Chapter 4 The Girl With the Locket

The walls always felt cold.

Even in summer, when the sun blazed outside and the other kids complained about the heat, the inside of the orphanage stayed gray and damp, like the building itself didn't know how to feel warmth. The stone walls were thick and old, built decades ago when people cared more about keeping children contained than comfortable.

I'd been here for as long as I could remember, though sometimes, in the quietest moments, I'd see flashes. Pieces of something that felt real but distant. Of fire that burned orange and yellow against a dark sky. Of broken glass scattered across wet pavement. Of a woman's voice singing softly, words I couldn't understand but melodies that made my chest ache. A scent I could never name but always missed. Something warm and safe and gone forever.

But mostly, I remembered him.

The man with the eyes that looked like they held both stone and fire. Dark and hard but somehow gentle when they looked at me. The one who held my hand in the hospital when I was scared and confused. The one who told me I'd be okay when nothing felt okay. The one who promised he'd come back for me.

His voice had been rough, like he didn't talk much. But when he spoke to me, it was different. Softer. Like he was trying not to scare me even though everything was already scary.

I waited.

And waited.

Years passed like water through a broken cup. Slow and steady and unstoppable.

The locket he gave me never left my neck, not even during showers, even though Miss Halden used to scream and yank at it. Her fingers would dig into my skin, trying to pull the chain over my head. But I'd curl up tight and protect it with my whole body.

I let her scream. I let her threaten to take away my dinner or lock me in the punishment room. I never let her take it.

The chain left marks on my neck sometimes. Red lines where she'd pulled too hard. But I didn't care. It was the only piece of before that I had left.

I'd open it sometimes when no one was watching. Usually late at night when the other girls were asleep and the hallways were quiet. The picture inside was half-burned and blurry from the car crash, the edges brown and cracked. But I memorized every inch.

That was my mother. Dark hair, kind eyes, holding a baby that was me. Both of us smiling in a world that must have been different then. Better then.

Some days, when the cold got too deep in my bones and the other girls were especially cruel, I convinced myself that the man from the car, the man who saved me, was just a dream. That maybe my brain had made him up to help me feel less alone. That maybe no one was coming for me because no one ever came for kids like us.

But something inside me never stopped waiting.

Life in the orphanage was manageable if you learned the rules.

Don't cry where anyone can see. Tears made you weak, and weak kids got picked on more. Don't answer back when the staff yelled at you, even when they were wrong. Don't stand out too much or you'd get extra chores and punishments. Don't stand out too little or you'd disappear completely.

Eat fast during meals or the bigger kids would take your food. Speak less so you wouldn't say the wrong thing. Fight if you had to, but only when no adults were looking. Getting caught fighting meant isolation, and isolation meant missing meals.

I learned to hide bruises under long sleeves and high collars. I learned to smile through gritted teeth when visitors came through, pretending we were all happy and grateful. I learned that silence was safer than hope, and hope was dangerous because it hurt when it died.

The other girls were survival lessons all by themselves. Most of them were older and hardened by years of disappointment. They'd stopped believing anyone would want them. The younger ones cried at night, soft desperate sounds that echoed through the thin walls.

I used to comfort them in those first years. I'd sneak out of my bed and sit with the little ones, telling them stories I half remembered or completely made up. I'd hold their hands and promise them things would get better.

Until I got too tired to care. Until their pain started feeling like my pain, and I had enough of my own to carry.

There was one girl, Tessa, who liked to pull my hair. She was three years older and twice as mean. She said I thought I was better than everyone else because I wore a locket. Because I kept to myself. Because I didn't cry when the staff ignored me on visiting days.

I didn't think I was better.

I just had something they didn't. A promise. A memory of someone who cared enough to save me.

Even if it was old. Even if it faded more with every year that passed. Even if I started to wonder if I'd imagined the whole thing.

One winter, when I was ten, I got sick.

Really sick.

It started as a cough, then turned into something that made my whole body ache. Fever that burned through me like fire. Chills that made my teeth chatter even under three blankets.

My whole body hurt, every muscle and bone. I was burning up one minute and freezing the next. I couldn't keep food down. I couldn't stay awake for more than a few minutes at a time.

But no one cared. Not really. The staff gave me some medicine that tasted awful and told me to rest. They put me in the sick room, which was just another cold gray space with a single cot and a window that wouldn't open.

I remember lying in that tiny cot, curled up in a thin blanket that smelled like other people's sickness, staring at the window while snow fell outside. Big fat flakes that looked soft and clean, nothing like the hard dirty world inside these walls.

"I think I'm going to die," I whispered to no one.

The words came out weak and broken. Part of me hoped someone would hear. Part of me hoped they wouldn't.

But I didn't die.

I made it through. Barely. The fever broke after five days, leaving me weak and hollow but alive.

And when I opened my eyes and saw sunlight instead of snow, I felt something shift inside me. Like whatever had broken in me during those sick days had started rebuilding itself with something stronger. Something that couldn't be bent or cracked as easily.

From then on, I stopped waiting.

Not completely. But differently.

I became good at pretending.

Pretending I didn't care when the others whispered about me behind their hands. Pretending I didn't flinch when one of the guards slammed his fist on the table during dinner. Pretending I didn't need anyone to save me or want me or remember that I existed.

I learned to be invisible when I needed to be. I learned to be fierce when I had to be. I learned that surviving was something you did alone, even when you were surrounded by people.

But at night, when it was just me and the dark and the sound of distant sobs from the younger kids, I'd still open the locket.

I'd whisper to the photo like it could hear me across whatever distance separated us.

"I'm still waiting," I'd say to my mother's burned and blurry face. "I haven't forgotten you."

And sometimes, when the moon was bright enough to cast shadows through the barred windows, I'd imagine those fire-colored eyes watching me from the darkness.

Maybe he had forgotten me. Kids got forgotten all the time. Promises got broken. People moved on.

Maybe he never meant the promise in the first place. Maybe it was just something adults said to make children stop crying.

But I hadn't forgotten him.

And somewhere deep inside, in a place that the cold walls and cruel words couldn't reach, I still believed he hadn't forgotten me either.