SOMETHING ABOUT HER STEPBROTHER

Lena's POV

The first thing I do when I walk into the Calloway house is trip over the welcome mat.

Not stumble. Not catch myself gracefully. I trip, crash into my own suitcase, and grab the doorframe with both hands as it owes me something. My mother is already three steps ahead, laughing at something Grant said, and she does not even look back.

That is how this new life starts. With me almost face-first on the floor while nobody noticed.

I pick up my suitcase and walk in.

The house is big. I will give it that. High ceilings, clean floors, the kind of quiet that means money. My mother looks around like she just walked into a dream she earned. Maybe she did. I do not know. I am still trying to figure out when exactly she decided our old life was not enough.

Six weeks ago, she sat me down at our kitchen table, the one with the wobbly leg we kept meaning to fix, and told me she was marrying Grant Calloway. I had met him four times. Four dinners. And she looked at me across that wobbly table like she was giving me a gift.

I smiled. Because that is what I do. I smiled and said congratulations, and went to my room and sat in the dark for two hours.

Now here I am. New house. New school starting Monday. New last name on the mailbox that I have already decided I am never using.

"Lena." My mother touches my arm. "Grant is going to show us around."

Grant Calloway is a tall man with a firm handshake and the kind of smile that has clearly been practiced. He points at rooms and says things like this is the living area, and we updated the kitchen last spring, and I nod as I care. I do not care. I am counting the steps between me and wherever my room is going to be.

Then Grant says, "My son should be home soon. Declan. He is your age, seventeen. I think you two will get along great."

I smile again.

We will not get along great. I already know this, the way you know a storm is coming before the sky changes. I do not know anything about Declan Calloway except that this is his house and I am the stranger inside it. That never ends great.

Grant leads us up the stairs. My room is at the end of the hall. It is fine. Bed, desk, window that looks at the neighbor's fence. Somebody tried to make it feel welcoming; there is a little plant on the windowsill and fresh white sheets on the bed. I stand in the doorway and feel nothing except tired.

"Do you like it?" my mother asks. Her eyes are big and hopeful, and I love her, so I say yes.

Grant says dinner is at seven. They go back downstairs together, her hand finding his like she has been doing for years. The door at the end of the hall, the one directly across from mine, is closed.

I bring my suitcases in. I close my door. I sit down on the floor with my back against the bed because the bed feels too final, like lying down means I have accepted this, and I have not accepted this.

I pull out my phone. There is a text from my best friend Priya back home that says: first report. need EVERYTHING. I start typing three different responses and delete all of them. How do you explain that your whole life fits in two suitcases and you are sitting on a stranger's floor trying not to fall apart?

I put the phone down.

The house settles around me. I can hear my mother's laugh floating up from downstairs, bright and easy, like she has been happy here forever. I press the back of my head against the bed frame and stare at the ceiling.

Then I hear it.

A car in the driveway. A door. Footsteps on the stairs, heavy, unhurried, like whoever it is owns the ground they walk on. I stop breathing without meaning to.

The footsteps come down the hall.

They stop right outside my door.

I stare at the door handle. It does not turn. Nobody knocks. There is just stillness. Like whoever is standing on the other side is listening for something.

I do not move. I do not make a sound. My heart is doing something stupid and fast inside my chest, and I cannot explain why. It is just a door. It is just a hallway. This is probably Declan coming home, stopping for half a second, and then moving on to his room and not thinking about me at all.

The footsteps start again. They move past. The door at the end of the hall opens and closes.

I let out the breath I forgot I was holding.

Okay. Fine. He came home, walked past, and went to his room. Normal. Nothing. I am sitting here on the floor making a whole story out of a set of footsteps like some kind of anxious mess. This is fine.

I get up and unzip the first suitcase.

Dinner at seven is quiet and careful. Grant talks about the neighborhood. My mother asks questions like she is genuinely interested. I eat my food and watch the empty chair across from me.

Declan never comes down.

Grant checks his phone twice and says, "He probably lost track of time," and smiles as that explains it. My mother says that it is totally fine. I say nothing.

After dinner, I go back upstairs. The light under Declan's door is off. Either he is asleep at eight-thirty, or he turned it off so nobody would bother him.

I get it. I actually get it more than I want to admit.

I brush my teeth. I get into the too-clean bed. I stare at the ceiling and listen to the house breathe around me and tell myself Monday is four days away, and I can survive four days of anything.

I am almost asleep when I hear it.

My door handle turns.

Slow. Quiet. Like someone testing whether it is locked.

It is locked. The handle stops. There is a pause that lasts exactly three seconds, I count them, and then nothing. Whoever it was is gone.

I sit straight up in the dark, heart hammering, eyes on the door.

The footsteps in the hallway go back the way they came. The door at the end of the hall clicks shut.

I sit there in the dark for a long time.

Because here is the thing that is keeping my brain wide awake, spinning like a wheel that cannot stop.

When I came upstairs after dinner, I checked.

Declan's light was already off.

So who was just at my door?