POV Caleb

I call her princess because that’s what she is—a girl who’s never had to fight for anything. And I’ve been crawling and fighting my whole fucking life.

The ceiling above my bed holds no answers, but I stare at it anyway, counting the minutes by the soft sounds filtering through the bathroom wall.

A drawer opening. Water running. The whisper of fabric against skin.

Serena moves through her nightly routine with the same precision she applies to everything else in her color-coded existence. And I lie here like some pathetic fool, cataloging every sound.

You’re sick. Twisted beyond repair.

The knowledge doesn’t help. Self-awareness without self-control is just masochism with extra steps.

I remember the first time I called her princess. We were twelve, forced together on that family lake trip our parents orchestrated. They thought forced proximity would make us best friends like them instead of whatever circle of hell we’ve created recently.

Serena sat on the dock with her legs dangling over the water, golden hair catching sunlight like she’d been dipped in honey.

She tried to skip a stone. Failed spectacularly. Her laugh bounced across the water, this mix of embarrassment and joy that hit me right in the chest and my feet carried me toward her.

“You’re doing it wrong,” I said, crouching beside her. “Here. Like this.”

I placed a flat stone in her palm and guided her wrist through the motion. Her skin was warm and soft, and my twelve-year-old heart hammered so loud I was sure she could hear it.

“See?” I said, trying to play it cool while my heart attempted to relocate to my throat. “Perfect technique for a perfect princess.”

She smiled at me—really smiled, not the polite thing she does now before remembering she hates me—and said, “Thanks, Caleb.”

Thanks, Caleb.

Two words. That’s all it took. I was done for.

But she was untouchable.

Perfect grades displayed on refrigerators. A mother who packed her lunches with handwritten notes. A father who never raised a hand to anything except a golf club.

Everything about Serena screamed ‘princess’, and at twelve years old, I thought she was the prettiest and the most perfect creature on the Earth I’d ever seen. I wanted her to look at me forever.

Then I went home.

That was the summer my father discovered new hobbies. Creative ones.

The kind that left bruises in places teachers wouldn’t check, marks that could be explained away as lacrosse practice or teenage clumsiness. He was smart about it—never the face, never anywhere that would show in family photos.

I learned to sleep with my eyes half-open, to flinch at footsteps, to disappear into walls.

I’d lie awake, body aching, and think about Serena on that dock. Her perfect family.

Her mother’s lasagna Tuesdays. Her father who called her “sweetheart” without irony or threat. The way she moved through the world like it had been designed specifically for her comfort.

And suddenly Serena’s perfection stopped being something beautiful. It became a mirror, reflecting every broken piece of myself I couldn’t hide.

She has everything. You have nothing.

That’s never going to change.

Middle school is when I started hating her. Not because I planned it—I wasn’t that calculating, not then. It happened on a Thursday, after a night when my father’s rage had been particularly creative.

I walked into school with shame burning holes through my chest, and there she was. Laughing with a boy from her book club at the lockers. So goddamn unburdened that it made my teeth ache.

If her life is so perfect, let me be the one imperfection.

I wanted to make her cry.

I tried everything—cruel words, public humiliation, destroying her projects. But she never broke. Her face would harden, her jaw would set, and she’d look at me with hatred so pure it could cut glass.

Almost two years ago now, I watched her at her mother’s funeral. The whole church wept. Her father sobbed into his hands uncontrollably while Serena shed only one tear.

A single drop sliding down her cheek before she wiped it away.

How is that possible?

How does someone do that? How do you lose the most important person in your world and still hold yourself together?

I wanted to grab her shoulders and shake her until she broke. Until she screamed. Until she showed me she was actually human under all that control.

Pick a lane, asshole. You can’t destroy someone and save them at the same time.

She wouldn’t. You know she wouldn’t.

Stop. She’s not yours to imagine.

I almost believed it.

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