(One Week Earlier)
"Cass, Cass! If you could have a superpower, what would it be?"
The question has been a ghost at my heels since childhood, whispered during sleepovers and shouted across playgrounds. My friends' answers were always a kaleidoscope of comic book dreams: flight, superhuman strength, the ability to glow in the dark.
Mine was simpler. Quieter.
I just wanted to be invisible.
Even then, I think some part of me knew it wasn't about hiding. It was about saving myself, though I was never sure from what.
"I don't know," I murmured, the lie tasting like ash on my tongue.
I stood, brushing invisible dust from my skirt. My face wore its usual mask—half bored, half lost—a carefully constructed shield to hide the fact that my mind was always somewhere else. The others' laughter faded back into the ambient noise of their lives, but I was already gone, drifting on an internal current, far, far away.
Things were not going according to plan. My life felt like a train I was perpetually running behind, watching as everyone else found their seats. People my age were building careers, falling in love, becoming someone. My own becoming felt sluggish, mired in mud. I'd imagined that life after graduation would be a straight line to independence, a simple equation of work equals money. Six months with a journalism degree and a stack of rejection letters had taught me otherwise. The world didn't want my words.
Invisibility. That was the answer. To move through the world unseen. To work and breathe and exist without the weight of expectation, without the constant, crushing question: What have you achieved?
My mom is a single mother. I've seen the lines of exhaustion carved into her face from years of making a life for us. She deserved a daughter who could give her peace, who could change our lives. The guilt of my failure was a heavy cloak, and I wore it everywhere, reflecting my own misery back onto them.
"Cass? Cass," Alba called, her footsteps soft in the hall.
"What is it?" I snapped, the word sharper than I intended.
Her voice, when it came, was gentle, which only made me feel worse. "Mom and I… we want to talk to you."
"About what?"
"Just… everything. Please come downstairs."
A sigh of defeat escaped me. "Fine."
I found Mom in her armchair, hands crossed tightly in her lap, a storm brewing in her eyes. My heart began to hammer against my ribs, a frantic, trapped bird.
"Cass?" Mom's voice cut through my spiraling thoughts.
"Cass, I want you to sit down first." Her tone was solemn, final. I sank onto the sofa, feeling like a defendant awaiting sentencing.
She took a deep breath. "Cass," she began, her voice trembling slightly. "I see you dying from the inside. I grew up without a father, too. I know what it's like to feel like there's an unsolved puzzle at the very center of you. I don't want you to repeat my story." She leaned forward, her eyes pleading. "Life isn't a straight line, honey. You just have to find what makes you happy, no matter how long that journey takes." Her composure finally broke. A tear traced a path through her makeup. "So, my dear… I want you to go away for a while. To your grandma's house. I want you to have the time and space to figure out what your happiness looks like... I want my happy daughter back."
The dam inside me broke. A sob tore from my throat as I surged forward and wrapped my arms around her.
"Thank you, Mom," I said, my voice thick.
"Stop," she said, her voice firm but loving. "Your journey is not their journey. Don't you ever compare your path to anyone else's."
She kissed my forehead. I went back to my room and began to pack.
The next morning, I said my goodbyes and folded myself into the back of a cab. The city shrank in the rearview mirror, its familiar faces and pressures dissolving with the distance. Grandma lived a hundred kilometers from the capital, in a world that smelled of damp earth and woodsmoke instead of exhaust fumes.
When I arrived, she was waiting on the porch, a silhouette of warmth against the rustic wood of her house. Everything about the place felt like a fresh start, a deep, cleansing breath. For the first time in months, I felt a flicker of something like hope.