Chapter 5: Drowning

## Emily

October 9th, 2021

The bathroom floor was cold.

That was the first thing I noticed. Not the blood — that came later. Not the pills scattered across the tile like tiny white planets in a solar system that had lost its sun. Not the way my phone screen glowed in the dark, casting everything in that sickly blue light that made the world look like it was already underwater.

The floor was cold, and I was lying on it, and somewhere above me the ceiling fan was turning in slow, lazy circles that I could track with my eyes if I tried hard enough, and I was trying hard enough because focusing on the fan meant not focusing on the thing I'd just done.

Jordan had been bad tonight.

Not the usual bad. Not the grab-your-arm, slam-you-into-the-wall, call-you-worthless kind of bad. That was baseline Jordan. That was Tuesday. That was the background radiation of my existence, as constant and predictable as gravity.

Tonight was different.

Tonight he'd come home at 11 PM with whiskey on his breath and something new in his eyes — not just anger but a kind of gleeful cruelty, the look of a person who had decided to enjoy what they were about to do. He'd found the jar.

The paper roses.

He'd gone into my room — my locked room, which meant he'd picked the lock or broken it, I didn't know which — and he'd found the jar on my nightstand and he'd dumped them out onto my bed and stared at them with that twitching muscle in his jaw that always preceded the worst of it.

"Who gave you these?" he'd asked, his voice almost pleasant. Almost friendly.

"Nobody."

"Nobody." He picked one up. Turned it between his fingers. "These are pretty. Somebody made these. Somebody cares about little Emily enough to fold paper flowers." He crushed it in his fist. "Who?"

"A friend."

"You don't have friends."

"I have Ash."

"Ash doesn't make paper roses." He crushed another. Then another. Methodically, the way a child pulls wings off flies — not in anger but in curiosity, wanting to see what would happen, wanting to see if the thing would still try to fly.

I watched my paper roses die in his hands and something inside me — some last, stubborn thread of self-preservation that had been fraying for three years — snapped.

"Stop it," I said.

He looked at me. Surprised. I didn't say stop. I didn't fight back. That was our arrangement, the unspoken contract of abuse — he broke me and I let him and the world kept turning.

"Excuse me?"

"Stop. Fucking. Crushing. Them."

The first hit knocked me into the wall. My head connected with the doorframe and the world went bright white and then dark red and then nothing for a second — just a gap, a missing frame in the film, a moment of blessed emptiness.

Then I was on the floor and he was standing over me and the remaining roses were scattered around us like the aftermath of a wedding that ended in murder.

He kicked me once in the ribs. Casually, the way you'd kick a bag of trash to see if it was full.

"You're pathetic," he said. "You think some guy with paper flowers is going to save you? You're as dead as your sister. The only difference is she had the decency to actually die."

He left.

I stayed on the floor for a while. I don't know how long. Time didn't work properly when Jordan was done — it stretched and compressed and folded in on itself until minutes and hours were interchangeable. Eventually, I crawled to the bathroom. Closed the door. Locked it. Sat on the cold tile with my back against the tub and my head pounding and the taste of blood on my lip where I'd bitten through it.

The razor was on the top shelf. Behind the mouthwash. Where it always was.

My hands were moving before my brain caught up. Reaching for the shelf. Fingers closing around the handle. Not thinking — that was the key. You couldn't think about it. Thinking introduced reason, and reason introduced guilt, and guilt introduced the image of Charlie's face, and Charlie's face introduced the question she'd ask if she could see me right now: Em, what are you doing?

But Charlie wasn't here. Charlie was dead. Charlie was dead because I said no, because I was lazy, because I stayed home eating gummy worms while the drunk driver ran his red light, and no amount of paper roses or collapsing star metaphors could change the fundamental, irreducible fact that I was the one who was supposed to die that night and I didn't and now I was here, on a bathroom floor, bleeding from my lip and my pride and about to add my wrist to the list because the pressure in my skull had reached a level that only the blade could relieve.

I made the first cut.

Shallow. Careful. On the inside of my left forearm, below the crook of my elbow, where the sleeves would hide it. The sting was immediate and clarifying — a bright, clean pain that cut through the fog of everything else. The blood welled up in a thin red line and I watched it with the detached fascination of a scientist observing a chemical reaction.

