Stellan was quiet for a long time before answering, his voice sounding raw. "No matter what happens, we will always be the closest of friends."

Thea ran off in tears. "I won't come looking for you again. When you've made up your mind, take it and go find my mentor."

Lying on the floor in a daze, I found myself drifting back to the year I turned 13. I had come home from the school for the blind covered in bruises.

Stellan had been furious. He was a bright kid with no reason to be there, but he insisted on transferring just to stay by my side. To keep up with the standard curriculum on his own, he never slept a full night.

When I was 15, Mom remarried. She held my hands and sobbed.

"Elara, your new stepfather can't help me raise a blind child. Being your mother has been so hard. You understand that, don't you?

"Stellan was taken in for your sake in the first place. He should be the one looking after you."

Mom dragged her suitcase out the door and left the old house and Stellan behind.

He was barely 18. Taking care of a blind girl ran him into the ground until his own health fell apart. I used to cry and beg him to leave, to stop burdening himself with me.

He would just smile and ruffle my hair. "Crybaby, the swallows under the balcony always fly in pairs. Neither one does well without the other."

Now, the little swallow was exhausted. He deserved to fly away on his own.

I was just a blind girl nobody wanted. If Stellan had not held my hand and raised me, I would have died a long time ago.

I should die somewhere he would never find out about, or else he would blame himself.

I wiped at the throbbing back of my head and had barely fumbled my way to my feet when the door opened.

"What happened to you?"

Stellan's voice was raw. "Where did all this blood come from?"

The words flashed across my vision. "Are you serious? You're the one who knocked her down, and now you're asking?"

I managed a smile.

"I'm sorry, I can't see, and I tripped over something."

Before the words had left my mouth, a cup shattered at my feet.

"Elara! You've lived in this house for years. How do you still not know where things are?"

I heard his ragged breathing and clutched at my sleeve, miserable. "I'm sorry, Stel. I'm useless."

Stellan dug out a dusty old cane and dragged me toward the door, walking so fast I could not keep up. I nearly fell down the steps more than once, but he did not stop.

I grabbed at him, frightened. "Stel, where are we going?"

He stopped without warning, and my nose slammed into his back hard enough to draw blood. I wiped at it with the back of my hand, and then I heard him come apart.

"Elara, there are millions of blind people in this world. All of them manage just fine with a cane. Why can't you?

"I'm not your guide dog. I can't spend the rest of my life being your dog!"

My heart felt like someone had it in a fist. Stellan shoved me from behind, and his voice came through the wind, ice cold.

"If you don't learn to walk the tactile path tonight, don't bother coming home."

His voice and his scent both disappeared. All that was left were the wind, the sound of traffic, and strangers muttering around me.

"Is she blind? What's she doing out here by herself, trying to get hit for a payout?"

The darkness and the panic swallowed me whole. I gripped the cane and fought the urge to scream, whispering Stellan's name instead.

"Stel, I'm so scared."

Back when I first lost my sight, I still had not gotten used to being blind. Every time I woke to nothing but darkness, I would cry until I could not breathe. Stellan always came running in and grabbed my hand.

"I'm right here. Don't be scared, don't be scared."

Now the only answer was the wind.

The words were still raging. "Didn't he swear he'd hold her hand for the rest of her life? That she'd never need a cane? What a piece of sh*t!"

I wiped my tears. It was not like that.

I had long forgotten how to read the tactile paths. I stumbled along, tapping the ground blindly in every direction. A girl like me must have been so exhausting for him.

I wandered without direction and stopped where the honking was loudest.

If a car hit me right here, Stellan could finally be the freest swallow of all. However, the impact never came, and someone yanked me into their arms.

Stellan's body was trembling. His voice was nothing but despair.

"Elara, you're blind, not stupid. How can you not figure this out?"

"Why did it have to be a blind girl who found me?"

Why indeed…

He was such an idiot. Why did he bother taking care of me at all?

I finally broke down and sobbed.

"You're right, I'm not stupid. So go! I don't need you looking after me!"

When I was five, my parents were in the middle of a divorce. They fought every single day over who would be stuck with me. They were so consumed by it that neither of them even noticed when the fever burned my eyesight away.

I had thought, miserably, that a child nobody wanted could not even hold on to her own eyes. Therefore, when I saw Stellan lying in the snow, thrown away just like me, my heart cracked open for him on the spot.

The world did not need another discarded child who could not keep what mattered most.

Stellan took my hand, too spent to fight anymore. "Okay. I'm sorry. Don't say things you don't mean.

"What, am I supposed to just let you wander into traffic and get yourself killed?"

He led me home. He never brought up the cane again, but he spent more and more time staring at whatever was in the study in silence.

I hid in my room and dialed a number. The voice on the other end flared the second she realized it was me.

"What do you want now? I haven't been legally responsible for you in years!"

I sniffed back the sting in my nose. "Mom, I don't need you to take care of me. Can you just pretend to take me in?"

I swore up and down that I was not trying to cling to her. Only then did she agree that, for old times' sake, she would come for me once my sister finished summer camp.

I hung up and smiled to myself.

Good for her. Mom had a new child to keep her company now, and Stellan could finally drop the dead weight.

When I knocked on Stellan's door, I heard him scramble to put something away.

"What do you want? Lost something again?"

I faltered for a second, then pulled on a playful grin.

"Stel, my mom reached out to me. She said she's doing really well now, and she feels awful about everything. She wants me to come live with her. I already said yes."

Stellan sounded stunned. "Do you even know what you're saying?"

I said it again. "I want to live with my mom."

He exploded. "Elara, have you forgotten what she did to you? Haven't you suffered enough?"

