, the front door rattled in its frame from the force of something he couldn't see. He sat up in bed and waited for the noise. But it didn't come. Just silence.
It was the silence that scared him.
The next morning, Sarah had a bruise near her elbow and a cracked thumbnail. She told Daniel not to stare.
He hadn't been. He didn't need to stare. He could feel it.
She made boxed mac and cheese and scraped the pot loudly with a wooden spoon.
"You act like some little ghost, you know that?" she said. "Just floatin' around, never sayin' a damn word. It's creepy."
She dropped his bowl on the table. It sloshed. He stared at it.
"Jesus, Daniel, blink or something."
He blinked.
She lit a cigarette with shaking hands and leaned on the counter, smoking with her back to him.
Daniel began writing more.
He didn't call it writing. He called it getting it out.
He used the backs of old bills, flyers shoved under their door, napkins from Lou's truck. He wrote tiny stories about things that didn't talk—a drawer that held screams, a boy who swallowed silence, a chair that disappeared every time someone tried to sit on it.
He hid the stories under his mattress.
Once, Lou found one and read it aloud in a stupid voice: "The man with teeth in his stomach opened his chest like a door. But there was no one inside."
He chuckled. "This some weird-ass school project?"
Daniel shook his head.
Lou shrugged and tossed the page in the trash.
Daniel fished it out later and burned it in the sink while Sarah snored in the living room.
One night, something changed.
Daniel woke to a sound that wasn't a sound—a kind of heaviness in the air, like the pressure before a storm. The bedroom door was closed, but light flickered under it, a shifting yellow that kept going dark.
Then: shouting.
Lou's voice. Slurred.
Sarah's, flat and sharp.
Then: a thump.
Then: nothing.
Not the slam of a door. Not the crack of a hand. Just the silence after. The sound a door doesn't make when it should. The kind of silence you can't ask about.
Daniel lay very still.
His heart was loud in his chest, but his body wouldn't move.
He imagined red crayon spilling across the floor, filling the cracks in the wood like blood.
Eventually, the light under the door went out.
The next morning, Sarah made pancakes. From scratch.
She wore a sundress that showed the shape of a bruise near her collarbone, like someone had rested fingers there too hard.
Her smile was tight. She laughed too easily. She didn't look at Daniel until he coughed.
When she did, her smile dropped.
"Don't start with your creepy little stares," she snapped. "You're not fooling anyone with that mute act."
She slid the plate in front of him too hard. One pancake folded over like a tongue.
Daniel chewed slowly. No syrup. The air in the room felt thick, like it had swallowed something it couldn't digest.
Lou was gone. His truck keys had vanished from the counter.
That night, the apartment stayed quiet.
But it wasn't peace.
It was the kind of quiet that grows teeth.
Daniel began whispering to himself in the bathroom.
He turned the faucet on, full blast, so no one could hear. The sink was rusted at the base and spat brown for the first few seconds. The mirror had a crack through it like a lightning bolt.
He stood in front of it with the door locked and the water running.
He opened his mouth.
Nothing came.
He opened it again.
Still nothing.
He squeezed his hands into fists.
And then, quietly—so quietly—he whispered: "I am here."
It came out like smoke. Barely there. But it came.
He swallowed. Tried again.
"I am here."
The sound startled him.
He tried once more.
"I am here."
His voice shook. His throat burned. But the words stayed.
The mirror didn't shatter. No one burst through the door. Nothing caught fire.
Daniel turned off the water.
He sat on the edge of the tub for a long time.
Then he whispered it again.
Not for anyone else.
Just for himself.
📖 CHAPTER THREE
The Boy Who Fell Through the Floor
The apartment was dark when Daniel opened the door. Not dim—dark. Thick and silent, like walking into the mouth of something that didn't chew.
At first, he thought it was the clouds—maybe it had stormed again, and the windows were just hiding the light. But then his foot bumped into something cold and soft near the entryway. A pack of lunchmeat. Unplugged, oozing slightly from its plastic edge.
The fridge light was off.
The heater wasn't humming.
The power was gone.
He stood in the doorway with his backpack slumped off one shoulder, his socks wet from walking through a puddle he hadn't noticed. There was the smell of old smoke and warm garbage, and something else—an almost-sweet smell, like perfume spilled on a rotting fruit.
