Change.
The act or instance of becoming different.
A word so small, yet so cruel.
The kitchen smelled of dinner. Dad was humming to an old song on the radio as he stirred the pot on the stove, his head bobbing slightly as if he was conducting an invisible orchestra. Mom sat at the table with her glasses slipping down her nose, pretending to read a recipe book she already knew by heart.
Maya, my little sister, was on the floor, glue on her hands and forehead as she tried to fix a crooked window on her dollhouse.
"Don't get glue on the floor," Mom called without even looking up.
"I'm not!" Maya shot back, not even convincing herself.
"You are," I said from the couch, grinning.
She stuck her tongue out at me.
"Be nice, Kariss," Dad said with a chuckle, waving the wooden spoon like it was a sword.
"You'll miss this banter when you're my age and the house is quiet."
I rolled my eyes. "I won't miss stepping on her toys."
Dad chuckled, sometimes I wondered how he was able to stay so positive no matter what happened.
The next day, the sky was gray, the kind that made the whole street look dead.
I was lying on the couch when the phone rang.
I remember padding across the cold floor, my feet sore from cleaning after Maya the whole day.
I remember picking up the phone, still half expecting to hear Dad's voice.
"Hey, what do you guys want for dinner?" something along those lines.
Instead, a calm, detached voice asked, "Are you the son of James and Evelyn Wilson?"
Something in my stomach twisted.
"Yes?" I said, with a slight hint of confusion in my voice.
The words that followed destroyed me completely.
Car accident.
Dead on impact.
I didn't even hear the rest.
The phone slipped from my hands and hit the floor with a monotone clatter that echoed in the tiny apartment.
Maya looked up from her dollhouse, her big brown eyes stared at me confused.
"Brother? What's wrong?"
Her voice was so small, so uncertain.
I wanted to tell her.
I wanted to explain why my chest felt like it had been split open, why the room was spinning, why I couldn't breathe.
But the words wouldn't come.
"It's nothing," I lied.. even if it was for a slight moment, I wanted her to keep that pure innocence that had always brought such a bright light into my world.
She nodded slowly, trusting me like she always did, and went back to building her little house.
My world changed when my parents died.
That night, I sat at the kitchen table with two untouched plates in front of me.
The apartment was so quiet I could hear the refrigerator humming.
I didn't sleep.
It was more like I couldn't sleep
I just stared at their empty chairs until the sun came up.
And when it did, I wasn't a kid anymore.
Because somebody had to take care of Maya now.
And there was no one left but me.
The rest of our family cut off contact with us a long time ago.
I thought that meant just feeding her, keeping her safe, making sure she brushed her teeth before bed.
But it was more than that.
It was learning to smile even when I wanted to cry.
It was staying up late with a flashlight, trying to figure out how to pay rent with a half-dead laptop.
It was listening to her cry at night because she missed Mom and Dad, and forcing myself not to cry as well because if she saw me break, she'd break with me.
I became everything at once:
Brother.
Parent.
Friend.
Provider.
And even though it was killing me, I told myself I was doing okay.
Some mornings, when I managed to make her laugh, I believed it.
When she brought home a good grade and showed it to me with that big proud grin, I trusted it.
For a while, I thought maybe this was what life was now.
Hard, but survivable.
But I wasn't sleeping.
I couldn't bring myself to eat.
I'd come home from school so tired I'd just sit on the couch and stare at nothing until she asked me something.
I wanted to be strong for her.
I wanted to keep the world from taking anything else from us.
But the world seemingly didn't care what I wanted.
The first time she got sick, I told her everything was fine.
It was just a fever.
Just a cold.
Kids get sick all the time, right?
I stayed up that night cooling her forehead, telling her that she'd be okay.
I held her hand and promised she wouldn't have to go through anything alone.
But the fever didn't go down.
And I didn't sleep.
Days blurred together.
The apartment smelled of sweat and pills.
My hands shook when I tried to pour water into her cup.
I called the doctor twice.
Both times they told me the same thing: monitor her temperature, keep her hydrated, she'd be fine.
She wasn't fine.
By the end of the week, she could barely stay awake.
Her tiny body shivered even under three blankets.
Her breathing turned shallow, too quiet.
I sat there with my head pressed to the mattress, listening to every single inhale like it was a lifeline.
Because if I stopped watching, if I looked away for even a second, what if she-
I didn't even finish the thought.
One morning, I woke up with my face still pressed against the edge of her bed.
The room was cold and still.
Too still.
Maya wasn't breathing.
