Archive of Our Own

It started with a call.

Zoey didn’t have a good feeling when her phone buzzed in the middle of the movie she was watching with Rumi and Mira.

It was from her mom.

Zoey and her mom didn’t talk much. They hadn’t for years.

She watched her phone’s illuminated screen, debating whether she wanted to answer. Biting her lip, she tapped the screen and raised it to her ear. She waited for a few seconds, but found only silence.

Zoey pulled it away from her ear. The lock screen greeted her. She hadn’t answered in time.

With a relieved sigh, Zoey turned back to the movie, only to find it paused. Mira and Rumi were watching her.

“Everything s’alright?” Mira asked, trying to sound nonchalant.

It was uncommon for any of the girls to receive calls. Mira had no contact with her family and had few friends outside Huntr/x. Aside from the two of them, Rumi only ever talked to Celine. It wasn’t very often, but they were working on it. Zoey’s relationship with her family was complicated. On both sides, for different reasons. They only called on holidays or birthdays.

The only person who called them constantly was Bobby, and he had his own ringtone on every phone.

“Yeah, just my mom,” Zoey explained “I think she called me by accident”

Mira relaxed in her seat. Rumi still looked troubled.

“Maybe you should call her back, you know, just to make sure it really was an accident.” Rumi tried, but still cringed at saying it. She knew things with Zoey’s mom were complicated

“Nah, if she really needed something she would—“
Zoey was interrupted as her phone buzzed again. Three pairs of eyes looked at the offending item.

With a long-suffering sigh, she tapped the phone and lifted it to her ear.

“Hi mom!”

Zoey used that high voice Rumi and Mira hated. It lacked the usual breathiness and the rambles that accompanied it. She was too calm, her smile strained, her head slightly tilted down, her clenched fists badly hidden at her sides. It was just Rumi and Mira watching but she still put on her mask.

Her free hand lay between Rumi’s as Rumi gently eased her fingers open.

“What?”

Zoey jumped from the couch. She was shaking, her face pinched, her fist clenched once again.

“What are you talking about?”

Mira and Rumi looked at each other, eyes wide, not understanding what was happening.

“You’re what — happy?” Zoey asked, spitting the words. “Happy that my dreams came crashing to the ground? You thought …what? That I’ll come crawling back to you? You know, a normal person would try to comfort her daughter, support her—not throw a damn party”

Mira and Rumi tensed, ready to jump in, to defend her, even though they didn’t know what from.

Zoey stayed quiet for a few seconds, letting the vitriol that came from the other side sink. Her shoulders relaxed slightly, her eyes hardening as a stray tear rolled down her cheek.

“Just…just stop it, mom. I’m tired of trying with you. There’s nothing in the world that would be enough for you, is there? Don’t call me, don’t text me. I don’t want to hear about you. Oh, and that ‘good’ news you read? Fake. We are taking a vacation. We. Are. Not. Separating.” With that Zoey punched the red button and hung up.

The penthouse was silent. Zoey’s shaky breaths echoed through the place.

“Zoey—” Mira tried

“I … umm… need to be alone… okay?I… I’ll talk to you guys later, okay?”

She didn’t hear their answer. She ran to her room, slamming the door behind her.

Her legs gave out a few steps away from the bed. She wrapped her arms around her stomach, trying to hug herself, trying to feel less abandoned.

She wanted her mom. The one who told her everything was okay. The one who used to hug her gently, who told her nothing was impossible. The one who sat by her side and read her notebooks, correcting them with a proud smile. The mom she had before she was ten.

That mom had been gone for a long time and it had taken Zoey more than a decade to accept it. Tonight, the small spark of hope that her mom might come back faded from her sky.

Throughout Zoey’s life there had been moments where her world tilted from its axis. The first time it happened, it was in a psychologist's office.

Zoey was different.

She always knew, but never understood why. The other kids knew it too and they didn’t understand it either. They didn’t like it.

There was an incident in school. Parents were called. Voices were raised. Adults were shown the bruises, and told what the others said about her. No one denied it. Still, they asked her what she’d done. In the end, her parents were forced to pull her out and change schools.

