The Summer I Was Nobody’s Choice Chapter 06

The Summer I Was Nobody’s Choice Chapter 06

The silence in the living room stretched like a held breath.

Chloe stood frozen by the trash can, her face flushed with embarrassment and indignation. The motion-sensor light on the stairs flickered once, then steadied, casting harsh shadows across the empty room.

“Where is she?” Chloe’s voice cracked. “Nora! Nora, where are you?”

No answer.

Mom stepped inside, her heels clicking against the tile. She glanced at the dark hallway leading to the bedrooms, her lips pressed into a thin line.

“Maybe she’s asleep,” Ryan offered, though his voice lacked conviction.

“She never sleeps this early,” Mom said. “And she always leaves a light on.”

Dad walked to the kitchen, flicking on the overhead light. The room blazed to life, revealing… nothing. The counters were clean. The dishes were put away. The fruit Chloe had mocked earlier—the mangoes, the grapes—sat untouched in a bowl on the counter.

But something was wrong.

The fridge door had a piece of paper taped to it.

Dad pulled it off, his eyes scanning the words. His face went pale.

“What is it?” Mom asked, walking over.

He handed her the note without a word.

*I’m leaving. Don’t look for me.*

Three sentences. No signature. No explanation. Just my handwriting, neat and small, the way I’d always written—careful, unobtrusive, taking up as little space as possible.

Mom stared at the paper. Her hands trembled slightly.

“She can’t just—” She stopped, swallowing hard. “This is ridiculous. She’s throwing a tantrum. She’ll come back.”

“Mom,” Ryan said quietly. “Her room.”

They moved as one, down the hallway, past Chloe’s room with its pink walls and fairy lights, past Ryan’s room with its sports trophies and gaming setup, to the door at the very end of the hall.

My door.

Mom pushed it open.

The room was empty.

Not just empty of me—empty of everything.

The bed was stripped bare, the mattress exposed. The closet doors hung open, revealing nothing but a few wire hangers. The desk, which had always been cluttered with textbooks and notebooks, was wiped clean. The small bookshelf that held my collection of secondhand paperbacks—the ones I’d bought with money from my part-time job—was empty.

Even the curtains were gone.

“She… she took everything,” Chloe whispered from the doorway. Her voice had lost its usual sharp edge. “Why would she take everything?”

Ryan stepped inside, his footsteps echoing on the bare floor. He opened the dresser drawers one by one. Empty. He checked under the bed. Nothing.

“She planned this,” he said slowly. “This wasn’t—she didn’t just leave tonight. She’s been packing for a while.”

Mom stood in the center of the room, her arms wrapped around herself. “No. No, that doesn’t make sense. She was here this morning. She bought groceries yesterday. She—”

“She bought groceries for us,” Ryan interrupted. “Not for herself. Look at the fridge. It’s full of things we like. Chloe’s collagen drinks. Dad’s mangoes. Your favorite grapes.”

Mom’s face crumpled.

Dad hadn’t said a word since handing over the note. He stood in the hallway, his back against the wall, his eyes fixed on the empty room. Something was breaking inside him—something he couldn’t name and didn’t want to acknowledge.

“She’ll be back,” Mom repeated, but her voice was weaker now. “She has nowhere to go.”

—

The next morning, the house felt like a stranger.

Breakfast was silent. No one mentioned the empty room at the end of the hall. No one mentioned the note still clutched in Mom’s hand. Chloe picked at her toast, her usual chatter absent. Ryan stared at his phone, scrolling without seeing.

Dad left early for work, something he never did on Sundays.

At noon, Mom finally called Grandma Brooks.

I wasn’t there.

She wasn’t there either.

And the secret Mom had been so careful to protect—the wheel, the years of invisible neglect, the slow unraveling of a family that had never really been whole—began to come undone with a single, trembling question.

“Mom, what did you mean when you said Nora stole something?”

The silence on the other end of the line was deafening.

Grandma Brooks’s voice, when it finally came, was ice.

“I think it’s time you told me the truth, Laura. All of it.”

—

Three states away, I sat in a diner booth by the window, watching the sun rise over a city I’d never seen before.

My phone buzzed. Then buzzed again. Then again.

I didn’t look.

Instead, I opened the notebook in front of me and wrote:

*Day One.*

*I am nobody’s choice. I never was.*

*But for the first time in my life, that feels like freedom.*

The waitress came by with a cup of coffee I hadn’t ordered. “You okay, hon?”

I looked up and smiled—a real smile, not the careful, invisible one I’d worn for eighteen years.

“I am now.”

—

Back at the Miller house, Chloe was crying.

Not the theatrical tears she used to get her way, but real ones—the kind that came from somewhere deep and scared.

“She’s not answering,” she sobbed, throwing her phone onto the couch. “She’s not answering anything. What if something happened to her?”

“What if she’s been planning this for months and we never noticed?” Ryan said quietly.

Mom sat in the armchair, the note now crumpled in her fist. Grandma Brooks’s words echoed in her head.

*What did you mean when you said Nora stole something?*

She’d exaggerated. They all had. The masks, the drinks—Nora hadn’t stolen them. Chloe had claimed them as her own, and Mom had looked the other way. It was easier that way. It was always easier to let Nora fade into the background than to admit the truth:

They had made her invisible.

And now she was gone.

Dad came home late that night. He walked straight to my room and stood in the doorway for a long time. The moonlight fell through the bare window, illuminating the emptiness.

He remembered the day I was born. The nurse had placed me in his arms, and he’d felt… nothing. Not the overwhelming love he’d felt with Ryan. Not the fierce protectiveness he’d felt with Chloe. Just a vague sense of responsibility.

He’d told himself it would come. That love would grow.

It never did.

Not because there was something wrong with me.

Because there was something wrong with him.

He sank to the floor, his back against the empty bed frame, and wept.

—

In the diner, I finished my coffee and paid the bill. The waitress wished me luck. The sun was fully up now, painting the city in shades of gold and pink.

I stepped outside, breathing in air that smelled like possibility.

My phone buzzed one last time.

A voicemail from Grandma Brooks.

I hesitated, then pressed play.

“Nora.” Her voice was soft, steady, the only anchor I’d ever known. “Whatever you’re doing, wherever you’re going—I’m proud of you. You were never nobody to me.”

I closed my eyes and let the tears come.

Then I deleted the message, turned off my phone, and walked into the day.