"Mom?" he called.
No answer.
He stepped inside, slowly, stepping over a pizza box that had been on the floor for three days. The TV was dark. The fish tank—empty for a year—sat dusty and dry like a grave someone kept decorating out of habit. The only sound came from the cracked window in the kitchen, where the wind kept making the blind tap-tap-tap against the sill.
He found her on the couch, her face turned into the cushions, mouth half open. A lit cigarette burned between two fingers, dangerously close to the blanket. She wore a red tank top and pajama shorts, one sock inside out. Her makeup had melted down her face. He couldn't tell if she was asleep or just pretending not to be conscious.
The couch cushion smoked slightly. He plucked the cigarette away and ground it into a plate with dried ketchup and ash already stuck to it.
"Mom?" he said again. "The lights are off."
She stirred but didn't turn her head. "Mmph."
"There's no heat."
"Then put on a hoodie," she mumbled.
He stood there for a long time, waiting for her to say something else. Explain. Apologize. Pretend to care.
Nothing came.
That night, he opened the pantry and found half a bag of cereal and two cans of peas.
"Mom," he said quietly from the kitchen doorway. "Can we get groceries?"
She didn't look up.
"I don't have any damn cash right now," she said, dragging a blanket over her head.
"But the fridge—"
"I know what the fridge is like," she snapped, suddenly loud, voice sharp with some bitterness that didn't belong to him.
He flinched. "I was just—"
"You were just acting like your damn father," she snarled, sitting upright now, her hair wild, one eye smeared with mascara like a bruise.
She stepped toward him, the blanket falling off her shoulders.
And then, with no warning, she slapped him across the face.
It wasn't hard. Not like in movies. It was awkward. The kind of slap that didn't know where it was going until it landed. But it landed. His cheek stung. The sound echoed in the little kitchen like someone had cracked an egg on tile.
Her hand stayed frozen in the air.
Then it dropped.
She stared at him like she couldn't believe what she'd done—or worse, like she could believe it and didn't know what to do next.
She said, quietly: "Daniel…"
He didn't wait.
He turned and left.
He didn't take anything but the sketchbook. No coat. No flashlight. No dinner.
He went down the hall, past the buzzing light in the stairwell, down the concrete steps with the handrail sticky from a broken pipe overhead. He passed the mailboxes where someone had drawn a penis in Sharpie that no one ever bothered to clean. He didn't stop walking until he reached the bottom floor.
Then he turned left, toward a door most tenants didn't notice. It had no label. Just a dent near the knob, and a faint smell of paint thinner around the frame.
He tried the handle.
It opened.
The basement was colder than outside. And it smelled like things that used to be alive.
The walls were poured concrete, lined with rusted metal shelves and tools coated in dust. A single, dim emergency lamp flickered above the boiler, casting long shadows that seemed to breathe.
Daniel stepped inside and closed the door behind him.
It was so quiet it made his ears ring.
He stood still, letting the dark settle around him like a second skin.
Then, slowly, he crossed the floor to the corner where broken furniture leaned against a wall: two office chairs missing wheels, a sagging bookshelf, a stack of wooden planks dotted with nails. He slid behind them, into a shallow nook between a hot water pipe and the wall. The pipe gave off a low, constant warmth.
This became his corner.
He sat.
He opened his sketchbook.
And he began to draw.
It started with a hole in the earth.
Not a tunnel. A mouth. A mouth in the ground where the real world spilled out. It was called Lowland, and it was shaped like a spiral.
In Lowland, things went backward.
Children aged in reverse, growing smaller and softer each year until they turned into little balls of light. Silence wasn't punished—it was power. You could use it like a shield, or a knife. In Lowland, monsters lived openly, but they weren't dangerous. They asked permission before they touched you. They had names like Thornfather and Marrow Sister. They took your pain and made masks out of it so you didn't have to wear it all the time.
He drew maps. Cities. Rivers of glass. Skies that bent like mirrors. A school with no teachers, only listening rooms, where you didn't have to speak to be understood.
He wrote names on scraps of paper and tucked them into the wall cracks: Motherflinch. The Grey-Eyed Listener. The Boy Who Drew Gates.
He gave them laws. Not rules—laws, written in red ink with a pencil eraser for a stamp:
No one may touch you unless they are hurting the same.
