The rain had stopped by the time Silas left Ravenwood, but the air still clung damp against his hoodie. The streets stretched long and gray, puddles reflecting the broken glow of streetlamps. He walked with his head tilted down, not because he feared catching someone’s eye, but because he preferred watching where he stepped. Shoes told more stories than faces—mud on the sole, uneven wear, a limp hidden by practiced posture.

  His own shoes were unremarkable. That was how he liked them.

  Students filtered out in groups ahead of him, laughter spilling across the pavement. Their voices rose and fell in a rhythm he didn’t follow. Silas walked slower, letting the crowd thin out until only a few shadows remained. Quiet came easier without company.

  He passed the corner shop that always smelled faintly of fried food and bleach, the shuttered bookstore whose sign had been broken since last year, the alley where the bricks still carried faint soot from a fire no one talked about. Ravenwood’s neighborhood was a patchwork of the forgotten, stitched together by people too stubborn to leave.

  The apartment building sat squat between a laundromat and a locksmith’s shop that never seemed to open. Paint peeled from its walls like tired skin, and the stairwell groaned with every step. But it was steady, and steady was enough.

  Silas fished his key from his pocket and unlocked the door.

  “Silas?”

  The voice came at once—light, curious, waiting. His sister appeared in the doorway to the living room, bare feet against the creaking floor. A book was tucked under one arm, her dark hair pulled into a messy braid. She was smaller than him, but her presence filled the space like sunlight sneaking through cracked blinds.

  “You’re late,” she said.

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  “I’m always late,” Silas replied, setting his bag down by the chair.

  “You promised to bring bread.”

  “Forgot.”

  She sighed dramatically, but her eyes softened in that way that told him she’d already expected as much. “There’s soup. I saved you some.”

  He hung his hoodie over the chair, sat at the small table, and waited. She ladled broth into a chipped bowl and placed it in front of him with more care than necessary. He didn’t thank her out loud. He never did. She knew.

  They ate in silence, the clink of spoons the only sound. She hummed faintly, a tune without rhythm, as she read a few lines from her book between bites. He didn’t stop her. Silence wasn’t about sound; it was about peace.

  After dinner, she curled onto the couch, knees tucked up, eyes darting across her pages. Silas rinsed the dishes, running the tap just long enough not to waste water. He dried the bowl with the corner of his sleeve and placed it back in the cupboard, where two mismatched plates sat like relics of a family that no longer existed.

  “How was school?” she asked without looking up.

  “The same.”

  “Meet anyone?”

  He paused. “…Someone sat next to me.”

  “That’s a start.”

  “I didn’t ask for it.”

  “Still a start.” Her grin peeked out from behind her book.

  Silas leaned against the counter, arms crossed. She could always do that—make a simple statement sound heavier than it should.

  Later, when the building had quieted to the low hum of pipes and the distant cough of a neighbor, Silas sat by the window with his notebook. He didn’t write homework. Instead, he sketched. A desk scarred with carved initials. The rigid stance of Ms. Caldwell. The restless tapping of a boy’s pencil. A lopsided grin that refused to fade, even under silence.

  Memory was fragile. Paper wasn’t.

  “You think too much,” his sister’s voice murmured from the couch, heavy with sleep.

  “Someone has to,” he said without turning.

  He shut the notebook, the graphite still smudging against the page. The glass of the window was cold beneath his hand as he leaned against it, staring down at the street below.

  A man stood under the flickering lamppost across the road.

  Tall, still, too still—like someone waiting for something that wasn’t coming. Silas watched for a long moment, waiting for him to move. The man didn’t.

  He blinked. And when his eyes opened again, the space under the lamppost was empty.

  Silas let out a slow breath, pressed the notebook tighter against his chest, and told himself it was nothing.

  It always was. Until it wasn’t.