Chapter Text
you met laney when you were nine, the summer the town pool was drained for repairs and everyone spent their afternoons at the creek instead. the heat was unbearable, heavy with the smell of pine and sun-warmed grass, the air thick with the drone of cicadas. you remember her the way you remember all the best things in life.
sudden and bright, like lightning on a cloudless day.
she was standing on the rocks by the water, skipping stones that barely made it past the first ripple. her hair was fiery red in the sun, her knees scraped raw, and she looked like she belonged there—wild, alive, untamed. when she caught you watching, she didn’t smile or wave. you stood behind her silently, attempting to skip your own rock. she stopped and watched you for a moment, still no smile. no wave.
she just said, “you're doing it wrong,” and handed you a flatter rock.
that was how it started.
by the time school started again, laney had become the kind of constant you never questioned.
you walked home together every day, kicking dust and trading secrets like candy.
you shared lunches, traded bracelets, talked about how boring everyone else was.
it wasn’t long before her mother started calling you her “shadow.” you didn’t mind. if you were a shadow, at least you were hers.
your house was quiet—too quiet sometimes.
laney's wasn’t.
her mom yelled, and her little brothers screamed, and her dog barked nonstop. you loved it there anyway.
it felt alive in a way your home never did.
laney's room was always a mess of posters, nail polish bottles, and half-finished homework. you'd lie on her bed while she painted your nails unevenly and told you about the life she was going to have someday: a car, a job, maybe even an apartment in the city. you'd just nod and watch the light catch her hair, pretending you didn’t already know you’d follow her anywhere.
years passed, and everything changed except her.
you both grew taller, your voices softened, your laughter turned quieter but deeper.
you spent your summers in that same town, swimming in that same creek, except now you were old enough to talk about what you wanted from life, and sometimes, what you were afraid of.
laney was always braver.
one night, lying in her backyard under a sky swollen with stars, she whispered, “please don’t leave me... i’ll always need more.” you didn’t know what she meant, but you said you wouldn’t. you said you’d always stay.
and you believed it.
it wasn’t until you were sixteen that you noticed how much she needed to be seen.
not just by you—by everyone.
laney had a way of pulling the world toward her. the football players, the girls who wore lip gloss and perfume, the teachers who let her turn in homework late because she smiled when she apologized. you'd watch from the sidelines, quietly proud but quietly afraid, too.
you weren’t built for the same light she lived in.
still, she always came back to you. no matter who she sat with at lunch or who she laughed with in the hallways, she’d find you after school, take your hand, and say,
“come on. let's go home.”
and you would. always.
you spent nights on the roof of her house, drinking soda out of the same bottle, the metal taste of the cap sharp on your tongue. she'd hum songs from the radio, her voice low and tired, and you’d let your head fall against her shoulder. sometimes you thought you could feel her heartbeat, steady and real, like the rhythm of something permanent.
you told her once that she was your best friend, and she said, “you’re my sister.”
you laughed, but part of you wanted to cry. because you knew what she meant, and it meant everything.
when laney got her driver’s license, everything changed again. the town got smaller, the nights shorter. you'd drive around with the windows down, singing too loud to songs you only half knew, your laughter spilling out into the humid night. you thought maybe this was what forever felt like.
something reckless, alive, and a little bit scared.
but sometimes you caught her glancing at her phone when she thought you weren’t looking.
a name lighting up the screen.
a smile that wasn’t for you.
you didn’t say anything. you didn’t want to break the spell.
still, when she said his name out loud for the first time—caleb—it felt like the air went out of the room.
she told you how he made her laugh, how he said her eyes looked like sunlight. you nodded and smiled, and she didn’t notice how your hands were shaking.
later that night, lying alone in your bed, you thought about the way she said his name.
the softness in her voice. the same softness she used to save for you. she was his girl now.
and you thought: she was my girl first.
you didn’t say it out loud. you never would. but the thought stayed.
it stayed for years.
you didn’t realize when it started.
nobody ever does.
it wasn’t a fight or a word left unsaid; it was the slow fade of a song you loved too much, the kind that lingers in your head long after it’s over.
it was small things at first; missed calls, plans canceled with apologies that sounded rehearsed.
you told yourself she was busy, that she’d call tomorrow.
she didn’t.
laney spent most of her time with him now. you saw them sometimes, walking through the halls with their fingers barely touching, like even the smallest connection was too much to hide. you told yourself you didn’t care.
