Chapter 4

"Sia. Sia, wake up. We are almost at our stop."

Her mother's voice was soft but persistent, the kind that doesn't give up. Sia stirred, blinked, pulled herself out of sleep slowly. The train was still moving but differently now, slowing down, the world outside the window becoming more dense, more urban.

"Go freshen up. And wear your shoes before you forget."

Sia did as she was told. She splashed water on her face in the small train bathroom, looked at herself in the tiny mirror for a moment, then came back.

Her dad was sitting there talking to the passengers nearby. Laughing at something one of them said. His voice was easy and warm and completely normal. He called her mother honey when she handed him his bag.

Like nothing had happened.

Like last night had not happened at all.

Sia was not shocked. She had stopped being shocked by this a long time ago. She knew exactly who her father was, how he moved through the world, how he could humiliate you in front of strangers one night and greet the morning like a clean slate. She had grown up watching this. She understood it the way you understand weather. You don't argue with it. You just know when to carry an umbrella.

So she sat down next to her mother, quietly, and said nothing.

The problem was her face.

Her face never got the memo. It never learned to pretend. Whatever she felt moved right to the surface whether she wanted it to or not. It was something she had always struggled with. You could read Sia like a page if you knew her well enough.

Her mother knew her better than anyone.

"Sia," she said, and poked her gently in the arm.

Sia gave her the flattest, most expressionless look she could manage.

Her mother laughed. A real laugh, sudden and genuine, the first one in the entire seventeen hour journey. It broke across her face like something that had been waiting a long time to come out.

Sia looked at her and said nothing. But something in her chest loosened, just a little.

Still, the heaviness was there.

It had been there since last night, sitting somewhere behind her ribs, quiet but persistent. A feeling she couldn't quite name. Like something bad was waiting just around a corner she hadn't reached yet. She didn't know where it came from or what it meant but she couldn't shake it.

She leaned close to her mother.

"I'm not feeling good," she said quietly. "Like something bad is going to happen."

Her mother looked at her. Then she reached over and took Sia's hand in both of hers, held it firmly.

"Nothing bad is happening," she said. "You are just overthinking. That is all."

Sia didn't fully believe her. But the hand helped.

The train slowed. The announcement came. Their stop.

They gathered their things, her parents managing the luggage between them, and stepped out onto the platform. The air was different here. The city was different here. Louder, bigger, moving faster than anything Sia had grown up around.

Outside the station they found a taxi. The luggage went in the boot, the three of them settled inside, and the driver pulled into traffic.

Sia sat with her hands in her lap and watched the city go by through the window.

Somewhere in it was her college. Her hostel. Her new life.

The heaviness in her chest didn't leave. But underneath it, quiet and stubborn, that feeling was still there too. The one from yesterday on the train. Hope. Excitement. The sense of something beginning.

She held onto that as the taxi moved forward.

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