We did not save each other.
That matters.
People love stories where broken people become medicine.
But Caleb was not my cure.
I was not his forgiveness.
We were two survivors standing near the same wreckage, learning not to mistake closeness for repair.
Still, there were moments.
Small ones.
He came over to fix the loose porch step because he said it bothered him, but really because my mother fed him soup when he looked too thin. I started drawing again, not faces at first, but windows. Then hands. Then one day, without planning to, I drew Caleb’s palms open under a stream of light.
He stared at the sketch for a long time.
“You made them look gentle,” he said.
“They are.”
He cried when he thought I wasn’t looking.
At graduation, I wore my hair pinned back.
Both sides of my face visible.
Not as a statement.