but you watched anyway.
you watched the way she leaned into him, how he made her laugh. the same laugh she used to save for you.
you told yourself it was fine. that people change, that it’s normal.
that it doesn’t mean she loves you less.
but one night, she sent you a photo of the two of them — her smile brighter than you’d seen in months, his arm around her shoulder — and you just stared at it until your eyes blurred. the accompanying text said “he makes me feel like home.”
you didn’t reply. you didn’t know what to say.
you thought about all the times you made her laugh, all the nights she fell asleep next to you, the secrets she told you like prayers whispered in the dark. and you thought, wasn’t i home once, too?
you still saw her, sometimes. at school. around town. but it wasn’t the same.
you’d ask if she wanted to hang out, and she’d smile that gentle smile—the one that always felt like a sorry—and say, “maybe next week?”
next week never came.
you told yourself she needed this. that you’d be there when she came back. but deep down, you knew the version of her you loved wasn’t coming back. she was changing. growing into someone new. someone you didn’t recognize.
still, you waited.
you waited for her texts.
her calls.
her laughter.
you waited for her to come knocking on your door with her hair a mess and her eyes red from crying.
you waited for her to need you again.
but she didn’t.
months passed. the creek dried up that summer, and you stopped going. the town felt smaller without her.
everything did.
you tried to fill the silence with other people, other things. you took up painting for a while. you stayed after school to help with the yearbook. you joined the school newspaper, and got decent at writing about the latest cow tipping scandal. you made new friends who smiled at you but didn’t know the language laney had taught you—the quiet kind, made of glances and half-smiles and shared breaths.
they didn’t know how to exist with you like she did.
sometimes you thought about calling her. you’d pick up your phone, scroll through your texts, stop on her name. you’d type something—i miss you, or do you remember the creek?—then delete it before you hit send.
she was probably with him, anyway.
one night, you ran into them at the diner off highway 10.
you were there with a group from school, laughing too loudly about something you didn’t care about, when you saw her.
she was sitting across from him in a booth, her hair tucked behind her ear, smiling at something he said. you froze. she didn’t notice you at first. but when she did, her face changed—just for a second. a flicker of something between guilt and recognition. then she smiled.
“hey,” she said when you walked over. her voice was soft. careful. “i didn’t know you’d be here.”
“yeah,” you responded, shrugging. “just hanging out.”
he smiled at you politely, the way strangers do when they know they’ve already taken something from you.
there was silence after that—thick, awkward. you wanted to ask her how she’d been. you wanted to ask if she still thought about you. but the words wouldn’t come.
instead, she said, “we should hang out soon.”
you nodded. “yeah, sure.”
you both knew it was a lie.
later that night, you drove home alone. the road was dark and empty, the only light coming from the gas stations and the neon signs that buzzed like dying stars. you thought about her, sitting in that booth, laughing with him, her hand resting on his wrist.
you thought about how much you missed her, and how much you hated missing her.
and you thought about how he loved her.
but she was my sister first.
the words burned. you didn’t know who you were saying them to—him, her, or yourself. maybe all three.
you didn’t cry. not yet.
instead, you pulled into the old creek road, parked, and got out. the air was cool, the moon bright enough to see your reflection in the still water.
you sat on the rocks where you’d once skipped stones, and for the first time, you realized how quiet the world had become without her voice in it.
you wanted to call her. to tell her everything.
but you knew it wouldn’t change anything.
you stayed there until dawn, watching the sky lighten, listening to the cicadas fade away.
when you finally got home, your phone buzzed. a text from her.
“hey. just thinking about you. hope you’re okay.”
you stared at it for a long time. then you typed, i miss you.
you didn’t hit send.
the last summer before everything changed was the hottest one you could remember. the air sat heavy on your skin, syrup-thick and unmoving, the kind of heat that made everything slow and quiet. you didn’t see laney much that year. she got a job as a journalist at a newspaper outside of town, the one that always smelled like burnt coffee and fried chicken. caleb would pick her up after shifts, headlights cutting through the dark, and you’d watch from your window as they drove by, the sound of her laughter fading down the road.
you told yourself it was fine. you told yourself people grow up, that she’d come back when things settled down. but she didn’t. and when you left for college that fall, she didn’t come to say goodbye.
you still waited, though. for a text. for a call. for something.
it never came.