Worried about her, they took her to a psychologist, Dr. Beckett. Dr. Beckett was a nice lady who made Zoey draw and play. They talked, too, and Zoey felt safe telling her anything. After each session, Dr. Beckett would always give her a chocolate. Zoey loved going to visit Dr. Beckett.

One day, after their session, Dr. Beckett called her parents after asking Zoey to wait in the reception room. Zoey didn’t wait for long. She was ready to run up to them when the door opened. Ready to greet them with a hug. Zoey stopped in her tracks as her parents came out. There were tears in her mother’s eyes and she was clutching her purse. Her father’s hair was messy as if he had run his hands through it many times. She remembers calling them in a small shaking voice asking if everything was fine. They looked at her like she was a ghost.

Dr. Beckett whispered something to them. Her dad reacted immediately, wrapping Zoey in his arms and carrying her to the car. They ate in her favorite restaurant as her dad made jokes and her mom stayed silent.

That night was the first time she heard them fight. One of the few where they tried to not wake her up.

Time passed. They took the tests Dr.Beckett recommended. She was right. The results confirmed it.

Her mom changed after receiving the results. She would tell her not to do things she had done many times before. She would talk to her slower, with measured words. She would cry and apologize for not being able to fix it.

Zoey never understood what she wanted to fix

Her dad changed too, but in a different way than her mother. He still encouraged her to do whatever she wanted, but he also pushed her to do things she didn’t like. He would tell her that she needed to try, that she needed to make an effort to fit in.

Zoey tried. She tried to shape herself around what others said, around what the internet said. She went to parties where the music felt like someone was hammering her head. She drank even when the taste made her gag. Her dad looked relieved when he found out, but after that first time, she never did it again.

Eventually she stopped trying.

Her parents' fights increased. They stopped caring if she heard, if she found herself in the corner of the room unable to leave. Many of the fights were about her. That was her reality for a year and a half, until they finally divorced.

After the divorce her dad stayed in the house while her mom moved back to Korea. She stayed with her dad during the school year and with her mom on summer vacation.

Life went on. Her dad moved on. Zoey saw him fall in love again, and soon, they welcomed her children into their lives. He never stopped asking Zoey to try, but he never asked the children to do things that they didn’t like. He discouraged them from changing themselves to please others.

Over time, her father had built a new family. He would attend her step-siblings events, but forget hers. They did activities together, but never with her. If Zoey talked too long about something, if she wasn’t still enough, he would scold her. This time when bruises appeared after coming back from school, when certain phrases made her flinch, he didn’t notice.

Two years into the marriage, the baby was born. She loved the little girl, but her cries made her want to cry too. Her screams pierced her ears until she felt they might start bleeding.

Going to Korea to visit her mom was a relief until the plane landed. Her mom had rules that chained her and words that made her shrink. Her mom suffocated her just the same but in a different way.

Zoey’s mom dragged her to weekly family dinners in her grandmother’s house. Her cousins would talk faster than normal to confuse her. When she asked them to clarify something they would roll their eyes and repeat it painfully slow. Her grandmother would huff every time Zoey asked her mother to translate something. Her aunts and uncles would tell her how she didn’t have as good grades as her cousins, how hard it was for her mother. It got worse after the tests. There were times at dinner where they would talk about her as if she wasn’t there.

Her grandmother would scold her mother for having a daughter with a foreigner, for how now all the family had to bear the consequences of her mistakes. Zoey would quietly sit as her mother did nothing but apologize to her family.

Another rule that her mother imposed, was that Zoey couldn’t leave the apartment alone. She would leave every morning warning Zoey not to go out. Every evening she would come back to find her daughter, cheeks red from the sun, waiting by the door. They fought every evening. Looking back, coming to visit her mother had brought one good thing, her audition.

One afternoon, as she walked back to her mother’s apartment, she saw it on the ground. A flyer. It had one of the Sunlight Sister’s faces on it. Celine. She picked it up and felt her heart beat frantically as she read through it. An audition. It was Zoey’s dream.

