Sam woke with a gasp, like he'd surfaced from a deep, dark pool. The ceiling above him wasn't the one he'd died beneath. No hospital fluorescents humming, no sour antiseptic clinging to the back of his throat. Just a familiar patch of white paint, a peeling corner near the window where the summer heat always swelled the drywall, and the soft tick of the cheap analog clock on his desk.
The clock said 7:18 a.m. A breeze moved the threadbare curtain. Silverpoint's morning—seagulls somewhere far off, traffic yet to fully wake, the faint hiss of pipes in the building that had been old even before he was born. He sat up fast, hands flying to his chest, his neck, his face, as if mapping out a terrain he didn't quite trust. Smooth skin. No phantom ache in the ribs from that last shove. The phone on his nightstand was the dinky one he'd saved for as a teenager—scuffed case, hairline crack across the top right. It lit when he pressed it: June 23. Summer holidays. Year eighteen.
He swallowed. His tongue tasted like sleep and disbelief.
The door creaked. "Sam?" Grace's voice, careful, a low call that tried not to wake the whole floor. He could hear Liz's cartoon theme song bouncing from the living room—bright, chirpy, instruments too happy for the hour—and the kettle starting its hiss on the stove.
"I'm up," he said, and the sound of his own voice at that pitch startled him. No hoarseness. Youth, light and flexible.
He dressed hurriedly—black tee, faded jeans, the sneakers he'd worn thin—then stepped into the hallway. The framed photos on the wall looked back: Grace at twenty-four, hair tucked behind her ear, holding baby Liz; Sam at nine with a muddy grin and a soccer medal clutched crooked; a school portrait where his tie was on the wrong side and Grace had laughed and kept it anyway. The space between those images and now felt like a canyon, all the years that had happened and, somehow, hadn't. He touched the frame with the soccer medal as if to anchor himself.
In the kitchen, Grace stood at the stove in the same slate-blue cardigan she'd mended twice. Her hair was pinned up. Lines lived at the corners of her eyes he remembered and respected. There was a strength in the way she held a wooden spoon—like the world could tilt a degree and she'd hold steady.
"You look like you didn't sleep," she said, peeking over her shoulder. She said it with that smile that made room for answers and refusals, both.
"I… slept," Sam said. His throat tightened for a beat. "Just had a weird dream."
Grace nodded, like weird dreams were a tax for living in Silverpoint, paid often and quietly. "Toast?" She gestured at the bread bag, the kind that always folded into itself when you reached for the last two slices. "Lizzy," she called toward the living room, "five more minutes then shoes, okay?"
"Okay!" Liz sang back, the sound buoyant. She was a lantern in this apartment—small body, big light. Sam didn't know how he ever let that light dim in his past life. He didn't know how he forgave himself.
He took plates down and set the table. The table wobbled if you leaned too hard; he adjusted the folded paper under one leg out of habit. Grace poured tea, gave the toast an extra minute in the pan because the toaster had died last winter and they'd never replaced it. Butter spread thin. Jam scraped from the quiet corners of the jar. Sam's stomach remembered what scarcity felt like, the little mental math games you played to stretch a week's groceries two extra days.
He watched his mother's hands. They were steady, purposeful. He could see the mornings she'd worked through fevers, the evenings she'd massaged her own aching wrists and told Liz stories anyway. In his past life, he'd promised himself nights off to visit more, to bring soup, to fix the door that stuck. Politics had eaten his hours, then his soul. And in the end, jealousy had eaten his body.
Liz slid into her chair with a soft skid, hair a tangle of sleep and ambition. "Sam," she said, bright, "Ms. Calloway said when I get to Year Five we get to do a big project with posters and everything. I'm going to do mine about rainforests." She declared rainforest like it was a spell that could grow trees in their kitchen.
"Rainforests are good," Sam said. "They'll like your poster."
Grace arched a brow. "They'll like it because you'll do it properly. Shoes after breakfast." She nudged Liz's cup closer.
Sam took a bite of toast. Butter, jam, heat, salt. A softness and a scrape. He took a breath that felt like gratitude and an apology both. "I can take Liz to the library later," he said. "If you need me to."
Grace gave him that look again, the one that measured and found him worth trusting. "I thought you were meeting friends."
He shook his head. "First day of holidays. I can help. Besides…" He searched for a phrase that wasn't a confession and wasn't a lie. "I want to get some things done this summer. For us."
Grace's mouth softened. "That sounds nice."
For us. The words felt right, like a key in a lock you'd been fumbling with. He was not going to sprint back into the old machinery. He was not going to be haunted by the logic that said you had to be useful to the wrong people to save the right ones. He looked at Liz, who was humming into her toast, and knew what mattered wasn't abstract power, but choices made close to home—the kind that kept the lights on and the kettle reliable and the cartoons loud.
After breakfast, he washed dishes and let the warm water run over his hands until the feeling anchored him. In his room, he sat at the desk and opened the notes app on his cracked phone. The home screen was a collage of his past self's wants: exam schedules, gym plans he stopped following after week two, a saved photo of a car he thought he'd drive one day. He swiped past all of it.