the city was louder than you expected. it wasn’t just the noise—it was the movement, the constant hum of life that never stopped. cars, trains, people shouting into the air like the world would listen if they were loud enough. you rented a tiny apartment on the seventh floor of a building that smelled like paint and old smoke. from your window, you could see the skyline, the towers of glass and light stretching up into the clouds.
sometimes, when you couldn’t sleep, you’d stand by the window and watch the sky. there were stories about him—the hero.
superman.
people said he could fly faster than sound. that he’d once lifted a collapsing bridge with his bare hands. that he’d saved an entire school from a fire uptown.
you saw him once, or at least you thought you did—a flash of red and blue cutting across the clouds, so high up it could’ve been a trick of the light. the city seemed smaller when he was there.
you almost smiled.
life moved quietly.
you got a job at a newspaper company that never seemed quiet enough. you made friends who came and went, names that blurred together over time. a few stayed: lois, jimmy, cat. people who refused to let you shake them off.
you kept yourself busy, but not full.
some nights, when the neon lights from the diner across the street painted your ceiling red and blue, you thought of laney.
you didn’t talk anymore, not really. there were still traces of her online—photos with caleb, a dog you’d never met, her hair shorter now. once, you saw a video of her at a local fair, spinning in circles under the lights, laughing with a joy so wide it hurt to look at.
you replayed it twice before closing your phone.
you wondered if she ever thought of you.
if she remembered the creek, the roof, the blanket.
if she ever whispered your name the way she used to when she was tired, soft and slurred like a secret.
you told yourself it didn’t matter. that you’d both grown up. that it was just part of life.
but there were nights when the quiet got too loud, and the memories pressed too close.
nights when you’d wake from a dream and swear you could still hear her saying, “please don’t leave me. i’ll always need more.”
and maybe she didn’t mean it forever.
maybe she just meant then.
the daily planet closed early one evening after a power outage. you stayed behind to stack the last of the boxes that cat had wanted for some exposé, the air thick with dust and the smell of wet paper. the city outside buzzed like it always did.
traffic, sirens, the faraway rhythm of music from some bar down the street.
you took the long way home, walking through the plaza. there was a crowd gathered by the big screen above the metro entrance, the one that played news twenty-four hours a day.
“—and in today’s coverage, superman intervened in a high-speed chase downtown, saving three civilians from an overturned vehicle—”
you stopped, watching the footage. it was grainy, the kind of news clip that looked more like myth than fact. a figure in red and blue, landing hard on the pavement, lifting a car like it weighed nothing. you watched the crowd cheer, phones raised to the sky.
and for the first time, you wondered what it felt like to be saved.
that night, you dreamed of laney again.
you were back in the creek, the water low and golden in the evening light. she was standing in the middle of it, skirt hitched up, her hands cupped around something small.
“look,” she said, smiling. “a tadpole.”
you laughed. “you’re gonna crush it if you’re not careful.”
“i won’t.” she looked up at you, eyes bright and endless. “i never hurt the things i love.”
but when you reached for her hand, she was already gone.
you woke to thunder. rain hit the window hard enough to rattle the glass. for a moment, you couldn’t tell if the sound in your chest was the storm or your own heartbeat. you sat there in the dark, the city alive outside, and whispered her name into the room.
just once.
it felt like letting go.
you started keeping a notebook after that. little things. thoughts. lines that didn’t mean much on their own.
you didn’t know why you wrote them down. maybe you just needed to keep her somewhere, even if it wasn’t real anymore.
perry liked them.
he’d congratulated you on how “personal” they felt once. lines about waiting for some hero to come save you.
he urged you to write more. stuff clark kent could use in his superman pieces.
so you did. you spent hours writing away, pouring your heart out in an empty notebook.
you didn’t know, but that was the night everything would change.
tomorrow, you’d take the same route home you always did—the subway, the crowded street, the crosswalk that never stayed green long enough. you’d be thinking about laney, like you always were when the world got too big. you’d be staring down at the pavement, lost in memory.
and then the earth would break open.
but that’s tomorrow.
tonight, you’re still here. sitting by the window, the rain still falling, the city pulsing like a living thing. and somewhere high above the skyline, a streak of red and blue light cuts through the clouds.
you look up just in time to see it fade.
and for the first time in a long while, you don’t feel so small.
it happens on tuesday. just like it was supposed to.
