The tension had been building like a storm for years, but that day... my parents were arrested. Caught trying to sell a rental car in another city, their careless greed finally caught up to them. The police took them away, handcuffed and defeated.
For once, silence fell over 16 Rue des Lias, an eerie quiet that whispered... this is my chance.
I moved fast. Took my mother's jewelry, the last remnants of value she cared about, and snatched what money I could find. My heart hammered with every breath... this was it. My only chance to escape.
I stood in the dim hallway, hand on the door, ready to step into freedom. But then my eyes drifted to the
neighbor's house... 17 Rue des Lias.
My refuge.
The one who recognized the ruin in me... and the only light that did not recoil from the surrounding dark.
And suddenly the weight crushed me all over again.
If I leave, I'll lose him. The only person who sees me. The only person who holds the pieces of my shattered
soul.
Tears welled up, blurring the path ahead.
If I stay, I die a slow death in that house… If I go, I might lose the only thing keeping me alive.
I sat down in the backyard, my mind a war zone. I loved him. I hated the thought of leaving. Yet the fear of
staying was a razor slicing through my lungs.
Finally, the desperate truth broke through:
If I don't leave, one of us will die. Probably me.
With a shaking breath, I rose, wiped my tears, and stepped out into the night.
The train rattled beneath me, the rhythm pounding like my own erratic heartbeat. Each mile away from Lille
pulled me further from the nightmare I'd lived... but also further from the one person who might save me.
Biarritz. A city full of strangers and cold streets. I had just enough money for the ticket, but not enough to find a
room. No motel, no shelter.
Darkness wrapped around me as I stepped off the train, swallowed by the chill of an unfamiliar night.
The streets were empty, but not neutral. They felt alert, as if they were holding their breath. I walked quickly,
then slower, then stopped... because the footsteps behind me did not stop when I did. They lingered at a careful distance, never close enough to confirm, never far enough to dismiss.
I crossed the road for no reason. So did he. I turned a corner too sharply. The sound followed, delayed, deliberate. I did not look back. Looking back felt like consent.
That was when I saw the house... abandoned, slouched in on itself, unnoticed by the streetlamps. This place isn't safe, I thought, already moving toward it. But the city wasn't either. And I was a girl alone, at night, with eyes on me that did not blink.
The door groaned as I slipped inside and shut it too quietly, my hands shaking as I leaned my weight against the wood. I waited. Outside, shadows shifted. A cough. A shoe scraping pavement. They did not leave. They circled, patient, as if time belonged to them.
I climbed the stairs because staying still felt worse. Every step tightened something inside me. The house
breathed around me... dust, rot, neglect. In the attic's corner lay a body, long dead, emptied of identity. I stared at it, hollowed by the realization that even hiding places were not spared, that safety was not guaranteed by walls.
Panic rose, sharp and hopeless. I could not go back outside. I knew they were still there. I could feel it... the
waiting, the listening.
This place isn't safe, I thought again.
And then, quieter, more devastating: but is anywhere safe for a girl like me?
I sat in the dark, suspended between terror and exhaustion, convinced the hollow stare in the corner was judging me for having fled when it could not. I did not move. Moving felt dangerous, as though motion itself might
summon consequences.
Time slipped its leash. Hours passed, or days.... it hardly mattered. Hunger arrived and stayed. Sleep hovered nearby but never crossed the threshold.
I began to speak aloud. At first, it was only to hear a human sound. Then I started answering myself. The silence shaped my thoughts, bent them, fed them back to me in unfamiliar voices.
The words came softly, as though borrowed from somewhere else: Enfin libre, par la fuite.
I repeated them. Tested them. Finally free... through escape.
I did not yet understand that the voice was mine.
And then, in the swirling darkness, a memory broke through: Fuite, in the library, leaning across the table,
pressing a slip of paper into my hand. His number. I had folded it carefully, memorized it like a prayer, like a lifeline. The paper had seemed small, fragile... but somehow it had felt like hope.
I remained still, but something inside me loosened. The nights bled together, indistinguishable, the darkness pressing so close that I could no longer tell where my thoughts ended and the house began. Shadows seemed to listen. My own mind felt crowded.
Loneliness hollowed me out slowly, deliberately, until even fear felt companionable.
Then the thought struck me... sharp, exhilarating, absurd: Fuite.
Yes. That was the word. That was the answer.
I called him, trembling and trembling, recalling that small scrap of paper from the library, his voice promising he would be there, guiding me. We counted the hours together... the silence and I. Seventeen, exactly.
When he arrived, he climbed the stairs and stopped short. He did not like what he saw. Perhaps he did not
appreciate unfamiliar company.
He told me to come with him. Again and again.
And I did.
Who was I, by then, to refuse him.