Calloway's Lamb

Jules

The ghost of me died on a rain-slicked pier in Boston. A boating accident, the papers had said. A tragic loss for the esteemed Calloway family. My father, the Don, held a lavish, performative funeral. My older brother, Cormac, had likely toasted to his newfound status as the sole heir.

They mourned a son they never had. The real me, Julian Calloway, was born on a Greyhound bus heading west, my mother’s secret trust fund burning a hole in my pocket and the ghost of a scream still lodged in my throat.

I ran because of what I saw. Cormac, my brother, broke a man’s fingers over a simple business slight. The sickening crunch of bone, the man’s whimpering pleas, and the cold, dead look in Cormac’s eyes as he did it. That was Calloway way. A legacy of casual brutality I had no stomach for. I was a stain on the family name—the soft son, the artist, the one who read poetry instead of ledgers. A lamb in a lion’s den. So I slaughtered the lamb myself and ran.

Now, six months later, I am Jules. Just Jules. A face in the crowd of Veridia City. My new apartment is a third-floor walk-up in a neighborhood that smells of old bricks and damp laundry. It is small, anonymous, and blessedly silent. The silence is the point. I’ve had enough noise to last a lifetime.

My only connection to my old life is Finn O’Connell, the son of my father’s consigliere, my only true friend. He’s the one who arranged the "accident." We talk once a month on a burner phone.

“They believe you are dead, Jules,” his last call confirmed. “Stay quiet. Stay invisible.”

Invisible is my specialty. I spend my days writing in notebooks no one will ever read, walking streets where no one knows my name. The loneliness is a constant, heavy coat, but it’s safer than the velvet-lined coffin of my old life.

Tonight, the loneliness is heavier than usual. The quiet of my apartment isn't peaceful; it's suffocating. I’m starting to drift off, curled on a mattress on the floor, when a crash from the hallway jolts me awake. A loud, clattering bang followed by a panicked, muffled curse.

My body goes rigid. Instincts I’ve tried to bury scream at me. Threat. Danger. Hide.

But this isn’t the sound of my family’s violence. It’s clumsy. Almost comical.

I pad barefoot to the door, my heart a frantic drum, and peer through the peephole.

A boy—no, a man, my age maybe—is crouched in front of my door, surrounded by a disaster of potting soil and shattered ceramic. He has a mess of wild, dark curls and is wearing a soft, worn-out band t-shirt. He’s muttering to himself, trying to scoop soil back into the broken remains of a pot like he could somehow fix it through sheer force of will.

He is a beautiful, chaotic mess.

Against every instinct I have, against every rule of invisibility I’ve set for myself, I open the door.

“Uh. You alright?”

He flinches, looking up. And I forget how to breathe.

His eyes are wide, startled, and the color of a forest in spring. Green. So impossibly, vibrantly green. Freckles are dusted across the bridge of his nose. And there’s a smudge of dirt on his cheek.

“Oh god. Hi. Sorry,” he says in a rush, his voice warm and a little breathless. “Yes. I’m—fine. This is fine. I was just…watering, and tripping. Mostly tripping. I’m Elias. I live next door.”

I lean against the doorframe, my arms crossed, a shield against his startling, uncontained brightness. “Watering your plants at midnight?”

He grins sheepishly, a dimple appearing in one cheek. “They’re on a weird schedule. And I have insomnia. It’s a whole thing.”

“So you murdered your plant and woke your new neighbor,” I say, my voice flatter than I intend.

“Technically,” he says, pointing a dirt-covered finger, “you left your welcome mat at a perfect trip-angle.”

“I don’t have a welcome mat.”

He blinks. “Oh. Then that was probably my doormat. That’s…somehow worse.”

A sound escapes me. A short, sharp huff of air that might have been a laugh. His grin widens, triumphant.

“You’re a disaster,” I say, but there’s no heat in it.

He gives a theatrical bow, nearly overbalancing. “I do my best. Goodnight, neighbor.”

He turns to leave, to his own little mess. And an impulse, stupid and reckless, takes over.

“Wait,” I say. He stops. “I have a dustpan.”

He looks over his shoulder, his green eyes sparkling with a surprise that feels like sunshine.

And just like that, I let the light in.