From a young age, music was her passion. She watched music videos for hours and later, after learning to play the piano, she would spend hours playing them. Sometimes she would change a chord here and there or change the key just to play around. As time went on she made her own beats and rhymes filling notebook after notebook with ideas. She would walk around the street, the mall, her house, everywhere with her headphones hearing her playlists on repeat. It felt as if instead of blood, music travelled through her veins.

Being an idol wasn’t necessarily what she aimed for. She wanted something where music was involved.

This was an opportunity. It didn’t matter where it took her. She had only a week to prepare.

She needed to write, to edit tracks, and to practice. She had no time to go out.

She hid the audition from her mother. She knew what she would say.

Her mother thought she was finally adapting to the rules she had imposed.

It was the calm before the storm.

The day of the audition came too fast. Zoey jumped out of bed, skipped breakfast, and almost forgot her notebook as she hurried out the door. At the site, she was given a number and told to wait to be called. Her leg bounced like a spring as she waited.

Every girl had a parent by her side, reassuring them or giving them hugs as they stepped onto the stage. Every hand on a girl’s shoulder carved into her heart, reminding her what she didn’t have. There was no support, no comfort, no warmth waiting for Zoey.

Zoey avoided looking at Celine all throughout the audition. Seeing her would make it real, and if it became real, she most certainly would mess up.

As she finished her rap, the lights shifted. The stage erupted with blue threads woven throughout the floor and walls.

Celine had a huge smile and was already walking towards her. Zoey stammered her way through the conversation, mostly nodding as Celine asked her to wait until everyone else was gone.

The wait didn’t take long. Zoey wasn’t sure if it was because she was the last one or if Celine had dismissed everyone else. Celine gave her such a convincing speech that it would make a salesman jealous.

She didn’t know that Zoey had been sold the moment she put a foot in the building.

It all crashed down when Celine asked her about her parents.

Zoey tried to find an excuse, something that wouldn’t make her sound like too much trouble to recruit. She stammered and stumbled. Her hands got sweaty.

She froze when she felt something squeeze her shoulder.

The threads were wrapped around her, warm like an old sweater, steady, encouraging.

With the Honmoon’s encouragement she spilled. Everything. Celine listened without interrupting.

At the end, when her tears finally stopped, Celine put a hand on her shoulder. It was just like the mothers of the other girls had done it, like the Honmoon did a few moments earlier.

“If this is what you want, I’ll help you.”

Her voice didn’t falter. Her eyes were soft, her jaw tightened with resolve. She looked at Zoey with something her parents had long lost. Faith.

That night, her mother came home to find dinner ready. The apartment clean. Everything was too perfect.

For the first time in a while, the apartment felt warm. Her mom talked about her job, and Zoey slipped in a joke here and there. It stayed like that until their plates were empty.

Zoey tried to ease into it carefully. She talked about her dreams, about music. Then she told her about the audition. About the opportunity. Sunlight Entertainment wanted her. Celine wanted her.

All throughout, the veil she had seen at the audition covered her. It helped her hands stop shaking. She hadn’t stuttered, or tumbled over her words as she normally did. It felt as if it was fanning the flames of her courage.

When she finished laying out her arguments, her mom went quiet. The silence devoured minutes. Zoey could hear her own heartbeat.

Without warning, her mother exploded.

It was a long night, filled with screams and tears. It was a night just like the ones before the divorce.

Zoey would always regret some things she said.

At the end, Zoey was told to do whatever she wanted. Her mother wouldn’t help, but wouldn’t stand in her way either. Zoey was left in the living room with only the Hoonmoon at her side.

Things were never the same after that.

It took a month to get everything ready. Celine and her lawyers did all the paperwork.

Zoey’s father agreed easily, but he still had conditions. He wanted to read every contract before anything was signed. He made Celine promise that Zoey would finish school and have scheduled visits with him.

Her mother signed without reading.

In the month she had left with her mother, Zoey barely saw her. She would leave before Zoey woke up. When she came back, she went straight to her room. Her mother didn’t drag her to family dinners anymore or get angry that she left the apartment.

Still, Zoey left post-it notes everywhere, reminding her mother of the day she would leave.

