Valeria's first morning as a free person began with silence.
Not the silence of loneliness — the silence of someone who'd woken up in a room that belonged to her, in a bed that belonged to her, in a life that belonged to her, and was lying still because the particular novelty of ownership required a moment of adjustment.
I knew this because Mira told me, and Mira knew because she'd spent the night on the floor of Valeria's dormitory room — uninvited, unapologetic, and armed with a blanket she'd taken from the medical wing and the particular stubbornness of a girl who'd decided that the person who'd given her back herself wasn't going to spend her first night of freedom alone.
