Everything.
Except me.
I wasn’t sure why I was the one spared—or if I deserved it.
After that night, I didn’t really live. I existed. I drifted.
With help from a local volunteer organization, I ended up in a community shelter. They called it a dorm-style housing program for displaced youth, but it felt like limbo—somewhere between catastrophe and uncertainty.
I shared a room with a girl who barely spoke. There were two bathrooms per floor and one shared kitchen for about twenty residents. It wasn’t luxurious, but it was warm, safe, and clean. I had a bed. That alone felt like a gift.
I could have lived with family, technically. But Aunt Denise—my mom’s older sister and my only living relative—said she didn’t have room.
“I’m sorry, sweetie, but there’s no space here,” she told me over the phone. “Your uncle uses the spare room for work. And I’m not giving up my reading nook for a teenager. I’m grieving too, you know.”
She might’ve been grieving, but she had no trouble claiming half of the insurance money meant for me. She promised she’d use it to help—clothes, therapy, whatever I needed.
Instead, she bought herself stacks of romance and mystery novels, a wine fridge, a new car, and an entire new wardrobe. She showed up to her weekly book club in designer hats and called it her “grieving wardrobe,” joking that it made her look “expensive but in mourning.”
I didn’t argue. I didn’t have the strength. I had already lost the most important thing—my family. I told myself I was lucky to have a mattress, a small desk, and quiet hours between eleven at night and six in the morning.
During the day, I buried myself in school. I studied like my life depended on it—because it did. I needed scholarships. I needed a future. I needed proof that I mattered, even if only to the person I hoped to become.
At night, while the other girls scrolled through TikTok, played music, or watched TV in the common room, I took over the shared kitchen.