Of course I had not forgotten. During the years the court had given her custody, she was always out on dates. Sometimes she would disappear for days at a time and forget to leave money for food.

Little Stellan used to go out in the dead of winter collecting bottles to recycle. Every piece of bread he bought with that money went straight into my mouth.

He was just a scrawny kid, stomach cramping from hunger, but he still kept his voice steady to comfort me. "I'm fine, I just ate too much."

I had taken Stellan in because I wanted him to live a good life. Instead, he had spent every day since then dragging a blind girl behind him without a single good day of his own.

I would not budge, and Stellan threw a fit, but he would not budge either.

I sighed to myself. He was just a stubborn idiot.

Then I called Thea.

"Please, try talking to him again..."

Thea called on the same day I had just come back from another eye exam. The doctor had let out a long breath before delivering the news.

"With her eyes... Dr. Hale, if even you can't do anything, she'll most likely be like this for the rest of her life."

Stellan's fists were so tight the knuckles must have been white. "Elara, why do your eyes have to be so useless?"

I had nothing to give him but an apology.

On the phone, Thea's voice was heavy. "Stellan, I'm leaving with my mentor in a few days. Once I'm gone, there really won't be another chance.

"Your whole life... is really just going to be this. Is this really what you want?"

Stellan stared hard at my eyes. Something in him snapped. He rushed into the study, grabbed something, and ran out the door.

Listening to the door close behind him, I felt something close to happiness.

A full day passed and Stellan still had not come home.

Thea sent me a voice message. "Thank you for letting him go. Stellan really is meant to paint. He and my mentor hit it off right away."

I was glad, but I had not eaten anything all day, and the hunger was becoming hard to bear. This time, when Stellan left, he had forgotten to set out the snacks where I could reach them.

I used voice commands to order delivery, but the door had been locked from the outside.

By evening Stellan still was not back, and acid was churning in my stomach. I felt my way toward the kitchen, searching for anything to eat.

However, that was the thing about being blind and useless. I knocked something over without knowing what it was, and the kitchen caught fire.

I scrambled to put it out, but I could not even aim the water in the right direction.

The fire spread quickly. The smoke had me choking on the floor, and the burns had gone deep enough that the pain stopped registering. I sobbed and clawed my way toward the door.

"Elara Langley, you worthless piece of garbage, do not die in here!"

If Stellan came back and found a charred body, he would never recover from it.

The words flashed urgently, guiding me. "This way, over here! Move this way!"

I crawled as fast as I could in the direction the words pointed, but the air was already gone. My consciousness slipped away.

When I woke up, I was in the hospital. Stellan arrived soon after, and Thea came with him.

Stellan murmured, sounding drained. "I was gone for one day. How did you manage to do this to yourself again?"

My hands twisted against each other. "I'm sorry..."

A police officer laid into Stellan. "What kind of guardian are you? How could you leave a blind person home alone? Do you have any idea she nearly burned to death?"

I tried to speak up for him, but Stellan's voice reached me first, hollow and lost.

"Is this what happens every time I try to move forward? You use reality to remind me that I'm never allowed to leave your side?"

Thea suddenly screamed. "Elara Langley!

"You set me up to convince Stellan, and right when he was about to say yes, you pulled something like this? You did it on purpose to guilt him into staying, didn't you!"

I could not see the bloodshot look in Stellan's eyes. I laughed.

"So what if I did? As long as my eyes don't get better, he has to stay by my side and be my dog for the rest of his life. Why else would I have taken him in?"

The crack of a palm against skin rang through the hospital room.

Stellan's slap knocked my head sideways. I let the corner of my mouth curl.

The idiot's hand had been shaking when he hit me.

"Stel, a worthless life like yours has no business chasing dreams. I burned every painting you hid. You're not going anywhere."

My phone rang. Mom's booming voice blared through before I could answer.

"I'm almost at the old house. Be packed and ready."

Before I could respond, Stellan snatched the phone from my hand. He grabbed my wrist, squeezing until I could feel the bones shift. Whatever was left holding him together finally gave way.

He screamed at me. "Elara Langley, I wish to God I'd died in that snow!

"20 years! I don't owe you a single thing anymore!"

He dragged me off the hospital bed. The doctor tried to intervene. "She can't be discharged. Her burns are severe!"

Stellan dragged me out anyway.

By the time we reached the gate of the apartment complex, Mom had just pulled up. It had been ten years since I had last seen her.

Stellan hauled me in front of her and let go. His voice was raw and twisted with something that almost sounded like relief.

"Take her and get as far away from me as you can. I hope I never see you again for the rest of my life."

He turned and left.

I echoed him silently. "Me too."

I went with Mom. She kept her distance, repulsed.

"I'm only here because you're my daughter. You'd better keep your word. Once I take you out of here, you're on your own.

"And whatever happened to you, that's your problem. Your sister is in school and that costs money."

I smiled. I was not sad. After all, today even the person who loved me most in this world had thrown me away.

"I won't be any trouble, Mom. Can you drop me off at Centennial Park?"

That was the place where I had found Stellan.

The moment we arrived, Mom left me there, as if she were afraid I would latch on.

It was winter, and the park was nearly empty. There was no one around to scold a blind girl for wandering where she did not belong.

I drifted in slow circles, round and round, until the burns across my body went numb from the cold and I could not feel anything at all.

My head throbbed. I thought I could hear Stellan's faint voice calling for help in the snow, the way it had sounded all those years ago.

However, I remembered that Stellan did not want to be saved by a blind girl. I called for help, over and over, but nobody came.

His breathing grew weaker and weaker.

I panicked. I am so sorry. Stellan. It’s going to be the blind girl saving you again.

I stumbled forward, and the words erupted in a piercing, deafening alarm.