Chasing the Bright Side

Prologue

The last photo of the three of us was taken on graduation day.

Therese is in the middle—of course she is—with her arm slung over my shoulder and the other looped around Bam's neck, pulling us both in like she was afraid we'd float away. Bam's eyes are half-closed because he blinked at the wrong moment, and I'm laughing at him for it.
Everyone in that photo looks like they have forever ahead of them.

We were supposed to have forever.
That was the unspoken deal—had been since the day Therese marched up to me on that playground, seven years old and full of a confidence I'd never possess, and asked, "Why are you alone? Come play with us."

I was a painfully shy kid, the kind who preferred drawing shapes in the sand with a stick over playing tag, invisible to everyone else on the playground. Until Therese. She grabbed my hand like it was the most natural thing in the world. Like she'd been looking for me.

Then came Bam. He was the boy who stole my colored pencils every day in kindergarten because they had his favorite characters on them—until Therese shoved him and told him to get his own. He never stole from me again, but he never left either. I think he fell in love with her right there, at five years old, getting bossed around by a girl half his size.

Since then, we were a unit. Therese led. Bam protected. And I was the quiet one in the middle—painting, listening, holding the space.

We were inseparable by the time my mother got sick. When she died a few years later, my dad didn't know how to talk to a grieving child. He would just take me to the park, sit on the bench, and hope the fresh air would fix what words couldn't. But it wasn't the fresh air that saved me; it was them. Therese and Bam became the family I was missing a piece of. They filled the massive, echoing silence my mother left behind.

At least, I thought they did.

After graduation, the shifting was subtle.
A missed call. A late reply. Plans rescheduled, then canceled, then never mentioned again. I told myself it was normal. People get busy. We were growing up. It didn't mean anything.

But then the group chat went quiet. I'd send a message and watch it sit there—Read. No reply. No reaction. Just gray text on a screen.

I tried the way I always try—too much, too hard, too willing to be the one who reaches first. I called Therese; it went straight to voicemail. I texted Bam; Delivered, never opened. I sent long paragraphs, then short ones, then just a "hey."
Nothing.

One night, I scrolled all the way back through our chat. Two years of messages—memes, voice notes, inside jokes, and late-night confessions. And I noticed something that made my stomach drop: every conversation in the last three months had been started by me.

Every "I miss you guys."

Every "When are we hanging out?"

Every "Are you okay?"

Me. Always me. I was the only one holding the line, and I'd been pulling so hard I hadn't realized the other end was slack.

So I stopped.

Not out of anger, but exhaustion. I needed to know: if I went quiet, will they come looking for me? The way Therese came looking for me on that playground all those years ago—would she do it again?

Weeks passed. My phone stayed silent.
She didn't come. Neither did Bam.

That's when the realization hit—not as a thought, but as a weight. Deep, heavy, and terribly familiar.

I've felt this hollow ache before. I felt it when the house went quiet after the funeral and no one explained how to live in the silence. It's the feeling of someone leaving, and the world expecting you to just keep going.

My mom didn't choose to leave; cancer took her. But Therese and Bam? They had a choice. They knew exactly how much I hated the silence, because they were the ones who originally pulled me out of it. And yet, they chose it anyway.
Somehow, that hurt worse.

My dad noticed. He didn't ask—he never asks—but one evening he looked at me over dinner and said, "Go to Nana's. Get some air."

He said it like a suggestion, but his eyes said something else. His eyes said: I see you disappearing again, the way you did when you were ten, and I don't know how to stop it.
I didn't argue.

People always say, "Look on the bright side." I've heard it my whole life. After Mom died. After every bad day. After every silent phone screen.
As if the bright side is just sitting there, waiting for me to turn my head.

But I've been turning for years. I've been chasing it through friendships, through art, through every person I hoped would stay. And every time I get close, the horizon moves. Every time I reach, it pulls away.

I'm tired of chasing.

So this summer, I'm going to Nana Rose's, to the small town with the mountains and the quiet streets. The same town where I spent childhood vacations alone in my room, painting and coloring—invisible and content.

I'll be invisible again. I'll be quiet. I'll stop reaching for people who don't reach back.

It's easier that way.