𝟬𝟬𝟬. 𝘂𝗻𝗰𝗵𝗮𝗿𝘁𝗲𝗱 𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗿𝗶𝘁𝗼𝗿𝘆

TONI HENDERSON HAD NEVER BEEN ANYWHERE. Not really. It wasn't that she hadn't seen places, but seeing wasn't the same as experiencing. She'd been to the grocery store, the high school football field, and the small woods behind her house, where the trees were bent and broken like the forgotten playground of an overgrown child. But travel? Real travel? That was beyond her. No plane rides to distant lands, no road trips to places with names she couldn't pronounce, and certainly no adventurous escapes to cities where everything was unknown. Hawkins was all she knew, and the idea of it being the only world she'd ever see felt like a cruel joke.

Everyone else seemed fine with it. They didn't know any better. They'd seen the same streets, the same boring town, and the same predictable future—go to school, get a job, settle down, rinse and repeat. Toni hated that. She hated the idea of becoming just another person in a town full of them. Of being just another person who would spend their whole life circling the same streets, walking the same halls, living out the same tired existence. She couldn't do it. She couldn't become them.

It wasn't as if she didn't understand why they acted the way they did. She did. The world around her didn't demand anything. Hawkins didn't demand anything. There were no grand expectations, no big cities to run to, no dreams so big you couldn't fit them in your backyard. People here didn't need dreams. They just needed to survive. Toni, however, wasn't interested in surviving—she wanted to live. But living was tricky, especially when you didn't know where to go or how to get there.

It wasn't the idea of seeing new things that frustrated her—it was the thought of being stuck, trapped in a small town with no way out. She hated the thought of always having the same conversations with the same people, hearing the same stories and following the same old patterns. To her, that wasn't living; it was existing. And existing had never been enough. It wasn't that she was ungrateful for the small things; it was just that she wanted more.

What was more, though? She had no idea. That was the problem. It wasn't that she lacked ambition. It was that she didn't know what her ambition was supposed to look like. How could you aim for something when the target kept moving? How could you want to be something when you didn't even know what that "something" was? Toni would sit up at night, looking out at the quiet streets, wondering if there was more beyond the streetlights and the rusting cars. She wondered if other people felt the same way, if they too got sick of the world around them but couldn't figure out what to do about it.

The truth was, Toni didn't have an answer. She didn't have a map, a direction, or a guide. She didn't have anything.

Her days, like the ticking of an old clock, were spent in the gray space between not caring and caring too much. School was a blur. She hated it, but she didn't care enough to make a scene about it. She went, she did her work, and she avoided the crowds. She didn't care what people thought of her, but it wasn't out of some fierce rebellion. It was just because... it was easier that way.

It was easier to not care than to try and connect, to pretend that she had things figured out when she didn't. It was easier to put on her headphones and disappear into the music, her little sanctuary from a world she had no interest in participating in. It wasn't the music itself that saved her, though; it was the way it made her forget. Forget about her mom's constant worrying, her dad's absence, and the fact that every time she looked in the mirror, she saw a face that didn't seem to belong to anyone. She wasn't happy, but at least she wasn't pretending to be.

And then there was Dustin.

Her younger brother. He was so damn optimistic, it made Toni sick to her stomach sometimes. It wasn't that she hated him for it; it was just that he reminded her of everything she didn't have—the naivety, the belief that the world was good, that people could change, that there was a place for them to go. He didn't know about the cracks she saw in everything, the things she wished she could unsee. Sometimes, she wished she could be like him, but she didn't know how to let go of the weight in her chest, the constant pressure of feeling like she was sinking.

But Dustin, even with his optimism, couldn't escape the fact that their parents were broken. It was the kind of thing Toni didn't like to think about, but there it was, an undeniable truth that hung over them both. Their dad was gone, and their mom, well, she tried, but it was different when you were trying to fill a hole that was too big to close. Toni felt it—every time her mom hid her pain with that pretty grin. Every time their house felt too small, too quiet, too empty.

It was easier to shut it all out, to push everyone away and pretend that she didn't care. But the silence? It was deafening. And sometimes, when no one was around, when the house felt like it was closing in on her, she would let herself feel it—the weight of everything she had been avoiding, all the things she had never said, all the words that stayed stuck in her throat.

Toni hated feeling vulnerable. She hated the thought of anyone seeing her that way. So she built walls, stronger and higher with every passing year. Walls that kept people out, that kept them from seeing how tired she was, how lost she felt.

And yet, despite all the walls she'd built, despite all the things she had pushed away, there was still a part of her that was restless, that refused to settle. It was the part of her that didn't care if she was stuck in Hawkins. It was the part of her that wanted to leave but didn't know where to go. The part of her that knew there had to be more than this—the part that was just too afraid to admit it.

- IRIS

this is one of the first okay 1st chapter i've written and that really says alot

#iriscantwritefirstchapters

ill push myself to finish this book bc i feel like i'll have fun writing it, praying against writers block