I don't remember what I did next.
I don't even remember screaming.
I just remember the quiet aftershock, a quiet so deep it swallowed the whole apartment.
For the last time my world had changed once more again.
After the funeral, people told me it would get easier.
They told me it would heal with time.
It didn't.
The days stretched.
Months felt like years.
I barely left the apartment except to buy food I never ate.
Most nights I didn't even bother with the lights, I just sat on the couch in the dark, staring at nothing, listening to the pipes rattle in the walls.
The place felt wrong without her.
Too clean, too empty.
Like a museum of a life that didn't exist anymore.
Her toys still sat in the corner where she left them.
The dollhouse still waited with its crooked window, halfway fixed.
I couldn't bring myself to move anything.
If I did, it would be like admitting she was never coming back.
So I just let the dust settle.
Let the dishes pile in the sink.
Let the apartment rot around me.
Some mornings I woke up on the floor and couldn't remember lying down.
Some nights I would sit by her bed, knees up to my chest, waiting for her to come back even though I knew she wouldn't.
Sleep became a stranger.
Food lost its taste.
The mirror stopped showing me someone I recognized.
I hated myself for still being here.
I hated that I had promised her she wouldn't go through anything alone yet she still did.
The thoughts came quietly at first, like whispers in the back of my head.
It would be easier if you stopped.
No one's here to miss you.
But the longer I stayed in that apartment, the louder they got.
I started thinking about the roof.
About what it would feel like to fall.
About how fast it would all be over.
I told myself it was just curiosity.
Just wondering.
But every night, when I lay awake staring at the ceiling, the wondering started to feel like planning.
And planning started to feel like relief.
Three months later, I finally climbed to the roof of our apartment building.
It wasn't impulsive.
I had been thinking about it for weeks.
Every night after the endless cycle of contemplating and living as if I wasn't even a human being… I'd lie awake staring at the ceiling until eventually it felt as if the ceiling started staring back.
Some nights I thought I could hear my parents' voices.
Other nights, my sister's.
But every time I turned on the lights, there was nothing.
Just me.
Just the silence.
That night, I decided I couldn't keep going.
The stairwell was empty when I made my way up.
Each step echoed, hollow and decisive, like nails in a coffin lid.
When I pushed open the door to the roof, the cold brushed past my face.
It was winter, and the air was sharp enough to sting my lungs.
I walked to the edge and looked down.
From up there, the streets looked so small.
Cars looked like insects, people just specks of dust drifting through the night.
And I thought, that's all I am as well.
Just one more speck.
One no one would notice missing.
I thought about my parents.
The way Mom used to hum while cooking dinner, the way Dad's laugh used to bring light to my mundane world.
I thought about Maya's face the day of their funeral, how she clung to me so hard that it felt like she would disappear if she didn't.
I thought about how quiet the apartment had become after she died.
Like someone had ripped the sound out of the world and left me to rot in the silence.
Tomorrow, it will be even quieter.
Tomorrow… no one would be left to miss them.
I climbed onto the ledge.
The city spread out below me like an endless sea of light and indifference.
All those lives, all those lights and not one of them would stop if I disappeared.
And for the first time in months, I smiled.
Because it was almost over.
I closed my eyes.
And then I stepped off.
For a single second, I felt like I had been unbound from every weight and thoughts that held me.
I was free.
The air rushed past me, gliding against my skin.
The ground rushed toward me.
And for that one instant, I wasn't drowning anymore.
Then the world slammed into me.
Pain exploded everywhere at once, searing, crushing, blinding.
Every bone in my body screamed, then went silent.
And then nothing.
The world changed for the last time..
I woke up in a hospital bed.
At first, I thought I was dead.
The lights were too bright, too clean, too monotonous.
Then the beeping started.
The air smelled of cleaning supplies.
And I realized I wasn't free at all.
I was still here.
I tried to move.
My legs didn't respond.
My arms didn't budge.
Not even my fingers twitched.
Panic set in.
I tried to scream, but my throat wouldn't work.
The heart monitor spiked as my breath came faster and faster, until someone rushed in, a nurse, shouting something I couldn't understand.
Later, the doctor came.
He told me I was "lucky."
Lucky.
My spine was shattered. I'd never walk again.
Never run.
Never even sit up on my own.
I stared at him until he left, and then I stared at the ceiling for hours.
When the tears finally came, they slid down the sides of my face and soaked the pillow.
I couldn't even wipe them away.
Days turned to weeks.
I couldn't feed myself.