Then I made a second cut. Deeper.

Then I reached for the pills.

Not to die. Not exactly. Not in the deliberate, planned, note-on-the-nightstand way that people imagined when they thought about suicide. More like... not caring if I woke up. Reaching into the medicine cabinet and grabbing whatever was closest — antidepressants, Tylenol, Jordan's leftover Ambien — and shaking a handful into my palm and staring at them the way you'd stare at a door that might lead somewhere better.

I swallowed them with water from the tap, cupping it in my shaking hands because I couldn't find a cup, and the water tasted like copper and chlorine and defeat.

Then I sat back down on the floor.

Then I waited.

The ceiling fan turned. The blood dried on my arm. The pills sat in my stomach like a fist, heavy and warm and purposeful.

My phone was on the counter. The screen lit up with a text from Ash.

Ash: movie tomorrow? Syn's making popcorn

I couldn't respond. My hands were shaking too badly. My vision was blurring at the edges — whether from tears or pills or the concussion that was probably forming behind my right eye, I didn't know.

But through the blur, I could see the card.

It was tucked into my phone case, visible through the clear back, a phone number in sharp handwriting. No name. No explanation. Just digits, written with the precision of someone who didn't waste ink on anything that wasn't essential.

If he touches you again, call me. I don't care what time it is.

2:26 AM.

My fingers found the number. Dialed. Pressed the phone to my ear with a hand that was slippery with blood and water and the residue of whatever chemicals I'd just ingested.

It rang twice.

"Emily." Not a question. Not surprise. Just my name, spoken at 2:26 AM with the immediate alertness of someone who didn't sleep or who had been waiting for this call since the day he gave me the number.

"Hi," I said. My voice sounded like it was coming from far away. From underwater. "I did something stupid."

A beat of silence. One second. Two. "What did you take?"

"I don't know. Some pills. Not a lot. Maybe a lot. I don't know how to quantify what constitutes a lot."

Movement on his end. Fast. Purposeful. A door opening. Keys. "Emily, I need you to listen to my voice. Can you do that?"

"I can hear you."

"Good. That's good. How many pills?"

"Maybe eight. Maybe ten. They were mixed. Some of mine, some of Jordan's Ambien."

"Fuck." The word was quiet. Controlled. The curse of a man who didn't waste profanity any more than he wasted ink. An engine turned over. "Emily, I need you to stay on the phone with me. I'm coming to you. Don't hang up."

"I'm not trying to die," I said. The words felt important to clarify. Essential, even, though I wasn't sure they were true. "I just... stopped caring if I didn't."

"I know." His voice was steady. An anchor thrown into churning water. "That's the most dangerous version, Snowflake. The not-caring is what kills people. The wanting-to-die at least has the dignity of intent. Not-caring is just... drift."

"That's very poetic for 2 AM."

"I'm a writing professor. It's contractually obligated." A beat. "Tell me about the ceiling fan."

"What?"

"Your ceiling fan. In the bathroom. Describe it to me."

I looked up. The fan was still turning, slow and hypnotic, its blades casting shadows that rotated across the ceiling like the hands of a clock that had given up on keeping time. "It's white. Four blades. One of them has a chip in it from when Jordan threw a beer bottle at the wall and the ricochet caught it."

"Keep talking. What else do you see?"

"The floor. It's cold. There's a crack in the third tile from the left. It's shaped like a river. Or a vein."

"Veins carry blood back to the heart," he said. His voice was close to the phone, intimate, as if he were speaking directly into my ear instead of through a signal bouncing between satellites. "Even when the body is shutting down, the veins keep carrying. They don't stop. They don't decide it's not worth the effort. They just keep doing their job."

"That's either inspiring or morbid."

"Like I said. Probably both."

My eyes were getting heavy. The pills were pulling me down, wrapping me in a warmth that felt like drowning and sleeping at the same time. "Grey," I mumbled, using his first name for the first time, not even conscious of the boundary I was crossing.

"I'm here."

"I don't want to be like this anymore."

"I know."

