I spent years learning how to live inside the silence that followed the accident, the kind of silence that doesn’t feel empty at first but slowly becomes part of everything you do—your mornings, your thoughts, even the way people look at you before they decide what to say. When I was ten, the fire took my parents and left my body changed in a way that made every stranger pause for half a second too long. After that, life became a series of careful conversations where people avoided certain words around me, as if naming the past too directly might break whatever fragile version of “normal” they thought I was holding onto.

Teachers spoke gently, neighbors offered sympathy that felt rehearsed, and classmates learned how to include me without ever truly approaching me, like I was someone positioned just slightly outside the main picture of childhood. Prom had always seemed like something that belonged to another version of my life, the kind of event where people move easily through laughter and music without thinking about how their bodies fit into a room. But I went anyway, not because I expected transformation or healing in a single night.