You may speak or not speak and still be heard.
Nothing that bleeds is broken.
He stayed there for hours.
Not pretending to be somewhere else.
Creating a place to survive this one.
At some point, the boiler rumbled louder. A pipe hissed. A light bulb blinked and died.
Daniel curled into the space beside the pipe and pulled his hoodie over his knees. The notebook rested on his thighs, still open to a map. His handwriting had become jagged from cold, but he could still read it.
He didn't cry.
He didn't fall asleep.
Instead, he whispered to himself.
Not words from school, or from home, or from any page he'd ever been forced to read.
He whispered his own words.
A language he hadn't taught anyone else.
Soft syllables.
Breath-shapes.
His name, over and over—but not the one his mother used. Not Daniel. A different name. A Lowland name.
He didn't know how long he stayed there.
But when he finally looked up, he realized the dark hadn't swallowed him.
He was still there.
Still warm.
Still holding the notebook.
Still writing.
Still here.
📖 CHAPTER FOUR
Micah With the Knife Smile
It happened between periods, in that windowless stretch of hallway near the boys' locker room where the floor always smelled like wet socks and piss. Daniel was walking alone, as usual, keeping his eyes low and his footsteps soundless.
The fight started before he even realized what he was seeing.
One kid was already on the ground, backpack half open, papers spilling like feathers. Another boy was straddling him, laughing. There was something manic in it, almost joyful. That was Micah Ortega.
Daniel had never seen him before.
Micah's shirt was half untucked. His lip was bleeding, not badly, but enough to look like a smear of lipstick. His eyes were sharp, tilted, strange. There was a scar that curved under one of them like someone had tried to erase him with a blade and failed. And he was laughing—laughing—as he grabbed the collar of the boy on the ground and whispered something into his ear.
The kid beneath him didn't fight back. Just turned his head to the side, ashamed.
A teacher shouted from down the hall.
Micah stood.
Casually. Like a curtain call.
He didn't run. Just lifted both hands and grinned. The kind of grin that didn't say I'm sorry—it said You should've been quicker.
Then, as they hauled him off, he turned his head—and looked directly at Daniel.
And winked.
Daniel kept walking.
But something followed him for the rest of the day.
Micah found him two days later behind the cafeteria, where Daniel sometimes sat alone beneath the brick overhang that dripped rainwater from a broken gutter.
"You're the quiet one," Micah said, lighting a cigarette with hands that were too clean for the rest of him. "Ghost Boy."
Daniel didn't answer. He never sat with his back to people, but Micah had come from behind anyway, slid down beside him like they'd planned it.
"Don't worry. I'm not gonna hit you." He took a drag and grinned sideways. "Unless you want me to."
Daniel glanced over.
Micah's grin widened. "There it is. First look."
He offered the cigarette.
Daniel hesitated.
Micah raised an eyebrow. "Don't act like you're pure."
Daniel took it.
He didn't inhale—just held it near his mouth, let the smoke curl past his cheek like something trying to become language.
Micah watched him the whole time.
"You always wear the same hoodie?" he asked, flicking ash at the wall.
Daniel nodded.
"Your mom poor?"
Daniel blinked. That wasn't the kind of question people actually asked.
Micah laughed. "Mine too. But she's dead. So that's one less problem."
Silence.
He didn't seem to mind it. He stretched out his legs, scratched a heart into the brick with a nail from his pocket.
"I've seen you before," Micah said.
Daniel turned to him.
"You sit weird. Like you're trying not to take up space."
Daniel looked away.
"That's not an insult," Micah said. "It's just… creepy. In a cool way."
A pause.
"You write stuff?"
Daniel didn't respond.
"I can tell," Micah said. "Writers always look like they're trying not to scream."
He stood up, dusted off his jeans, and tossed the cigarette to the ground. "See you, Ghost Boy."
Daniel didn't know why he felt lighter and heavier at the same time.
They met again behind the gym.
It became a pattern. After school. No schedule. Just an understanding.
Micah always arrived with something in his pocket—a candy bar, a matchbook, a bottle of nail polish he'd stolen from the drugstore. He said he used it to write on walls.
They talked, kind of. Micah talked.
Daniel listened.
