Married At Eighteen Where She Belonged

...

She curled up on her bed, the blankets wrapped tight around her shoulders like armor. The room was dim, the only light coming from the glow of her phone screen.

Her fingers hovered over the screen for a moment before she opened her messages. Isleen. The last person who made her feel like a person.

She scrolled past old conversations, reading them over and over, as if memorizing them would make her cousin’s presence real again.

Astria Rodrigues (FL)

(Isleen)

Isleen Maverick (FL Cousin)

💬 Hey, don’t let Mom get to you. You know how she is.

She swallowed. Yes, she knew. Too well.

Isleen Maverick (FL Cousin)

💬 You’re not a burden. You’re brilliant. Just because she doesn’t see it doesn’t mean it’s not true.

She read that message three times, her chest tightening. She wanted to believe it.

Isleen Maverick (FL Cousin)

💬 Remember when we stayed up all night watching that stupid documentary about deep-sea creatures? 😆

Isleen Maverick (FL Cousin)

💬 I swear, you know more about giant squid than the people who study them.

A small, fleeting smile tugged at her lips. That night had been one of the only times she felt like she belonged—like her interests weren’t weird, just hers.

Her fingers hovered over the keyboard. She wanted to text back. To say "I miss you" or "Come home soon" or "It’s worse when you’re not here."

But she didn’t.

Instead, she locked her phone and curled up tighter, holding onto the words on the screen as if they could keep her from unraveling.

Astria Rodrigues (FL)

*shifts on her back and stares at the ceiling*

She locked her phone and stared up at the ceiling, the weight in her chest pressing down like gravity.

The ceiling wasn’t the sky, but if she imagined hard enough, she could pretend.

She pictured the vast, endless blackness of space, stretching infinitely beyond reach. A place where nothing could touch her. Where voices didn’t echo and people didn’t yell.

She imagined the swirling arms of a distant galaxy, millions of light-years away. The thought was soothing. Everything that hurt her now—her aunt’s cruel words, the emptiness left by Isleen’s absence—was so small compared to the universe.

The universe didn’t care about money or normalcy or being a burden.

Stars exploded and reformed without asking permission. Planets moved in perfect orbits without being told they were wrong.

She envied them.

Her fingers traced invisible constellations in the air above her. Orion. Cassiopeia. The Pleiades. Each one familiar, safe. They had been there for thousands of years, long before her aunt’s voice filled the house with poison, and they would still be there long after.

The sky never left.

And neither did the stars.

She closed her eyes and imagined floating among them, weightless, untouchable. Somewhere out there, maybe in another galaxy, there was a version of her that didn’t feel like an alien on her own planet.

Maybe, in the vastness of space, she belonged.