The last day, Zoey woke up cold in the middle of summer. Her mom’s room was empty, breakfast dishes dirty.

Zoey spent the morning pausing between boxes, trying to tell whether the footsteps she heard were her mother’s. They were always Zoey’s.

While her things were being loaded, she kept her eyes on the street. She knew none of the cars that went through.

At the airport, she searched the crowd for a familiar face. For one last hug. Everyone but Celine was a stranger.

She chose to sleep on the flight. She wasn’t tired, but oblivion was better than memories.

The heaviness that had claimed her body didn’t last long. Something in her sparked back to life the moment she greeted the two girls at the door.

Rumi, the purple-haired one, smiled too wide. She seemed to be debating the appropriate greeting as if getting it wrong would crash the Korean market.

Mira, the pink-haired one, scanned her appearance, the way she moved, the amount of bags she carried. She raised an eyebrow as if Zoey was already in debt and she came to collect.

Her gravity shifted, and the two girls in front of her became her center. It was the second time her world tilted off its axis. Even if she didn’t know it yet.

The Honmoon blinded them with its happiness. Literally.

A long time passed before Zoey and her mother talked again. Now, they see each other two or three times a year and call on special occasions.

Their conversations were always sharp and at the edge of breaking skin. Her mother would always ask if she was tired of her job already. She asked when she was coming back home. It didn’t matter that Zoey enjoyed it, that she was good at it.

Zoey would mention what she accomplished that week, how other people praised her work. Every time her mother brushed it off, she swallowed her anger. She would always give up halfway through and start giving vague answers. She kept coming back hoping that the conversation would have a different ending. It never did.

What a fool she was.

It was a recurring thought as she knelt on her bedroom’s floor, sobs tearing out of her. She choked on her breath, coughing as she tried to calm down. Slowly, she dragged herself closer to the bed until her back rested against it.

She cried until all that was left were quiet whimpers, until her breath finally evened out.

Zoey woke up with a hand on her shoulder. Her room was dark.

“Zoey, come on, let’s get you to bed” a voice whispered

It took Zoey a few seconds to understand. When she tried to stand, her knees buckled, but someone caught her before she hit the floor. Half-aware of what was happening, she let herself be guided to her bed.

There were some muffled sounds. Something soft settled over her. Instinctively she pulled it close to her face and let her awareness fade again.

Morning came all at once. Her eyes were swollen, her head was pounding. The light was too bright and the night had been too short. Zoey’s ceiling was the only place she was comfortable looking.

Memories slammed into her. If she hadn’t already been lying down, she might have recoiled from the impact. The call with her mom was still playing on repeat in her head. Tears filled her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.

A sweet smell drifted into her room. She paused. She breathed in deeply, closed her eyes, and started sniffing, trying to figure it out. Pancakes. With chocolate chips. Her favorite.

She threw the blanket aside. The floor was cold beneath her feet. She had barely stood when the realization took out her breath.

They didn’t know.

The thought sent her sinking back onto the bed. Rumi and Mira didn’t know. They knew the relationship with her mom wasn't good. That they barely talked. They didn’t know why.

They didn’t need to know, Zoey reasoned. She could just tell them what her mom had said, skip over the why. They would be too angry to look too closely anyway. It changed nothing. It didn’t affect anyone else.

Rumi’s patterns hadn’t changed anything either. She was still Rumi.

Still, Zoey would have liked to know before the Idol Awards.

It hadn’t changed how they saw Rumi. Their best friend. The one who always buys Mira and Zoey’s favorite drink when she goes out on a run. The one they have to tackle and tie to the couch to make her stop working. The one who would spar with Mira when she needs a healthy outlet for her anger, who would listen to every fact about turtles without interrupting.

Nothing had changed after Rumi was exposed.

Rumi was still their half-demon best friend.

Nothing should change with this. It wasn’t a groundbreaking, mind-shattering or world-altering view. It was just a Zoey-altering view.

She dragged herself out of bed, determination slipping away with each step. Her hand lingered on the knob.