"I mean it. I don't want to — I'm so tired of being broken. I'm tired of pretending I'm not. I'm tired of the medication and the concealer and the sleeves and I'm so fucking tired of this bathroom floor. I've been on this floor so many times. So many times. And every time I think it's the last time and it never is."

"It is this time."

"You can't know that."

"I know things." I heard his car accelerate, tires on asphalt, the engine pushed past its comfort zone. "I know that the pills you took are going to make you drowsy but probably won't kill you because Ambien and SSRIs in moderate quantities cause sedation, not respiratory failure. I know that the cuts on your arm are shallow because you're too careful to go deep — that's not cowardice, Emily, that's the part of you that doesn't want to die fighting the part of you that doesn't want to live. And I know that you called me instead of letting the drift take you, which means there is something inside you — something small and stubborn and unbreakable — that chose to reach for the phone instead of surrendering."

Tears were sliding down my face. Warm. Relentless. "I called because you were the only number I could see."

"Or because I was the number you wanted to see."

I closed my eyes. The room was spinning. Slowly, gently, like a carousel winding down. "Tell me something brilliant," I whispered.

He was quiet for a moment. Just the sound of the engine and his breathing and the vast, humming distance between wherever he was and wherever I was lying on a bathroom floor with blood on my arm and chemicals in my blood.

Then he said: "When I was seventeen, I found a cat. Black. Feral. Missing half an ear and most of its trust in humanity. It was living behind a dumpster in an alley where I was doing things I won't tell you about yet. Every day, I'd go to that alley, and every day, the cat would hiss at me from behind the dumpster like I was the worst thing it had ever seen."

"What did you do?"

"I sat down. Every day. Same spot. Didn't move. Didn't try to touch it. Just sat. For weeks. Until one day, the cat walked up to me and pressed its face against my knee. Not because I'd earned it — I hadn't. But because it was tired. Tired of being feral. Tired of the dumpster. Tired of hissing at every hand that came near it. And in that moment of exhaustion, it chose to trust."

My breathing was slowing. The room was still spinning but softer now. Like being rocked.

"I named her Sirius," he said. "After the star. Because she was small and black and she burned brighter than anything else in that alley."

"Where is she now?"

"Asleep on my pillow. She's thirteen. Still feral. Still missing half an ear. Still the most important relationship I've ever had."

I almost laughed. Almost. "You're comparing me to a feral cat."

"I'm comparing you to the bravest thing I've ever known. Stay with me, Emily. Stay on the line. I'm twelve minutes away."

"Eleven," I murmured. "You're driving too fast."

"I'm driving exactly the right speed."

I pressed the phone closer to my ear and listened to his engine and his breathing and the occasional whisper of something he was saying under his breath — counting, maybe, or praying, or threatening the traffic lights — and I stayed.

Not because I wanted to live.

But because a man who made paper roses and named his cat after a star had told me to, and for reasons I couldn't explain and didn't want to examine, I trusted him.

The bathroom floor was cold.

But his voice was warm.

And for now — just for now — that was enough.

---

## Grey

October 9th, 2021 — 2:41 AM

I broke three traffic laws getting to her.

Possibly four. The last red light was debatable — it was more orange than red and I was already in the intersection when it changed and the philosophical argument about whether a traffic light constitutes a binding legal agreement when there's a girl bleeding on a bathroom floor felt like a conversation I could have with the municipal court at a later date.

Jordan's apartment was on the third floor of a building that smelled like mildew and domestic violence. I could hear a television through one of the doors — some late-night show, laughter track, the sound of people pretending that everything was fine.

Her door was locked. I picked it in six seconds. Malachi would have been disappointed — my record was four.

The apartment was dark. Small. A living room that doubled as a kitchen, a hallway with two doors, the kind of space that felt like it was designed to make people feel trapped. Beer bottles on the counter. A hole in the wall, recently patched, badly. Jordan's room was to the left, his door open, snoring audible from the hallway.

I stood outside his door for three seconds.

Three seconds to decide whether to go right — to Emily — or left — to him.

Left would be easier. Left would be permanent. Left would solve the problem with a pillow and ninety seconds and Jordan Glass would never throw another bottle or crush another paper rose or put his hands on a girl who weighed half of what he did.

Malachi's voice in my head: Don't do anything foolish.