"I was born too fast," Micah said once. "Like, literally. My mom said I slipped out in the car. That's why I'm slick."
Another time: "I stabbed a guy once. Not deep. Just enough to make him cry."
Daniel flinched.
Micah laughed. "Kidding. Or not. Depends who you ask."
He leaned back against the concrete and stared up at the rusted floodlight above them.
"You ever kiss a boy?" he asked suddenly.
Daniel looked at him sharply.
Micah smirked. "You're not that quiet, Ghost Boy. I can see you thinking."
Daniel opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
Then said, quietly, "No."
Micah nodded, like that confirmed something he already knew.
"Not me either. I mean, not really. But girls don't do it for me. Not always."
Another long silence.
Then Micah stood up and drew something on the wall in green nail polish. It looked like a face with two mouths.
One day, Daniel brought a story.
He didn't mean to.
It was in his backpack, half-finished, written in red pen across the margins of an old geometry worksheet.
Micah found it.
They were sitting under the bleachers, watching a kid puke from running suicides in gym class.
"What's this?" Micah asked, tugging the page from Daniel's bag.
Daniel reached for it, panicked, but Micah held it up.
"The boy who couldn't scream had a mouth on his hand. But when he tried to speak, the teeth wouldn't let him."
Micah read the whole thing out loud. Slowly. Then again, softer.
When he finished, he looked up.
"I like it," he said. "It's fucked."
Daniel stared at the ground.
Micah folded the page carefully—deliberately—and handed it back.
"You're better than school," he said. "You don't belong here."
Daniel didn't know what to say.
So he said nothing.
Micah leaned closer. "You should burn this place down. Leave something behind that scares them."
Then, without warning, he pulled something from his coat pocket and placed it on Daniel's knee.
A knife.
Small. Foldable. The kind you'd steal from a gas station.
The handle was black and smooth, with a chipped skull sticker on one side. The blade was half-open. Just enough to flash silver.
Daniel froze.
Micah leaned in.
"For when you want people to stop thinking you're soft."
Daniel didn't move.
Micah stood.
"Don't lose it," he said. "It's yours now."
He walked away.
Daniel stayed there for a long time, his hands cold, the blade warm where it touched his thigh through the denim.
He didn't open it.
He didn't throw it away, either.
That night, he wrapped the knife in a sock and hid it under his mattress—next to the pages he never let anyone read.
📖 CHAPTER FIVE First Light, First Fire
The library had a smell Daniel liked—dust, and binding glue, and something warm beneath it all, like the breath of old paper. It wasn't quiet the way movies made libraries quiet. There were hums: of air vents, fluorescent lights, old computers ticking softly as they waited to die. But it was the kind of quiet Daniel could live inside.
They met near the back. Past the periodicals, past the encyclopedias nobody touched anymore. Micah called it "the graveyard." It was the last row before the wall—the place with the battered art books and old poetry collections no one checked out.
Micah was already sitting cross-legged on the floor when Daniel arrived, leaning against the base of the shelf with a paperback held upside down in his lap.
"You're late," Micah said.
Daniel looked at the clock.
"I said three," Micah added. "You showed up at 'whatever.'"
Daniel shrugged.
Micah smirked. "Time isn't real anyway."
Daniel sat. He pulled out his sketchpad, opened to a page of unfinished figures. No one had faces. They never did at first.
Micah peeked. "You always start with the hands."
Daniel nodded.
Micah leaned closer, his voice lower now. "That's creepy. And cool."
He returned to his book—still upside down—and read aloud in a faux-British accent: "The wound is the place where the light enters you." He rolled his eyes. "Rumi. You know this dude probably never touched a boy?"
Daniel smiled, barely. Just with one corner of his mouth.
Micah watched him. "There it is. Your almost-face."
Daniel turned the page in his sketchbook. New figure. Same hands.
They sat in silence after that. Not awkward. Just full. The kind of silence that holds things it doesn't say. Micah pulled a pen from his sleeve and began doodling on the wall behind him. A single eye with long lashes and a stitched mouth. He signed it M.O.
They didn't say goodbye when they left. They just stood up and walked in opposite directions. Like the scene had ended, and both boys knew not to ruin it with a curtain call.
It became a routine.
The rooftop of the laundromat. The corner of the library. A graffiti-tagged bus stop near the edge of the woods. Places no one claimed.