She closed her eyes, memorizing the sounds on the other side. Mira’s grumbling as Rumi stole already-made food. Rumi's laugh as she dodged the wooden spoon that came for her hand. Their footsteps, Mira’s heavy ones and Rumi’s light, almost silent ones. She wanted to remember this, in case everything changed once the door opened.

She felt something she hadn’t in years. An encouraging pressure on her shoulder.

The Honmoon was wrapped around her. It calmed her racing heart and warmed her freezing hands.

There was something else. Something that wasn’t there before. Rumi’s guiding hand. Mira’s armored back, standing firm, marking the path. Their echo called out for her.

One last, gentle nudge gave her strength to turn the knob.

Slowly, she turned the corner to find them.

The other parts of her soul.

Rumi was covered in flour, holding her hand close to her chest, rubbing it. She had what looked like half a pancake in her mouth, nibbling at it while pouting.

Mira flipped the pancake in the pan and raised an eyebrow at Rumi, as if daring her to try and take it.

They stopped their staring contest at Zoey’s laugh.

“Why is Rumi — covered — in flour?” Zoey asked between laughs.

Mira dropped the cooked pancake onto the plate beside her, then opened the cabinet below. Zoey couldn’t see from where she was standing, but she knew the routine. There was another plate inside, stacked with cooked pancakes. Mira slid the new one in, shut the door and set the empty plate beside her. The whole thing took less than five seconds. It was her anti-Rumi strategy. She poured the last of the pancake batter onto the pan.

With a smirk, she answered:

“Well, you see Zoey, Rumi here was a little impatient”

Rumi grumbled, crossing her arms like a petulant child. She was still nibbling at her stolen pancake.

“She tried to ambush me from across the table while I was taking a pancake out of the pan”

Zoey calculated the ambush had happened during the one-second window where the pan was down. The only moment no one risked getting hurt.

“She jumped” Mira’s smirk grew “like a tiger, and tried to get the pancake. She startled me enough to get it, but I had reached for the flour to make more batter and well” she shrugged “I threw the bowl at her. Instinct you know.”

By Mira’s smile, Zoey knew instinct had nothing to do with the throw.

“She obviously dodged it, but some flour fell on the way”

Zoey was starting to believe that Mira had thrown the bowl upside down, high enough for all the flour to rain down on Rumi. She was completely covered.

“I was so surprised that I instinctively hit her in the hand with my wooden spoon. I have no idea when I grabbed it, I didn’t have it in my hand when she jumped. It must have been the surprise. At least it wasn’t a very hard hit. Wasn’t it Rumi?”

Rumi had finally finished the pancake. Her hands were still crossed on her chest, her pout grew bigger by the second.

“It still hurt,” she mumbled looking away

Mira opened her mouth to continue explaining when Rumi sneezed. A white cloud formed all around her, making her sneeze again.

Rumi grumbled again as both Zoey and Mira lost it. Zoey held herself up with the help of a wall, wiping tears from her eyes. Mira was also doubled over laughing. She was standing up, but still holding the pancake cabinet closed in case someone saw an opportunity.

They were so busy laughing that the last pancake almost burned.

The laughter only stopped after Rumi dragged Zoey to the table like a potato sack and dropped her into the seat beside her. She grumbled one last time, reminding Mira that the pancakes would get cold.

Breakfast passed in soft laughter and easy conversations.

Mira and Rumi would steal glances at her as if waiting for her to break. Zoey would pretend she didn’t notice.

Inevitability tasted like dish soap as silence settled over them while they cleaned.

Rumi opened her mouth every few minutes just to close it seconds later. Mira would shake her head to herself as if trying to chase away the wrong words. Zoey washed most dishes twice, trying to wash away all her doubts about what came after.

They have a dishwasher.

Her hands shook as she shut off the water. She turned around to find Mira feigning interest in her phone and Rumi wiping the same spot over and over, pretending she wasn’t looking at Zoey.

Zoey left the kitchen before they could say anything. She wasn’t going to have an emotional breakdown while awkwardly standing up.

She dropped onto the couch and sank into one corner, wishing the cushions would make her disappear. She curled in on herself. Rumi sat to her right. Mira to her left.