Right.

I went right.

The bathroom door was locked. I knocked softly. "Emily. It's me."

Rustling. A whimper. The lock clicked.

She was on the floor. Exactly where I'd pictured her — back against the tub, legs out in front of her, phone in one hand, the other arm streaked with dried blood from two shallow cuts below her elbow. Pale. Trembling. Eyes half-closed, pupils wide from the sedatives.

The pill bottles were scattered across the counter. I counted quickly — her antidepressants, Tylenol PM, generic Ambien. The Ambien was the concern but the bottle was mostly full, which meant she'd taken maybe five or six, and with her weight, that was sedation, not death.

She'd live.

That fact settled into my chest with a force that almost buckled my knees.

"Hey," she murmured, looking up at me with those blue eyes — glazed, heavy, but present. Still present. "You came."

"I told you I would." I crouched in front of her. Assessed. The cuts were superficial — clean, intentional, the work of someone who knew exactly how deep to go and exactly how deep was too deep. She'd been doing this for a while. Long enough to develop technique. Long enough that her forearm, when I gently pushed her sleeve up, revealed a constellation of old scars — thin white lines, dozens of them, overlapping, forming a map of every night she'd spent on this floor before tonight.

My hands didn't shake. I didn't allow them to.

"Let me see," I said, taking her arm carefully.

She let me. No resistance. The fight had gone out of her.

I cleaned the cuts with water from the sink and strips torn from a clean towel. I flushed the remaining pills. I checked her pupils, her pulse, her breathing — all within survivable parameters. She was going to be miserable tomorrow, but she was going to wake up.

"I'm going to lift you," I told her. "We're leaving."

"I can't leave. Jordan—"

"Jordan is asleep. And by the time he wakes up, you'll be somewhere he can't reach you."

Her eyes filled. Not with gratitude — with something more complicated. Fear and relief and shame and the bottomless exhaustion of a person who had been carrying themselves for so long that the idea of someone else holding the weight was almost incomprehensible.

"Where?" she whispered.

"Somewhere safe. I promise."

I picked her up. She weighed nothing — not in the poetic sense, in the medical sense. She was thin in the way that people became thin when eating felt like a chore and the body ran on adrenaline and sugar and antidepressants. I could feel her ribs through her shirt. Her shoulder blades like wings that had forgotten how to open.

She pressed her face into my chest. Her hand found my shirt and held on with a grip that was weak and desperate and heartbreaking.

"I'm sorry," she whispered.

"Don't. Don't ever apologize for surviving."

I carried her out of the apartment. Past Jordan's door, where the snoring continued, oblivious. Down three flights of stairs. Into my car, where I laid her in the passenger seat and buckled her in and drove to the only place I could think of.

My apartment.

Temporary. Off campus. A one-bedroom that Malachi paid for, filled with books and paper roses and a thirteen-year-old cat who would either love Emily Glass or try to murder her.

Sirius chose love.

The second I carried Emily through the door and laid her on the couch, the cat jumped up and pressed herself against Emily's side and began to purr — a sound like a small, furry engine, constant and warm and unreasonably comforting.

Emily's hand found the cat's fur. Her eyes were closed. The sedatives were winning.

"She likes you," I said, pulling a blanket over her.

"She's warm," Emily mumbled.

"She's a terror. But yes. She's warm."

I sat on the floor next to the couch with my back against the wall and my phone in my hand and I watched her breathe.

In. Out. In. Out.

Each breath a small, ordinary miracle.

I texted Jeremy: Emily Glass is at my apartment. Possible overdose — Ambien and SSRIs, moderate quantity. Self-harm, superficial cuts. She's stable. I need you to run a full background on Jordan Glass by morning. Everything. Finances, criminal record, contacts, the works.

Jeremy: Copy. On it.

I set the phone down.

Sirius purred.

Emily breathed.

And I sat there in the dark, in the glow of the streetlight coming through the window, and I folded paper roses until the sun came up, because my hands needed something to do that wasn't violent, and the girl on my couch needed something to wake up to that wasn't ugly.

By dawn, there were twenty-three paper roses arranged on the coffee table in the shape of a constellation.

Sirius. The star.

The brightest one in the sky.