I was easygoing.
I understood.
I would be fine.
But sitting there with my acceptance letter folded in my hands, I finally saw the pattern as one long road.
I had not imagined it.
I had simply learned not to name it.
That night, while laughter moved through the downstairs rooms and my parents began building Amber’s future out loud, I sat alone on my bedroom floor. The window was open, and warm Denver air drifted in with the smell of cut grass and somebody grilling nearby. My room looked painfully ordinary: the narrow desk, the stack of library books, Amber’s old laptop, the thrift-store quilt, the corkboard filled with notes I had written to myself in careful block letters.
I wanted to cry. I expected to cry.
But nothing came.
The shock had frozen somewhere deeper than sadness.
Around midnight, I opened Amber’s old laptop. It took several minutes to start. The fan groaned, and the screen flickered before finally brightening. I typed into the search bar with fingers that felt detached from my body.
