City Lights, Country Nights

1.Beginnings and Baggage

She could never have imagined it happening, and who could blame her? To think that something so devastating could happen to her and her sister felt like a cruel twist of fate, akin to a tragic movie plot, yet it was all too real for Liora.

She had lost everything—her home, her parents, and now her sister. The only remaining constant in Liora's life was her older sister, Jackie. Despite Jackie's presence, Liora still felt an overwhelming sense of loneliness and sadness. She was supposed to be with her family that fateful night, but by chance, she had to be at her dance concert instead.

Her family had been on their way back because she had asked them to join her, but tragically, they never made it. Liora stood there for nearly two hours, frantically calling and texting them, but there was no response until Jackie finally found her.

Liora couldn't bring herself to cry. She refused to, as if shedding tears would make the painful reality too hard to bear. Every time thoughts of her family entered her mind, her chest tightened, her breathing became labored, and her head spun. She wanted to scream and yell, but she wouldn't allow herself to cry. She stopped eating, smiling, and laughing; it was as if her body was present but her mind was absent. No matter how much time passed, the pain never dulled.

Liora found herself isolated, withdrawing from the activities she once loved. She no longer spent time with her friends, stopped dance the one thing she adored, and played the piano. She preferred solitude in her room over interacting with anyone who claimed that time would heal her wounds. She knew that you don't simply "get over" something like this—it stays with you forever, a constant reminder of what once was. 

To mask her problems, she pushed everyone away. She resisted help, craving solitude, unwilling to engage in conversation or pretend that everything was okay when it clearly wasn't. and as Liora's days became a blur of motions, a sequence of actions without purpose or pleasure. With the loss of her family's guiding presence, she strayed farther from the person she once was. Her behavior grew erratic, her decisions impulsive. She would often find herself in confrontations, her temper short, her words sharp. The fights weren't about winning or proving a point; they were an outlet, a physical manifestation of the turmoil that boiled within her.

At school, she became the topic of hushed conversations, the subject of worried glances. Her once pristine record now marred by a series of detentions for outbursts she couldn't explain. It wasn't like her to seek conflict, yet there she was, in the midst of it, as if the chaos outside could drown out the chaos inside.

Her nights were no more restful than her days. Liora would often wander into the dangerous embrace of the city's nightlife, where the air was thick with vice and escape. She found solace in the shadows, among faces that didn't ask questions, didn't offer pity, only the numbing comfort of oblivion. In those dimly lit corners, she dabbled with substances that promised to dull her senses, to give her moments of peace from the relentless ache in her soul. They were moments when she could pretend that the emptiness didn't consume her whole.

The substances, the altercations, they were her silent cries for help, her unspoken pleas for someone to notice, to care enough to pull her back. But those cries were often lost in the noise, mistaken for teenage rebellion, an assumption that she was just another youth acting out. And so Liora continued to spiral, unchecked, her pain manifesting in ways that even she couldn't predict.

Jackie, when she found Liora, could see the signs of her sister's silent war. The dark circles under her eyes that she couldn't hide, the way her hands shook ever so slightly—a stark contrast to the stillness of her demeanor. It was a stillness that wasn't peace but resignation, a giving in to the currents that threatened to drag her under.

Despite the distance that had grown between them, Jackie knew she had to intervene, to become the lifeline Liora was too proud, too broken, to ask for. And in that moment of realization, Jackie understood that their roles had reversed. Where once Liora had been the strong one, the protector, now it was Jackie's turn to be the anchor in the storm, hoping against hope that she could guide her sister back to safer shores.