Page 39 of Shy Girl

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streaking my face. Nathan watches, his amusement crackling in the space between us.

“Luckily,” he says, his tone light, conversational, “you didn’t tell her anything about me. I know because I checked your texts. You know, for someone who’s supposed to be your best friend, you didn’t tell her much.” He chuckles, low and cruel. “If I’d known you two were so close, I would’ve written her a letter. Told her you

were off starting some fabulous new life abroad. Actually...” He pauses, tapping his chin, “I still might do that.”

Guilt slams into me, sharp and relentless.I should’ve told her something. Anything.If I had, maybe she’d know. Maybe she wouldn’t still be looking.

Nathan crouches in front of me, his face inches from mine, triumphant and mocking. His voice drops, dark and cutting. “Not that it matters. The police aren’t taking your disappearance seriously. They think you ran off. Even your dad gave up. Sent a text saying he’d leave you alone—figured it’s what you wanted.”

The sobs come harder now, shaking my body as the poster blurs in front of me. It’s an accusation, a mirror, a monument to the version of me that’s vanished. Nathan rises, brushing off his hands like he’s finished tidying up.

“It’s amazing,” he says, his tone breezy, almost impressed.“You disappear, and the world just moves on. You made it so easy for me.”

His words are knives, and I can’t stop bleeding. My chest heaves as the sobs tear through me, my tears pooling on the rug. Nathan’s smile fades slightly as he watches, his amusement dimming, replaced by something bored, disinterested. Withoutanother word, he turns and leaves, the door clicking shut behind him.

The deadbolt slides into place, final and cold.

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I stare at the poster, its details smudged by my tears. My face stares back, warped and distant.Kennedy is looking for me. Six months. She’s been looking for six months.

And she won’t find me.

YEAR TWO

TWENTY

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The next yeardrags slow and jagged, each day bleeding into the next with no clean edges, no seams to tell one from another. Time here doesn’t stretch forward—it is a heavy, pink-tinted void where nothing begins or ends. The books on the shelf have long stopped being stories. Their words dissolve as I read them, the letters turning into shapes, the shapes into noise. But I read them anyway, over and over, hoping the repetition will tether me to something real. Anything.

But the only real thing is my voice, thin and trembling in the dark, whispering apologies to a father who will never hear them.

I didn’t think about my dad much before this room. He was always on the edges of my life, a figure of quiet disappointment. He lived in the sighs he let out when I told him I wasn’t coming home for Thanksgiving, knowing he’d get drunk and unravel the night. But now, in the pink glow of this room, he is everything.

At night, when the silence wraps itself around me like a second skin, I lie on the bed with its scratchy quilt and press my face into the pillow. I whisper to him, my voice breaking on the same

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promises, over and over:If I get out of here, the first thing I’ll do is call you.

I hold his face in my mind like a photograph I’m scared to lose. The crow’s feet that deepened when he smiled. The way he’d squint at the horizon, refusing to admit he needed glasses. His hands, rough and steady, fixing things I didn’t know were broken.

The last time I saw him, he hugged me awkwardly, his arms too loose, like he wasn’t sure I wanted to be held. I replay that hug constantly, looping it like a lifeline, imagining what it would feel like to step into it again.

Some nights, Kennedy finds her way into my thoughts. I imagine her at her kitchen table, scrolling through my dead social media accounts, trying to stitch together clues that don’t exist. Her determination feels like both a gift and a curse. I wonder if she’s angry with me, if she hates me for leaving without a word. I hate myself for all the things I didn’t say, every message I didn’t send. If I could go back to that afternoon in her backyard, I would tell her everything. Maybe she would have stopped me.

The rest of my life slips away slowly, like a photograph left too long in the sun. My apartment, with its drafty windows and creaky floors, feels distant, its edges fraying. I can’t remember the exact shade of my couch, the smell of my favorite candle, or the way the light spilled through the blinds in the late afternoon. The details fade, one by one, until my life feels like a dream I once had but can’t hold onto.

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