My limbs feel foreign, like borrowed parts that don't quite fit. My chest is hollow, a void consuming everything except the pain that refuses to die.

The room spins in slow motion—or maybe I'm the one rotating, caught in orbit around memories I can't escape. Colors pulse with my sluggish heartbeat, while bass vibrations rattle through my bones. Monty's laughter cuts through it all, sharp and jarring against the chemical quiet in my head.

Reality comes in disconnected snapshots now. My head falls back and fireworks explode behind my eyelids—her face, her blood, her body broken on blood-slick asphalt. Everything blurs together until I can't tell what's memory and what's nightmare. I've lost track of time on this filthy floor that's become my home. Days blur into weeks when you're trying to dissolve yourself into nothing.

Through the fog, voices pierce the veil—familiar, urgent, disappointed. Jay and Nick materialize like judgmental ghosts through my chemical haze. I try to focus on their faces, but my body's already surrendered to whatever darkness Monty pumped into my veins.

"Jesus Christ, Nate." The words reach me like they're traveling through deep water, warped and distant.

Fragments of sensation assault me: rough hands gripping my arms, feet dragging across carpet that reeks of stale cigarettes, the world tilting sideways. Then cool leather against my back—a car seat becoming my new reality as voices float above me like storm clouds.

"Keep this quiet." Nick's voice cuts sharper than any needle. "People don't need to know."

Jay says something lost to the void while the engine's vibration hums through my bones like a lullaby for the damned.

I'm sorry, Leni.

I'm sorry I couldn't save you.

I'm sorry I became everything I swore I wouldn't.

The darkness swallows the rest.

Time melts like wax, dripping and pooling at the edges of consciousness. I'm somewhere else now—Nick's house, I think. The air here is clean wood and expensive cologne, jarring after weeks of breathing Monty's cocktail of stale smoke and desperation. They lay me down, and the leather couch swallows me whole. I squeeze my eyes shut against the spinning room, but darkness brings no peace. Instead, she materializes like a ghost I can't outrun.

Nora.

She's five, a snapshot of innocence in that purple dress scattered with daisies. Pigtails bounce as she moves, bright eyes sparkling with the kind of hope I'd forgotten existed. Her tiny hands clutch a crayon and paper like they're precious treasures.

“Nate, you have to sign this."

"What is it?"

"It's a forever friends promise."

The memory burns bright enough to scar as she hands me a piece of paper. Her backwards S's swimming across the page, each misspelling perfect in its imperfection.

Her signature sits at the bottom, waiting for mine like she never doubted I'd sign. Like she knew, even then, that I'd promise her anything.

"The pony's name is going to be called Dolly. And we can rescue all the puppies and give them Avenger names like Superman!"