Unbroken

“I think you’ve got it worse,” I tell her. “And I thought about fleeing, but…my home is Brown Bay.”

My home is withthem. Even if it’s just the imprint of our memories in Brown Bay. Even if it means one is gone, and the other is cold. Because there, walking those streets, staring out into that ocean—even when they’re not there—Ifeelthem.

“What’s your story then?” Fay asks curiously. “How’d you wind up in the centre of that war?”

“Yeah,” Brit says. “I heard the violence was outta control for a while there. All those shops burning down—”

“People dying,” Fay adds.

“They fought for you, didn’t they?”

I don’t answer for a long time. It’s hard to breathe when my throat is clogged with unshed tears. But I finally manage a weak, “Yeah.”

“One of those boys is dead.”

I bang my head back against the wood, sucking in a hard breath, repeating, “Yeah.”

“So, tell us then,” Fay urges. “Tell us from the start what the fuck happened.”

My shoulders slump. “What do you want to know? I’ve known them my whole life.”

“But how’d it get to be that way? It doesn’t happen out of nowhere.”

“Yeah,” Brit inserts. “When did it start to get ugly?”

My lips twist as I pretend to think about it, but I know already. I know the exact day when the tides began to turn.

When friendship was nothing but a dream of the past.

“We were thirteen,” I say, quietly.

Fucking thirteen years old and I’d never had the opportunity to truly savour our friendship. Shame. Because we were so innocent.

But innocence vanishes in a blink of an eye, and it hits without warning.

One day you’re a little girl, the next you’re suddenly aware—aware of all the ugly that’s been in front of you the entire time.

The loss of innocence is like coming closer to a painting and spotting all the inconsistent lines you never knew were there.

I lost my innocence the second I realized I loved them both equally.