I was thirteen when I learned that houses can feel loud even when nobody's talking.
The noise didn't come from the TV or the sounds of outside. It's like it lived in the walls. In the way doors closed too hard. In the way footsteps stopped when someone else entered the room. In the way nobody ever asked how I was doing, because everyone was already drowning in their own shit.
Jasmin was twenty and barely home. When she was, she moved like she was visiting a place she didn't belong to anymore. She kept her head down, spoke calm, and stepped in when things got ugly. She took most of it. The yelling. The blame. The weight. She was smart enough to know what was happening to us and strong enough to stand in front of it for as long as she could.
People called her the black sheep.
I think she was just the first one brave enough to leave.
Monique was seventeen and loud. Not loud like happy—loud like sharp. Every word had teeth. She acted like she was better than everyone in the house, like none of this touched her. Always dressed up, always on the phone, always worried about boys and how she looked. She never missed a chance to remind you she didn't care.
But I watched her closely.
People who really don't care don't try that hard to prove it.
Devon was fifteen and angry at the world. Shorter than most kids his age, smaller too, and always trying to make up for it. He got bullied at school, so he came home looking for someone weaker. That was usually me.
He stayed with bad friends. Kids who thought acting hard meant something. They smoked weed and cigarettes, sat around the house when my mom was at work, and treated the place like it was theirs. Sometimes they'd laugh at me. Sometimes they'd shove me. Sometimes they'd just look at me like I was nothing.
I learned early that silence was safer.
My mom worked two jobs. When she wasn't working, she was drinking. Not loud-drunk. Not falling-over drunk. Just enough to not feel everything she was carrying. Bottles lined up like they were part of the furniture. I don't remember her ever asking how school was. I remember her asking if I ate.
Some nights the arguing started before dinner. Some nights it waited until after. The house smelled like smoke and alcohol and something burnt, even when nothing was cooking. I'd sit in my room and listen to the voices rise and fall, trying to guess how bad it was going to get.
Jasmin would step in when it went too far.
Monique would laugh and walk out.
Devon would slam his door.
And me?
I stayed quiet and watched.
There were moments—small ones—where things felt almost normal. Laughing at something stupid on TV. Eating together without yelling. Those moments never lasted. They felt borrowed, like we were pretending to be a family we weren't.
I didn't know it at the time, but I was learning patterns. Learning people. Learning how fast things could flip.
One night, my mom told me to pack a bag.
She didn't look at me when she said it.
I stood there with a backpack half-zipped, waiting for an explanation that never came. She kept talking like she was reading off a list—what to take, what not to forget. Her hands were shaking. I don't know if it was from stress or the drink.
"You're going to your dad's," she said.
I didn't argue. I didn't cry. I didn't ask why.
I just nodded.
Jasmin hugged me longer than she needed to. She whispered something I couldn't hear. Monique barely looked up from her phone. Devon smirked like he won something.
Nobody said goodbye the way people do in movies. No speeches. No promises. Just movement.
By nightfall, I was in a car headed somewhere I didn't know, leaving a house that never really felt like home and heading into a place I'd only heard about.
The ghetto.
Different streets. Different rules. Same pressure.
I didn't know then that this was the moment everything split.
Before and after.
Inside and outside.
All I knew was that I was thirteen, sitting in the dark, carrying a bag that felt heavier than it should've been—full of clothes, memories, and things nobody ever taught me how to talk about.
And that was just the beginning.