**The past**

Alecia had buried her face into the crook of her arm hours ago, but it didn’t seem to matter anymore. The room had sunk into a silence that felt thick and suffocating, and it settled like a film over everything. The windows were open. The curtains shifted in the breeze, she knew it was going to rain.

She wasn’t sure how long she’d been curled like that. Her arm had gone numb and her face was swollen and patchy with the last of her dried tears, unrecognizable in the faint ...