New note. Title: Summer Plan.
He typed:
— Build capital (fast, legal, quiet).
— No tutoring.
— Protect Grace + Liz.
He stared at the second line. In his past life, the tutoring job had been a simple thing. He'd needed money, took it, and then the little misunderstandings, the girl with the neat handwriting and the laugh that made the air around her feel bright, the friend who wanted what he didn't have and then hated him for stumbling near it—all of it had grown like ivy. It hadn't looked like danger. It had looked like a summer gig.
He wasn't going to step into that room again.
The apartment's hallway window cast a rectangle of light across his desk. Dust motes drifted through it, slow and unashamed. He thought about Silverpoint—of bus routes and markets, of secondhand shops and the way prices danced when the city's students cycled out and new ones cycled in. He thought about what he was good at when you stripped away the titles: reading people, spotting need, making small things slightly better.
He made another list:
— Scan local demand (books, gadgets, starter kits).
— Look for price gaps (graduate sell-offs, shop clearances).
— Offer simple services (phone clean-and-check, delivery runs, shop listings).
He could hear Grace moving in the bedroom, drawers closing, the soft thud of a wardrobe door. Liz hopped down the hall like a song in motion. "Library! Library! Library!" she chanted, victory assured.
Sam smiled. He pocketed his phone and grabbed his old backpack, the one with a stitched-on patch he'd done himself in Year Ten. It felt light. He'd make it heavier, with the right things. Outside, Silverpoint's air carried the smell of the river and hot pavement, a promise of days that unfolded slow and bright if you let them.
They walked together—Grace to the bus stop for her shift at the bakery, Liz and Sam toward the library. Grace pressed a kiss to Liz's hair, then to Sam's cheek as if it were nothing and everything. "Don't forget to eat," she said, which was one of her ways of saying I love you and please survive.
"We will," Sam said. He watched her board, saw her find a seat by the window, wave once, and then vanish as the bus rolled away, taking pieces of his heart with it and returning purpose in exchange.
At the library, Liz beelined for the children's section with a single-mindedness Sam admired. He stood in the foyer for a moment, listening to the muffled quiet of old pages and air conditioning, feeling a memory uncoil—a time he'd hidden in a corner with a book to avoid a meeting, a time he'd hoped walls of learning could make him invisible. He wasn't hiding now. He was planning.
He took a city map from the rack and marked a few spots in his head: the student housing blocks where end-of-term boxes piled up, the weekend market where stall fees were negotiable if you smiled and were patient, the mall where some stores put last-season accessories into discount bins and hoped no one noticed how cheap they were. He pictured conversations—honest, not pushy. He pictured trading little value for fair cash and moving on. No strings. No applause. Just work.
Liz popped her head around a shelf with two books held up like flags. "Which one?"
"Both," Sam said, and the grin that took over her face could have powered their apartment for a week. He sat at a table with his phone and wrote a few more lines:
— Keep everything in cash and simple receipts.
— Set clear hours (morning scouting, afternoon meet-ups, evening family).
— Avoid late-night deals and anyone who wants special favors.
He added, almost as a prayer:
— This time, simple beats clever.
He thought of the friend—of how a man with a soft belly and a bright laugh had let that laugh sour. He thought of the tutoring room and the girl who had been kind because kind is easy and had been unkind by accident because unkind is easy too when you're busy and young. He thought of timelines. Of traps disguised as ordinary.
He closed his eyes and saw a fork in the road. On the left, the old path: apply, get the job, believe you can steer other people's emotions like a boat in a calm harbor, discover too late that storms don't ask permission. On the right, a quieter street: don't apply, don't enter the room, remove the catalyst before it exists.
When he opened his eyes, the decision felt like a weight lifted and a responsibility accepted. He didn't owe anyone an explanation for the road he wasn't going to take. He owed his mother and sister a better life.
He looked at Liz, who was sprawled on a beanbag, tongue peeking out at the corner of her mouth as she sounded out a long word. He thought of Grace, her hands in flour, her back aching, her smile intact. He thought of Silverpoint: the city that loved you in odd ways and tested you in even ones.
He pulled up the listing site on his phone and scrolled past the tutoring ad without stopping. He didn't click. He didn't bookmark. He didn't whisper a promise to revisit it later. He was done with that door.
Outside, the day had warmed enough that the river looked like a sheet of glass tucked into the city's bones. Sam stood on the library steps for a second, breathing, letting the sun touch his face. He made a vow that was smaller than revolution and bigger than survival: he would make their life gentler, day by day, choice by choice, with money that didn't come with warnings attached and friends who didn't confuse kindness with competition.
He typed one last line into his note and saved it:
— Enter college on my terms.
Then he slid his phone into his pocket and went back inside to help Liz find a book about rainforests with the best pictures, because some promises start with pages and end in forests, and some lives begin again on ordinary mornings in Silverpoint.