That week, they climbed onto the roof using a broken fence and the rickety back stairwell. Micah lit a cigarette and handed Daniel a stick of gum. "So your lungs can stay holy."
They sat with their backs to the vent, watching the street in silence.
Micah exhaled through his nose. "You ever feel like you're not in your own life?"
Daniel turned toward him.
Micah tilted his head. "Like… someone else is walking around inside your body. Wearing your face. Saying your lines."
Daniel nodded slowly.
Micah laughed without smiling. "Yeah. I figured."
The sun was setting behind the pawnshop sign, turning the sky the color of old bruises. Daniel watched a man below kicking at a soda can. He didn't know why it made him sad.
"My mom used to hit herself when she thought I wasn't looking," Micah said suddenly.
Daniel stiffened.
"Like, just enough to feel it. Smack her thigh. Pull her hair. I think she thought it would keep her from hitting me. Or maybe it was punishment for doing it anyway."
Micah didn't look at Daniel. Just stared straight ahead.
"I told her once I didn't feel anything when she screamed at me. She cried for like an hour. That was the worst part. The crying."
A pause.
Daniel opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
Then said, barely audible, "She hit me too."
Micah turned to him, eyes wide with something that wasn't surprise. Something closer to recognition.
"She ever say sorry?"
Daniel shook his head.
"Mine did once," Micah said. "Right before she OD'd. I don't think she meant it, though. I think she was just tired."
Neither of them spoke for a while.
Then Micah flicked his cigarette into the alley and said, "You wanna see something fucked?"
The factory was two blocks past the edge of town, near the old gravel pit where trucks used to dump construction rubble. It had no windows, just tall, cracked walls of soot-streaked brick. Someone had spray-painted a giant X on the front door.
Micah led the way through a side entrance that had been pried open with a crowbar. "Don't tell anyone," he said. "This is my chapel."
Inside, it smelled like rust and mildew and gasoline. The air was cold and dry. Dust drifted like falling snow through the shafts of weak sunlight.
Micah kicked aside some broken wood and pointed. "There."
An old oil drum.
He dropped a bundle of dry paper into it—ripped from a phone book—and lit a match. The flame took slowly, hungrily.
The glow spread across Micah's face in flickers.
Daniel stood a few feet away, arms crossed, the sketchbook under one arm like a shield.
Micah tossed another match in. "Feels holy, doesn't it?"
Daniel stepped closer. The heat licked his fingers.
Micah sat cross-legged on the concrete floor, legs pulled close, hoodie sleeves shoved up to his elbows. He looked up at Daniel, his expression unreadable.
"You ever think about kissing someone?" he asked.
Daniel froze.
Micah grinned, but there was something nervous in it this time.
Daniel sat.
Micah leaned forward. "Like… not just kissing. Wanting. Needing."
Daniel stared at the fire. His throat burned from nothing.
Micah's voice dropped. "You ever want me to?"
The air between them held still, like it was listening.
Daniel didn't answer. He didn't move.
Micah did.
Not much—just enough that his knee touched Daniel's.
They sat like that, the contact electric and terrifying.
Then Micah pulled back. Laughed once—sharp and fast.
"Relax," he said. "I'm just fucking with you."
Daniel stared at the flames. He didn't respond.
Micah stood and stretched. "Let's bounce. This place makes me feel like someone's watching."
Daniel didn't follow right away. He stayed by the drum, watching the last of the phone book curl and blacken.
Micah's voice echoed from the doorway. "Ghost Boy, you coming?"
Daniel nodded.
But he didn't answer.
That night, Daniel couldn't sleep.
He lay in bed with the switchblade under his mattress and the sketchbook open in front of him.
He didn't draw.
He wrote.
A story.
Two wolves.In a cave.One white. One black.One wanted to be touched.The other wanted to bite.They circled each other in the dark for a hundred years, speaking a language made of breath and teeth.They never touched.They never looked away.
He finished the story at 3:27 a.m.
Then he whispered the last line aloud, once, so the room would know it had been written.
And when he finally slept, he dreamed of a fire in the shape of a boy.
✍️ CHAPTER SIX –
The Things You Can't Undo
The hallway felt different after Micah stopped looking at him.
