Georgia was quiet.
Not just in the way people mean when they say "peaceful," like birds chirping or the wind brushing against porch screens. I mean real quiet. The kind that seeps into your bones and silences the parts of you that never shut up. No screaming. No doors slamming. No muffled sobs through drywall or the static buzz of a TV left on overnight. Just crickets, heat, and the creak of the old porch steps when I shifted my weight.
It was the kind of quiet that didn't need permission to exist.
My grandparents lived on the edge of a wooded area, far enough from town that the sky didn't look polluted. The trees went on forever, layered with sun and shadow, a place where you could vanish for hours and no one would come looking. I liked that. The birds didn't look at you like they expected anything. The wind didn't ask how your day was. And the animals that passed through the trees never stopped long enough to be disappointed.
Their place was old, wide, and sunk deep in green, with woods wrapping around it like the arms of something that didn't want to let go. You couldn't hear any highways. No neighbors slamming doors or thudding upstairs. Just the porch creaking, the screen door clicking shut, and the wind slipping through pine trees like it was trying not to wake anything.
Every morning, my grandpa woke up before the sun and made black coffee that smelled like burnt wood. He never tried to get me to drink it, just handed me a piece of toast and nodded toward the field. That meant practice. I followed him without saying a word. He didn't need a reason, and I didn't need one either.
The bow was old but maintained. The string bit into my fingers when I pulled, and my arms ached the first few days. The first arrow I fired missed completely, vanished into the grass somewhere, maybe still flying. My grandpa chuckled. Not mean, just amused. Like the arrow's failure had been part of the plan.
I didn't laugh with him. Just loaded another.
That one hit the outer ring of the target. Then the next hit the center.
Then the next one. And the next. Tree after tree. Target after target. I stopped missing.
It didn't feel like a skill. It felt like instinct. Like my body had decided that being good at this was the closest it could get to purpose.
My grandpa started calling me "sharpshooter." Sometimes he'd raise a hand to clap me on the back, then stop himself. I appreciated that. I didn't like being touched. It always felt like someone trying to dig their way into me, like they needed to feel something for me so they could feel better about themselves. He never forced it. Just smiled and watched me shoot. That was enough.
My grandma would bring out lemonade or cold water, sit on the porch, and say, "You've got the eye." Never pushed a conversation. Just said what she meant and went back to her book. She didn't treat me like a child who needed fixing. Just a person who preferred silence.
Some evenings, I'd do push-ups in the grass. Sit-ups until my stomach knotted up. No one asked why. I didn't know why myself, only that it felt right. Like I was building a body made of stone around something soft and weak, something I didn't want anymore.
When I wasn't training or working out, I wandered into the woods. Sometimes I'd find a tree and just sit there, still, listening to everything that wasn't human. The way the wind rustled the leaves didn't remind me of whispers. The way the squirrels chattered didn't sound like laughter. None of it was tied to memory. It just existed.
And that was what made it perfect.
Back home, everything breathed down your neck. The streets. The people. The buildings themselves felt like they were leaning in, waiting for you to slip. But Georgia didn't care what you were or weren't. It lets you be.
I didn't miss my mother. I didn't think of Jace. I didn't check the time.
That summer, for the first time in my life, I started to feel... still. Not happy. Not safe. Just still.
And that was enough, but then the summer ended.
No warning. Just the suitcase in the back of the car again. My grandpa gave me a firm nod. My grandma hugged me gently. I let her. She didn't ask me to say anything, didn't call me a good kid, didn't ask me to visit more. Just said, "You take care."
That meant more to me than all the forced hugs I'd dodged before.
The drive home was quieter than I remembered. Or maybe it was just me that had changed. The roads got uglier. The trees got fewer. Buildings stacked up like teeth in a rotting mouth, and the sky got choked out by wires.
When we pulled into the parking lot, my stomach went cold. I already knew what was waiting inside.
I opened the door.
The smell hit first: Stale beer, cheap perfume, grease, and decay. Bottles were scattered across the carpet like landmines. Crushed cans. Plastic bags. Flies were buzzing around a sink that hadn't seen soap in weeks.
The air was humid, heavy, and smelled like rot. Cans. Takeout wrappers. A pizza box was halfway under the couch. Stale beer and spilled wine mixed into a scent so sharp it felt like biting glass.
Jace wasn't home, although his shoes were at the door.
My mother was passed out on the couch, arm dangling toward the floor, drool crusting at the corner of her mouth.
I froze. And then, as if my world was warping once more, I was four.
Small. Running barefoot down the hallway, holding a plastic toy in one hand, wandering about because I'd found something. I can't remember what. My mom was screaming at the TV. Slurring her words, she waved a half-empty bottle of something brown.
She whipped it across the room like it was nothing.
It hit the wall and bounced. Spun. Landed in the hallway. I stepped on it, slipped, and went flying.
I remember the cold on the floor. The snap in my wrist. The bruises blooming up my back. I remember blinking up at the ceiling fan after the blow knocked the wind out of me.
She looked at me like I was an insect she couldn't be bothered to squash.
"Watch where you're going," she'd said. Then turned the volume up.
Now, back in that same room, standing on that same floor, I gritted my teeth and started picking up bottles.
Not because I wanted to help. Not because I cared.
Because I couldn't stand the mess. Couldn't stand what it reminded me of. Couldn't stand the noise it made just by existing. Glass clinking. Aluminum crunching. Evidence of people who didn't deserve to breathe.
Humans always leave a mess for someone else to clean up.
Every time I touched one of those bottles, I thought about how easily she let it all happen. How she let herself rot and expected me to breathe it in without choking.
They always expect that. Humans ruin everything and act surprised when something breaks.
They destroy homes, love, and children, and when something lashes back, they call it a tragedy. They cry. They point fingers. They hold vigils and light candles like it means anything.
They are rotting fruit in human skin. And I hate them.
Not just because of what they've done. But because they never stop.
I don't say that out loud. I don't shout or cry or punch walls. That's what they do. I just cleaned.
Bottle after bottle. Room by room. The stink is still there, always there, but fainter. I scrubbed until my fingers ached, and then I sat still.
Just like I was in Georgia, but colder now. No more quiet like there, more like a forced silence I was bringing on.