you’re late leaving work, rain again, streets slick with light and sound. the city feels like it’s breathing heavy tonight, traffic groaning, neon signs flickering in and out like tired stars. you pull your jacket tighter, turn down the side street you always do, the one that cuts through the plaza and past the flower stand that never closes.
you’re halfway across the crosswalk that never stays green long enough when the world explodes.
a sound like thunder, but sharper. the kind that shakes the bones first, and only later the air. you stumble back, heart in your throat, eyes searching for the source.
and then you see it: a building, maybe three blocks down, half of it gone in a cloud of dust and an explosion of fire.
the sound follows like a roar, glass raining from the sky.
people scream.
cars screech.
the city folds in on itself.
you can’t move.
you should run, but your body refuses to listen. you stand there, staring at the orange light swallowing the skyline, and for one impossible moment, you think of laney.
she’d hate this city, you think. too loud. too big. too easy to get lost in.
someone shoves past you, and that’s when you start to run.
the smoke spreads faster than it should. the air tastes like a mix of metal and rain. you don’t even know why you’re running toward it—maybe instinct, maybe something else.
maybe you’re tired of standing still.
you reach the corner just in time to see the building groan, tilting toward the street. the crowd surges back, shouting.
and then everything stops.
a flash cuts through the haze, bright as lightning.
superman drops from the sky.
he’s realer than you ever imagined—taller, solid, his cape whipping behind him in the wind. he lands hard, the concrete cracking beneath his boots. the air itself seems to hold its breath.
then he moves—faster than you thought he could, catching the edge of the collapsing structure and holding. the strain ripples through his shoulders, the ground trembling beneath his feet.
you can hear people crying, praying, filming, calling out his name.
and somehow, amid all that chaos, his eyes find yours.
you don’t know how long you stand there, the world burning around you.
he shouts something—maybe “move!”—and it’s enough to break the spell. you turn, feet pounding against the pavement, lungs aching, until the sound of falling stone fades behind you.
you don’t stop until you reach the next block.
and then you collapse.
when you wake, you’re not sure where you are. the air smells of antiseptic and smoke, and the world hums with the low static of fluorescent light. your vision clears slowly—the inside of an ambulance, a paramedic pressing gauze against your temple.
“you’re okay,” she says softly. “you were lucky. that building came down faster than anyone expected.”
you blink. “superman—did he…?”
she smiles faintly. “he saved at least a dozen people. pulled a woman out from under a car. i think he’s still out there.”
still out there.
you nod, even though your throat feels tight. there’s a hollow in your chest, something that feels like awe but hurts too much to be only that.
because as the sirens wail and the lights blur outside, you realize what’s been gnawing at you all this time.
you’ve been waiting to be saved—not from danger, but from yourself.
from the empty spaces laney left behind. from the ache that settled so deep you stopped noticing it.
but he did save you.
maybe not in the way you expected, but enough. enough to make you believe again.
later, when they discharge you, you wander through the streets like a ghost. the city feels different—still loud, still endless, but alive in a way it hadn’t before. the wreckage is cordoned off, smoke curling into the night sky like a signal. you stop at the edge of the barrier, watching the workers sift through the debris.
you catch a glimpse of him then—high above, silhouetted against the searchlights, cape trailing behind him like a comet’s tail. people cheer when they see him.
you don’t. you just watch.
you want to tell him thank you, though you’re not sure for what.
for saving you. for reminding you that people still reach for each other, even when the world falls apart. for giving you a reason to look up again.
you whisper it anyway.
just in case he can hear.
that night, back in your apartment, you open your notebook again. the last page is still blank, waiting. you pick up your pen, your hand trembling just slightly, and write:
i think i’ve been waiting for someone to catch me ever since she left.
you set the pen down.
the rain’s stopped.
somewhere outside, a siren fades into the distance, and for a heartbeat, you could swear you hear the rush of air, like wings slicing through the clouds.
you go to the window. the city stretches out before you—wounded, shining, alive.
a single streak of red and blue moves across the skyline, bright and fast, disappearing into the horizon.
you smile, quietly. you don’t know where he’s going, or what comes next.
you’ll dream of laney again, you know you will.
the creek, the tadpoles, the sun caught in her hair.
but when you wake, it won’t hurt as much.
and maybe that’s what saving really means—not fixing what’s broken, but reminding you that you’re still here.
still alive. still reaching. still looking up.
before you go to sleep, you draft an email to perry.
could you partner me up with kent next week? i think i want to try a superman piece.