It wasn't just the lack of glances—it was the presence of their absence. The way Micah moved past him now like he'd never spoken Daniel's name. Like he'd never touched his knee in the factory. Like he'd never leaned too close under the bleachers or whispered things that could ruin a boy.
Daniel told himself it didn't matter.
He told himself a lot of things.
The week after the fire, Micah didn't show up at the library.
Then the next.
Then Daniel saw him laughing in the courtyard with three boys from the wrestling team. Laughing the same way he used to when they were alone—head tilted back, eyes half-lidded like he saw through everyone and didn't care.
Daniel sat on the steps and picked at the frayed hem of his sleeve.
He'd stopped bringing his sketchbook. He didn't want it to get seen.
He didn't want to be seen.
Not like this.
It happened on a Thursday.
Third period. Social Studies. The class was half asleep, the lights too bright, the teacher droning about the Industrial Revolution like it was a bedtime story.
Someone giggled behind him.
Then another laugh.
Daniel turned, slowly.
Micah wasn't looking at him—but the boy beside Micah was holding a piece of paper, folded three times, reading something aloud under his breath.
Daniel's stomach dropped.
He recognized the paper.
The color of the ink.
The tilt of the handwriting.
The Wolves.
Micah had taken it.
Not that day—not in front of him. But before. Maybe from the sketchbook. Maybe from Daniel's bag when he wasn't looking. He had taken it.
And now someone else was reading it.
Mocking it.
Laughing at it.
The boy read the line: "One wolf wants to be touched."
He burst out laughing, loud enough for the teacher to glance up.
Daniel's ears went hot. His hands clenched.
Micah met his eyes across the room.
Not smug.
Not cruel.
Just blank.
And that was worse.
He didn't eat lunch.
He didn't go home after school.
Instead, he walked.
Blocks and blocks through the neighborhood, past cracked sidewalks and kids yelling in yards and dogs tied too tight to trees.
He found himself outside the abandoned factory without thinking.
The oil drum was still there.
Cold now. Empty.
He sat beside it.
He didn't cry.
He bit the inside of his cheek until it bled, just to feel something that belonged to him.
Then, slowly, he took the switchblade from his hoodie pocket.
He didn't open it.
He just held it.
Tightly.
Like an answer he wasn't allowed to say.
When he got home, Sarah was gone.
There was a note on the counter: "Be back late. DON'T burn anything."
He opened the fridge. Empty.
He opened the bathroom cabinet. The bottle was gone. Her last refill.
He sat in the hallway for a long time, the light off, the house so quiet it sounded like it was breathing.
Then he went to his room, shut the door, and pulled out a fresh piece of paper.
He didn't write about wolves this time.
He wrote about a boy with two mouths.
One for speaking.
One for swallowing the words he wasn't allowed to say.
The second mouth grew larger every time he was humiliated. Every time someone laughed. Every time someone touched him like a secret, then forgot.
By the end of the story, the second mouth had devoured the first.
The boy didn't speak anymore.
He consumed.
He folded the paper neatly.
Put it under his mattress.
Right beside the knife.
And turned off the light.
✍️ CHAPTER SEVEN
The Teacher Who Didn't Leave Fast Enough
There was a period where Daniel spoke only in fragments.
Not full sentences. Not direct answers.
Just the barest shapes of meaning:
"Yeah.""Dunno.""Fine."
Most teachers stopped calling on him.
Some marked him down for "lack of participation."
Others pretended he wasn't there.
He didn't mind. He preferred the invisibility. It was cleaner than pity.
Then came Mr. Crane.
Mr. Hal Crane arrived mid-semester, replacing Ms. Dearden, who'd left abruptly after a "personal leave" that no one explained. Crane was young—not young-young, but younger than the others. Wore rolled sleeves and thin ties. Spoke softly, like he assumed people would listen. Most didn't. At first.
He didn't raise his voice. He didn't threaten quizzes. He didn't try to be funny. He just taught—and he looked at students like they were already real.
On the first day, he handed out a short story by Raymond Carver.
Daniel read it twice, silently, before the bell rang.
Crane noticed.
Two weeks in, Crane dropped a book on Daniel's desk during silent reading: The Bell Jar.
Daniel looked up.
Crane just said, "Skip to chapter six."
And walked away.
Daniel did.
