The word landed like a stone. Too heavy for how casually she said it.
I remember the scratch of the pen in my hand, the way my signature looked unfamiliar, like it belonged to someone older and more confident than I felt.
When we walked out, we had our belongings in plastic bags. Not even matching bags. Mine was cloudy and wrinkled. Noah’s had a tear near the bottom that made him keep adjusting it so nothing slipped through.
There was no party. No cake. No “we’re proud of you.”
Just a folder, a bus pass, and that quiet, terrifying weight of “good luck out there.”
Outside, the air hit my face like a reset—cooler, sharper. The sky looked too wide. The sidewalk felt like a boundary line.
Noah rolled beside me and spun one wheel lazily, like he was trying to act relaxed for my sake.
“Well,” he said, “at least nobody can tell us where to go anymore.”
I let out a breath that was half laugh, half something else. “Unless it’s some kind of official trouble.”
He snorted, and the sound was so normal it steadied me. “Then we better not get caught doing anything stupid.”
We didn’t have a master plan. We had each other and a stubborn willingness to work.
We enrolled in community college. We filled out forms with hands that didn’t quite stop shaking until we were halfway done. We learned which offices to call, which websites to refresh, which lines to stand in.
We found a tiny apartment above a laundromat.
It always smelled like hot soap and damp cotton and burned lint. The air was warm in a way that clung to your skin. The machines downstairs thumped and churned all day, like the building had its own heartbeat.
The stairs were awful. Noah eyed them once and then looked at me with an expression that said, Well, this is inconvenient.
But the rent was low. The landlord didn’t ask questions. The door had a lock that worked.
So we took it.
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