“Zoey…” Rumi said softly

“She wasn’t always like this…” Zoey whispered. “I—I hoped that.. that after all this time she would see me. That she would go back to how she was before.”

Mira and Rumi shared a look Zoey didn’t see. They had met Zoey’s parents. They liked neither. Between the two, they liked Zoey’s dad a little more. He tried to make an effort, even if it was too late. He would call sometimes. The few times they met, he would awkwardly try to make conversation. Zoey didn’t see him much, but Rumi and Mira could tell he tried. Zoey always seemed at ease with him.

On the other hand, Zoey’s mom never tried. They would talk once in a blue moon. Sometimes her mom wouldn’t even call on Zoey’s birthday. The few times they met her, Zoey would always be fidgeting with her hands and smiling too big. She tried to hide it, but there were topics that Zoey always tried to steer away from with her.

What the two of them liked even less was how she would talk about Zoey as a burden. As if Zoey’s contributions didn’t exist. They corrected her, but she would dismiss them convinced they were only humoring her daughter.

“I tried, I tried really hard. I really did. I wanted her to see me. To congratulate me. To put her pride aside and—and be my mom!”

Tears were streaming freely down her face. She was still folded in on herself, but her right leg was extended. It bounced like a spring, it was so fast that it almost seemed like it vibrated.

Rumi softly put a hand on the bouncing leg, as if making it stop would soothe Zoey’s inner turmoil. It did stop the bouncing, but like putting a Band-Aid on a bursting pipe, something else was bound to give. The tension hunted for a weak spot from which to burst free.

Her hands were shaking.

“I wanted her to see me as her daughter and not through the label that came with those stupid tests!”

Mira and Rumi understood.

Mira’s parents had expectations. No matter how good her grades were, her brother’s were better. It didn’t matter if she followed their instructions by the letter or that she was extremely polite, there was always some fault she needed to correct. One day, she got tired of controlling her words, of smiling at things she didn’t like, of trying. She was angry at their disinterest. One day, she stopped trying. A small part of her, one she learned to ignore, would always desire for them to see her, to see what they abandoned and not the problem that they think they got rid of.

Rumi, on the other hand, lived chasing legends. Rumi’s mother was perfect. The perfect idol, the perfect hunter. She needed to make her mother proud, she needed to do whatever was necessary to be perfect too. It was an impossible goal because Rumi had been born faulty. It was her father’s fault.

Her mother’s too, her mother knew exactly what she was doing.

They never acknowledged that.

The small purple spiral on her shoulder that grew with time was the evidence of the sins she inherited. She couldn’t be like her mother until she could purge the blood of her father that had dared to cling to her mother’s. Celine would not look at her until she did.

It is impossible now. The Honmoon would never be gold. The patterns were permanent now.

Celine was trying to change. To mend what she broke.

“Zoey, breathe,” Mira instructed as Zoey hiccuped and her breathing became ragged. “Inhale… exhale… inhale… exhale”

Zoey struggled to follow Mira’s instructions. After trying over and over, her breathing finally slowed down. She was still hiccupping.

“Zoey, it’s okay,” Rumi soothed. This time she wrapped her hands around Zoey’s, not to stop the shaking, but so that Zoey could feel the warmth. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to. We’re here for you when you are ready. Something happened and the only thing we want is to be with you — if that’s what you need.”

“I — I want to tell you” Zoey whispered, her voice trembling. “It's just that… It's really difficult. I’m just so angry and hurt and afraid. I try to explain but my thoughts get all mixed up … I lose the thread … I don’t know where to start”

“Well,” Mira said, uncharacteristically soft, a small smile on her lips. “From the beginning is always a good place to start”

Zoey snorted and returned the smile. “Obviously.”

Zoey closed her eyes and dropped her head back. Her brow furrowed. Her hands still shook. Silence settled between them, waiting to be broken.

Rumi and Mira waited for her, doing their best not to pressure her. It wouldn’t make Zoey feel better, it would just make things harder.

Zoey opened her eyes slowly. Her head felt heavier, full of tumultuous thoughts that wouldn’t leave her alone. Still, she maintained the broken determination to tell them, to get it all out.