He read it in the library bathroom, sitting on the closed lid of a toilet, the tile freezing against his thighs.
He didn't understand all of it.
But it understood him.
From then on, books began appearing.
In his locker. Slipped under his desk. One had a note:
You're not broken. You're just loud in a quiet world. Keep going.– H.C.
Daniel kept them hidden in a box beneath his bed. He read late at night, flashlight between his knees, every paragraph a lifeline.
One day, Mr. Crane wrote this on the whiteboard:
"Survival is not the end of the story."
And underneath it:– Ocean Vuong
Most kids ignored it.
Daniel copied it three times into his notebook.
After school one Thursday, Mr. Crane called Daniel to stay behind.
Daniel panicked at first. Thought he'd done something wrong.
But Crane just sat on the edge of the desk and held out a folder.
"I read your piece for the winter journal."
Daniel froze.
"I know you submitted anonymously. But I've read enough of your handwriting to know."
Daniel took the folder, hands shaking slightly.
Inside: printed pages.
His story.
Marked with pencil. Underlines. Marginalia. Not corrections—reflections.
At the bottom:
"This made me feel something. That's all a reader wants. Thank you."
Daniel looked up. His throat tightened.
Crane smiled. "You have a voice. Even if you don't use your mouth."
Daniel didn't know how to say thank you.
So he just nodded.
Crane nodded back.
And nothing else had to be said.
Spring came slowly.
Daniel started writing again—not just for class, but in secret, in notebooks with taped spines and worn corners. He even left one piece in Crane's mailbox. Just signed it D.
The next day, Crane tapped his desk as Daniel passed.
"You got guts, D."
Daniel didn't smile.
But something in him lifted.
Just an inch.
The rumors started in April.
A senior girl—Natalie something—crying in the hallway.
Her friend saying things too loudly.
"He just stares at people like he knows everything."
"I told her not to go after school."
"I think he touched her hand."
It wasn't Daniel.
But it didn't matter.
Whispers spread faster than truth.
Crane started keeping his door open.
He stopped staying late.
Stopped leaving books.
Stopped writing notes.
One Monday morning, he was gone.
No warning.
No goodbye.
Just a substitute with a list of assignments and a note from the principal:
Mr. Hal Crane is no longer with the district. We will respect all privacy and move forward with academic focus.
Daniel stared at the desk where Crane used to sit.
The chair was turned sideways.
Like someone left in a hurry.
That night, Daniel opened his folder of marked-up stories.
Read every comment again.
Then wrote a new one.
Just for Crane.
It was about a man who taught ghosts how to speak.
Not by giving them voices—
But by listening long enough that they believed they were real.
✍️ CHAPTER EIGHT
The Year Without a Name
He stopped using mirrors that year.
Not for any big reason.
Just because one morning he looked and didn't recognize the shape staring back.
Not the body. That was the same—too thin, hunched shoulders, hoodie with the sleeves pulled over his hands. But the outline was blurred, as if the thing inside had slipped slightly out of sync.
So he stopped looking.
And the world kept moving without him.
At school, he barely passed anything.
He wrote his name on tests but didn't answer the questions.
No one stopped him.
Not really.
The counselor called Sarah once. Daniel overheard.
"We're concerned about disassociation… academic withdrawal… lack of engagement."
Sarah's response: "What do you want me to do, talk to him?"
Daniel left the house that night and slept in the crawlspace behind the laundromat.
It was warmer than his bedroom.
Smelled better, too.
Two weeks later, he came home and found a woman in a navy windbreaker sitting at the kitchen table. Her notebook had Child Services Division printed in the corner.
She asked soft questions.
Sarah shouted louder ones.
Daniel just stood there, holding a grocery bag with two cans of soup he bought using quarters he'd found in the couch.
That was the last night he lived at home.
The group home wasn't like he expected.
It wasn't a movie.
It wasn't padded rooms or screaming.
It was beige walls.
Neutral smells.
An old TV bolted to the ceiling, always playing reruns of things that made no one laugh.
He shared a room with a boy who whispered in his sleep and carved letters into his mattress with a fork.
No one hit him there.
No one hurt him.
They just didn't see him.
And somehow, that was worse.
His name was written on a laminated card taped to a locker: "REED, D."
