Broken souls

27

I've seen that look before.

Not here. Not in a school filled with polished floors and plastic smiles. Not on someone dressed in clean uniforms and surrounded by bodyguards.

But in basements.
Concrete rooms.
On faces that had stopped believing in rescue.

That kind of stillness, it doesn't come from fear. Not regular fear.

It comes from conditioning.

I didn't mean to stare, but the second I saw her freeze under Anastasia's shouting, I knew exactly what I was looking at.

Not weakness.

Not submission.

Collapse.

But the quiet kind. The kind that doesn't scream or cry or fight.
The kind that waits.
Because it knows fighting back only makes it worse.

I had seen people break that way.

No, I had made people break that way.

She didn't know me. Of course not.

But I saw the way she looked at me after. Once Ramón had stepped in. Once the eyes turned and the cafeteria buzzed again.

She looked at me like I was dangerous.

To be honest it had never bothered me before, but seeing that look tugged something in my soul that wasn't supposed to be there.

I followed Anastasia out of the cafeteria. I didn't say a word.

My mind was still stuck on her.

Aurelia Ramírez.

The girl with a last name that made people step aside, and eyes that made me forget what it meant to breathe.

Not because she was beautiful.
That was obvious.

But because she carried her soul like it was something that had been stolen, and had yet to be returned.

That wasn't something you could fake.
And it wasn't something you could miss
not if you'd been the one holding the knife.