“Okay… okay,” Zoey breathed deeply. She raised her head, finding Mira and Rumi waiting.

It was too much, looking at them, trying to understand what their expressions meant. She dropped her gaze to her lap.

“When I was nine or ten, my parents noticed that I didn’t like school. Like, it wasn’t the normal dislike… it was more like being terrified of going”

Mira and Rumi frowned. Zoey had told them that her school experience was horrible. She had even slipped and hinted at what she had suffered. They were never told the extent of it.

“Long story short, I changed schools and started therapy.”

Zoey barreled through, leaving Mira and Rumi feeling as if they had just sped past their exit on the highway.

“Things were looking up. Therapy was helping. Then the psychologist noticed something. She noticed I was different. Really different from other kids. She told my parents to take me for some tests”

Zoey closed her eyes. This was it. She was going to say it. This might break everything she had. Might change it all over again.

Her breath hitched. A knot tightened in her throat. Tears betrayed her and fell again.

“The tests… they… they were to see if I… if I had autism, and I do.”

Zoey waited. She didn’t know what for. Repulsion? Shock? Anger?

A small part of her hoped that if she looked up, she wouldn’t find them looking at her like her parents still do.

Silence took over the room. This time it felt like it separated Zoey from the girls. It was loud with feelings left unsaid, loud with Zoey’s unfinished story

“What does that mean?” Rumi asked delicately, treading carefully as she did in interviews where one misplaced word might get twisted into something awful.

“Well… it shouldn’t mean anything. It’s more like an explanation of why I do certain things. For example, you know that I really don’t like you touching my notebooks. Right?”

Zoey didn’t see it, but both nodded.

“It’s because I have a system. I need to follow it, every time. I use black for rough drafts where I scratch things and discard ideas. Green for lyrics or ideas that I like but don’t fit what I’m currently working on. Blue for the almost-finished draft. If I start mixing colors, then when I come back I don’t know which was which. If I don’t have at least those colors I can’t start… Don’t even get me started on what’s better between notebooks with spirals and those without...”

Zoey bit her lip. Her trembling hands clenched the fabric of her pants. “For me, it’s more like autism is an explanation for my quirks.” She winced, “Why I’m the way I am”

“Is there … Anything you need? Anything we can do to make things easier for you?” Rumi asked as carefully as before.

It made Zoey laugh. An exhausted, hurt laugh.

Out of everyone she had ever met, these girls were the only ones that had accommodated her. She knew it wasn’t easy. Sometimes she got frustrated with how difficult everything was. It frustrated her that, sometimes it was herself who made things unnecessarily difficult.

They had looked out for her before they knew she needed them.

Now they knew, and they were trying to find more ways to help her.

“No, I don’t need you to help me more than you already do… Without even realizing it, you’ve always been there for me.” Zoey smiled to herself. “You never tell me to shut up when I ramble, or to talk when I have nothing to say. You— you make me eat veggies because you are afraid that I’ll have anemia. You make me even though you know I hate them.” She stuck out her tongue at the thought “but only the ones that aren’t slimy or gooey or… soggy. You don’t even push if I’m really not up for it. Sometimes… sometimes I don’t really get if you’re being sarcastic, but you don’t roll your eyes or leave me hanging trying to figure it out… you explain it to me…”

Zoey was tired of crying, but God, it was really difficult not to.

Two pairs of arms wrapped around her. They held tight as if she would fly away if they let go. The tears that were threatening to fall retreated. Her body went almost limp between the two girls.

They stayed like that for a long time. It only broke when Zoey grew restless, worrying the girls were tired and holding on just for her. Feeling her twitch, they let go.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Mira asked. Not harshly or unkindly, but with a hurt edge in her voice.

“It didn’t—” Zoey cut herself, because it did. It did matter. That was the reason she hid it in the first place. “Sorry, that’s not right. The truth is that I… I was scared. People change when they know. Even my parents changed. They start thinking about me as autistic, not as Zoey. Knowing doesn’t change me, just how people see me. I… I didn’t want you to change. It would hurt too much if you did.”

Zoey grimaced, waiting for their response. Waiting for the gavel to fall and give its sentence.