The staff called him that: "Reed." Not Daniel. Not even Dan.
He didn't correct them.
He ate what they served. Did his assigned chores. Sat through group therapy without blinking.
They praised him for being "low maintenance."
He overheard one case worker call him "easy."
That night, he punched the wall in the shower.
It didn't leave a mark.
On the wall, or on him.
Time slipped.
It didn't move forward. It just… spun.
Every day, the same schedule.
Wake up. Eat. School. Homework. Dinner. Lights out.
No clocks in the bedrooms.
No cell phones.
Just structure.
Some boys tried to fight it.
Daniel didn't.
He just stopped counting.
Stopped naming.
Stopped being.
One night, during the 9:30 quiet hour, he sat cross-legged on the floor beside his bed.
There was a box of donated school supplies in the common area. He'd taken one notebook. Black cover. Spiral binding. 70 pages.
He opened it.
Wrote the date in the top right corner.
Paused.
Then wrote:
My name is still Daniel, I think.
He stared at the sentence for a long time.
Then, quietly, under it:
I used to be someone.
Then, quieter:
Maybe I still am.
He closed the notebook.
Didn't hide it.
Just left it on the floor.
The next morning, someone had stepped on it.
There was a shoe print across the cover.
He traced it with his finger.
Then smiled.
Faint.
But real.
Like breath returning.
✍️ CHAPTER NINE
The Voice Under the Floorboards
The new house smelled like lemon wipes and guilt.
His foster parents were named Dean and Marcy. Dean worked at the DMV and asked too many questions. Marcy offered too many snacks. They called him "bud" and "kiddo" and sometimes just "hey."
The guest room had pale green walls and a window that stuck halfway when you tried to close it. The sheets were clean. The closet was empty.
Daniel unpacked slowly.
One hoodie.Three shirts.Four notebooks.No photos.
They gave him a key. Told him he could come and go "within reason."
He said "okay" once.
It was the first word he'd spoken in two weeks.
He found the crawlspace by accident.
The dog—Otis, old and wheezy—had nudged open the linen closet door while chasing a dust bunny. Behind it, half-hidden: a small panel with a metal latch.
That night, after dinner, Daniel opened it.
Inside: a low, wooden tunnel that ran beneath the floorboards. The air was dry, musty, still.
He crawled in.
Brought a flashlight and a blanket.
Not to hide.
Just to be.
There was something under the fourth plank.
He didn't find it right away. It took three visits, one slip of the hand, and a splinter before he noticed the board was loose.
Beneath it: a tin lunchbox. Faded. Dent in the side.
Inside:
Four letters, folded tightly, addressed to "Me (but later)"
A stack of childish drawings—dark red scribbles and broken figures
A cloth pouch with a tarnished locket inside
One matchstick
A note that said: I'll come back when I matter
Daniel sat cross-legged in the dust, flashlight between his knees, and read every letter.
They were messy. Unfiltered. Beautiful.
Written by a girl named Harper.
She'd lived here.
She'd been here.
And she had tried to make herself real by writing things no one would see.
Daniel read her words again and again.
One line stayed with him:
Sometimes I wonder if silence is a spell we cast on ourselves.
He brought his notebook down the next night.
He wrote back.
Dear Harper,You don't know me. I found your box. Your locket still opens. The picture's faded. I think it's your mom.My mom's probably alive, but I'm not sure.I haven't spoken in a while.It doesn't hurt anymore. It just feels… far.You said silence is a spell.I think you're right.But I want to break it.
He folded the letter and placed it back inside the box.
Didn't close the lid.
Just left it open, like a door.
Each night, he came back.
He wrote more letters.
Not just to her.
To Micah.
To Mr. Crane.
To his father, whose boots still haunted his dreams.
To himself, the version buried somewhere deep under the noise.
He didn't plan what to write.
He just listened.
The words came slowly, then all at once.
Like they'd been trapped behind his teeth for years, and the right floorboard had finally come loose.
One night, after writing until his wrist ached, Daniel sat in the dark, flashlight off, just breathing.
Then, quietly, so quietly he thought the house might miss it, he whispered:
"Harper."
Then:
"Daniel."
His name sounded strange in his own mouth.
But it sounded.
And that was enough.
✍️ CHAPTER TEN
All That Wasn't Said