Mail day at St. Briar always felt like a cruel joke.
The staff called out names like a lottery nobody wanted to win. The letters were rarely good — court dates, transfer notices, social-worker apologies.
Layla never expected anything. Still, she listened. Hope was the one habit she couldn't unlearn.
---
The Name in the Stack
It was Reese who handed her the envelope. "This was mixed in with mine," she said, tossing it onto Layla's bunk.
Layla frowned. No return address. No seal. Just her name, written in jagged pen like the writer had pressed too hard.
Inside wasn't a letter — just a folded sheet torn from a file. A photocopy. At the top, the words: Department of Juvenile Corrections – Transfer Record.
Her eyes scanned down the page, heart hammering.
Then she saw it.
Inmate Name: Jayden Carter.
Status: Active Placement – St. Bridge Rehabilitation Unit.
The world tilted. The hum of vents vanished. The noise of the dorm dissolved into silence.
Jayden. Alive.
She read it twice, three times, just to be sure the ink wouldn't fade between blinks.
---
The Weight of Knowing
Reese noticed her shaking hands. "Who's that?"
Layla's voice came out rough. "My brother."
Reese raised an eyebrow. "You got family still breathing? Damn. That's something."
Layla's throat closed. She hadn't said his name out loud in years. Saying it now felt like opening an old wound and finding it still bleeding.
"He's in a place like this," she said softly. "Worse, maybe."
Reese leaned back, studying her. "Then he's either broken or burning."
Layla looked down at the page. "He doesn't break."
---
The Fire Returns
That night, she couldn't sleep. The copy lay on her chest, the paper warm from her skin.
For so long, she'd thought the silence meant death — that the world had swallowed Jayden whole like it did everyone else they'd ever loved. But now she knew better.
He was still out there, somewhere behind his own set of locked doors, still fighting.
And that changed everything.
Because if Jayden was alive, then the story wasn't over. Not for him. Not for her.
---
Reese's Advice
The next morning, Reese caught her staring at the page again.
"You planning to do something about that?" she asked.
Layla folded the paper, sliding it into her pocket. "Eventually."
Reese smirked. "Just remember — systems like this feed on noise. If you move, move quiet. Fire's loud enough when it finally hits."
Layla met her eyes. "I'm not gonna burn it down."
Reese shrugged. "Then what?"
Layla's lips curved into the smallest, fiercest smile she'd had in years. "I'm gonna find him."
---
The Sketch
That night, she opened her notebook to a new page. On one side she drew herself — the dorm, the fences, the flame in her chest. On the other, she drew a boy behind bars, head tilted, a matching flame glowing through the cracks.
Between them, she drew a line of smoke connecting both fires.
Underneath, she wrote: Some flames never die. They just wait to find each other.
---
As lights dimmed and the night folded over St. Briar, Layla lay awake, her heart beating in time with a memory. Somewhere, she knew, Jayden was looking at the same ceiling, breathing the same recycled air, fighting the same war.
And for the first time in years, the silence between them didn't feel like distance.
It felt like a promise.