Couldn't scratch when my skin itched.
I had to wait for nurses to come turn me like a piece of meat so I wouldn't get bedsores.
Sometimes they forgot, and I would lie there staring at the wall for hours, my back burning, unable to move, unable to even sleep.
Sometimes I wished they wouldn't come back at all.
When they did, they talked about me like I wasn't there.
"Poor kid."
"Such a waste."
"Why would someone so young try something like that?"
I wanted to shout at them.
To tell them I didn't want to be here either.
But all I could do was stare at the ceiling and let their words seep into my mind.
I wasn't a person anymore.
I was just something the hospital kept alive out of obligation.
Some nights I wished I had hit my head a bit harder.
And every evening, that stupid anime played on the TV in the corner of the room.
It wasn't my choice. The nurses said they left it on so I wouldn't feel "lonely."
Like a glowing box full of perfect people could replace the sound of my sister's voice.
But the longer I stayed here, the more those bright colors bled into my head, and the more I started to memorize every frame.
Amaris.
The chosen one.
The golden boy.
The hero who always stood tall, who could always come out the victor no matter what, who always saved everyone.
I hated him.
I hated how his cape fluttered when he ran.
I hated how his hair always looked perfect even after a fight.
I hated the way he smiled at people like he was some shining beacon of hope.
I hated that he never failed.
That no matter how bad things got, no matter how hard the world tried to break him, he always stood back up.
I couldn't stand up.
I couldn't even sit up.
I lay there, strapped to a bed by my own useless body, while that smug bastard danced across the screen with a sword in his hand and that light in his eyes.
And yet… I couldn't look away.
Because for those twenty minutes every night, I could pretend it was me.
I could imagine my body moving with every slash, every leap, every dodge.
Imagine my legs running, my arms swinging, my voice shouting.
Sometimes I'd close my eyes and time my breathing with his.
Pretend that if I could just match him perfectly, somehow my body would remember how to move.
But when the episode ended and the credits rolled, I was still here.
Still broken.
Still staring at the TV, waiting for someone to come and turn me over.
The hate festered in me like an infection.
I hated Amaris.
I hated that I wanted to be like Amaris.
I hated the nurses for talking about me like I wasn't even there.
I hated the bed for holding me hostage.
I hated the ceiling for stopping me from seeing the night sky.
I hated myself for not being capable enough to even die properly.
The worst nights were the quiet ones.
When visiting hours ended and the hallway lights clicked off, the silence pressed down on me like a weight.
There was no one left to pretend for, no one to convince that I was "getting better."
It was just me.
Just me and the machine that kept beeping to remind me I was still alive.
I wanted to scream.
I wanted to thrash and tear the tubes out of my arms and rip the sheets that covered me.
But I couldn't even move my fingers.
All I could do was lie there.
Lie there and rot.
Tonight was worse.
The smell of alcohol felt like it had burned into the inside of my nose.
The room was too quiet, even the beeping felt muffled, like it was underwater.
The TV was still on.
The glow painted the walls a pale blue, almost ghostly, flickering across my motionless body.
Amaris stood there on the battlefield, sword in hand, light blazing around him like the world itself bent to his will.
He looked invincible.
Even though I hated him, I hated myself more.
I wanted to break the screen.
I wanted to crush him, to make him realize he didn't deserve the light he had.
But at the same time, I wanted to be him.
I wanted to stand like he stood, to breathe like he breathed, to fight like he fought.
I wanted to move.
The pressure in my chest grew tighter, heavier.
Each breath dragged like I was trying to inhale with a wet cloth over my face.
My heart pounded, not fast but hard, slow and deliberate, like it was counting down.
I stared at the TV until my vision blurred and the bright light of Amaris became a smear of color.
And I thought, maybe this was it.
Maybe I won't wake up tomorrow.
Maybe I wouldn't have to.
I didn't fight it this time.
I let the heaviness settle over me, let it push me down into the mattress like I was sinking into water.
For once, I felt calm.
Almost… relieved.
Then I heard it.
A sound that wasn't the TV, wasn't the beeping, wasn't anything human.
A whisper, right by my ear, so close I could feel the air move.
"Do you still wish for change?"
The words didn't sound like words, they felt like they were inside me, like they were coming from the essence that was me.
Through the confusion, I only had a single desire to live a life worthy of a "Hero."
"Yes…" My voice cracked, desperate and broken, barely more than a rasp.
The world dimmed.
The TV faded.
The smell of medicine vanished.
And everything went dark.