CHANCE | ✔

14| Callista/Chance

That's the thing about pain. It demands to be felt. 
— John Green 

Yesterneve 
(n.) yesterday evening 

Tuesday — September 5, 2023 

Callista 

I wake up at six the next morning. 

I lie there for ten minutes, mustering up the strength to peel my eyelids open and face the day. 

My face presses into the soft mattress, warmth still clinging to the sheets. Coherent thoughts are fuzzy in the moments between sleep and consciousness. But my skin prickles unmistakably with physical memories. I don't know why tears slip past my eyes but I let them relieve me. 

I sit cross-legged at the center of my ridiculously large bed for the next five minutes, looking through the glass window down at the stillness of the artificial pond blinking softly in the darkness; the strip of vermilion in the twilight sky, looking like a tear in the fabric of the universe — like someone had ripped it open and let the otherworldly firelight have a look at this one; and the near-silent padding of footsteps somewhere in the house, reverberating through the silence. 

I take another three minutes to untangle myself from the sheets. 

I head downstairs to grab a glass of water, propping myself on a barstool at the kitchen island. 

The footsteps are nearer now. I silently set the glass down on the island and peek down the hallway. Nothing. 

I head back upstairs. 

Here, down the hallway, my father exits a room, already dressed in a formal suit, phone against his ear as he talks in a hushed voice. I wouldn't have known he was talking if I hadn't seen his lips move. 

But that isn't what spikes my curiosity. 

He's about to turn this way. 

I scamper away to my room like a thief in the night, not wanting to be caught lurking about. But why should I care? I live here, after all. 

But my mind hooks on one thing, even as I sink back into the warmth of the comforter, even as I unlock the phone and find a dozen messages from Destiny, asking me WHAT THE FUCK happened last night. 

I find that Chance doesn't dominate my mind for once. 

I stare at the screen but don't absorb the words. 

All I can think is, why was my father in my old room? 

It's a ridiculous thought. 

Three years is a long time. He might have converted it into anything. A file room. A storage room for unused ceramic. Hell, even a mini-kitchen or an indoor garden. 

Some part of me knows I'm indulging myself. 

I hadn't yet thought of asking him for my old room, or why I'd been given this one instead of that. It hadn't crossed my mind with the hatred for my current father and my grief over my previous one cluttering my head. 

I don't think I've got the balls to ask him now that I have, either. 

I sigh. 

●⁍●⁍●⁍● 

"You down to get laid?" 

Nope. Not today. I walk past the guy, whose face drops at the rejection. I keep my feet moving, moving, moving, until I reach the lockers.