It’s been two weeks since her injury.

Two weeks of summer spent mostly indoors, and Ceres was starting to feel like the walls had memorized her breathing.

Had she not broken her ankle, she wouldn’t be stuck here—rotting slowly in boredom she didn’t know how to sit still with.

Her home life wasn’t bad. Just unbearably dull.

Watching her mother dance to Michael Bublé in the kitchen was one thing. Being mocked by her brother every time she tried to move around the house was another. Especially when they walked slowly in front of her just to test her patience.

Just let it end already.

The occasional texts from her two friends at summer camp were the only thing keeping her tethered to something outside this house. Six weeks until they came back. Six weeks too long.

Staying still had never been her strength. Soccer came first, always. And now her physical therapist had taken that away from her like it was nothing.

What was she supposed to do instead—sit and stare at the ceiling until her thoughts started eating her alive? No. She refused.

Everything had slowed down since the injury. Even the stairs felt like a reminder of what she couldn’t do anymore, her crutches turning every simple movement into a negotiation with her own body.

Lately, she caught herself replaying old matches. Not just watching them in her head, but rewriting them. Fixing passes. Adding goals. Changing outcomes she couldn’t change anymore.

Her thoughts didn’t feel like thoughts now. Just noise pretending to be useful.

That was when her mother decided, against all protest, to “arrange something” for her.

Ceres already knew it was going to be a mistake.

Not because meeting new people was the problem.

But because the person next door apparently didn’t care.

At all.

And somehow, that made it worse.

She’d spent the past two weeks trying anyway—talking about soccer, about her matches, about being a Nike ambassador, about anything that might spark something.

It never did.

Just a quiet “cool.”

And nothing else.