“Thank you for telling us.” Mira whispered serenely.

It surprised Zoey. She expected Mira to be hurt.

Mira’s hurt was always sharp. A wall of spikes designed to force people away. Over the years, Mira had learned to hold back her words, giving way to silence. Sometimes the silence was sharper than words.

This time, the words landed softly.

Rumi lifted her chin gently so that Zoey would look at her eyes.

“You were very brave. Braver than I was. Thank you for telling us.”

Zoey didn’t feel brave. She felt as if she had woken up in the middle of an open-heart surgery. Her heart laid bare and unprotected without her ribs that, up until now, were always there. Still, it was necessary. Sometimes surgery is the only way to heal.

“That’s not true. I’m not…”

“You are.” Rumi interrupted, leaning closer “I’ll remind you over and over until you are so tired of hearing it that you’ll just accept it.”

Their foreheads touched. Rumi gave her a tender smile, a hint of a smirk tugged at the corners of her mouth

“You should just accept it, Zo. You know her. Once she sets her mind on something, the rest of the world just has to deal with it.”

Rumi scoffed.

“As if you weren’t the same,” she rolled her eyes.

Silence stretched between them, until Mira interrupted.

“Zo it’s not that I don’t appreciate you telling us, but what prompted this? Why now?”

Zoey sighed. She had forgotten what had brought them to this moment. She pulled away from Rumi. Without thinking, she placed her hand above her heart and rubbed it as if it would chase the ache away.

“My mom called”

Rumi and Mira hummed softly, urging her to continue.

“She wanted to talk about my future plans. She was happy for me”

Mira and Rumi furrowed their brows and sent questioning looks at Zoey. They didn’t see the problem.

“She saw something in one of those talk shows. A rumor about us separating. She was happy.” Zoey scoffed. “She thought I finally came to my senses. That I understood this life isn’t meant for me. That finally I would return home to be taken care of as if I was a child!”

“What? Why would she think that?” Rumi jumped off the couch. Eyes wide. She started pacing.

“What about your dreams? Your career?” Mira snarled. Her fists clenched.

Seeing them so angry on her behalf untied the final knot in Zoey’s chest. Maybe telling them was the right decision.

“She thinks autism makes me incapable of, well, everything.” Zoey shrugged. “Some autistic people need a lot of support, others don’t… I need some support, but my mom doesn’t get that. She tries to help when I don’t need it, then doesn’t notice when I actually do. I’m capable. I—I know that. I just do things differently and find some other things difficult... I guess”

The confession sank in silence.

“How do you feel about, you know, telling her not to call you again?” Mira asked with sympathy.

“Horrible. I want her in my life. I want my mom, but I can’t do this anymore …” Zoey looked at the ceiling, her eyes glazed as she was far away. “I want the supportive mom I had when I was little, not the controlling, belittling version I got after the diagnosis.” Zoey sighed. “Yesterday finally extinguished my hopes… I’ve waited for so long. I'm just so tired.”

Rumi was still pacing, lips pressed together, her eyes on the floor as if it held the answers.

Mira was watching Zoey, eyes soft, mouth just as thin as Rumi’s, her hands twitching as if deciding the best way to comfort her.

“That’s normal.” Mira acknowledged. “You still love her. You can change your mind later.”

Rumi sighed and sat next to Zoey. It seemed the floor had eased her worries.

“We’ll be here. For whatever you want to do. You just have to ask.”

“I will. Thank you,” Zoey whispered.

“Feel better?” Mira asked after a few seconds.

“Yeah, a little”

“Enough to see a turtle documentary?” Rumi coaxed.

“Always” Zoey reassured, a small smile tugging at her lips.

Zoey stayed in between them for the rest of the day. They were softer than usual, spoiling her at every turn, but it was no different from any other time she cried.

That night, they had a sleepover in Rumi’s room. Zoey was the first one to fall asleep. She slept at peace, knowing that tomorrow everything would go back to normal. Losing her mother didn’t seem as unbearable with them by her side.

Tomorrow, they’ll still be here, just as they were today.

Tomorrow, she will wake up, and they will still be the same.