I don't remember much of middle school anymore. Most days blur together—classrooms with buzzing lights, the smell of warm plastic from chromebooks, hallways that always felt one step too crowded. The occasional fight near the gym lockers. Group projects where no one did the work until the night before.
But the day the sky opened…
That day stands out with a clarity I didn't earn.
If I close my eyes, I can still feel it.
We were walking home together: me, Gwen, Peter, Ned, and MJ. A familiar path, familiar noise, the same teasing and bickering that filled the last leg of every afternoon.
Then the air tilted.
I felt it behind my ears first—a faint pressure that didn't match anything I knew.
I slowed without thinking.
Gwen glanced back. "You okay?"
"I think so," I said, but my voice didn't sound sure to even me.
The pressure deepened.
People around us started looking up.
We followed their eyes.
A streak of blue cracked open the sky.
Ned's hand slipped off his cup. It hit the pavement and rolled. our mouths hung open, then panic began around us
But I didn't move.
My chest tightened, not from fear—more like a connection. Something in me reacted before my mind did. A surprising, quiet warmth pooled under my ribs, rising in slow waves.
The crack widened. A shadow emerged—long, angular, metallic. Another followed, then another. Within seconds, they were swarming out, firing, and attacking indiscriminately.
Someone screamed behind us.
A car braked hard, tires skidding.
A dog barked and ran in circles.
A man yelled for his kids to get inside.
Still, my heartbeat didn't accelerate.
It steadied.
That's the part that haunts me the most.
I was twelve. I should have cried, or frozen, or shouted. Instead, I stood there breathing too evenly, the warmth in my chest spreading like a small fire fed by air.
Gwen grabbed my sleeve. "Arwin—move."
I didn't.
Not at first.
Something in me wanted to stay just a moment longer, to watch what was happening with a strange, misplaced calm. and to be filled with whatever was filling me, making me feel whole. The blue light reflected in Gwen's eyes. The wind grew sharp with the smell of ozone. I felt the warmth shift again, deeper this time, as if a locked door inside me rattled.
Then Gwen's fingers tightened.
Her voice cracked.
"Please. Come on."
And I ran.
We sprinted down the street, feet pounding pavement, the wind slicing past us. Peter tripped once, and Ned kept looking over his shoulder even though Gwen yelled at him not to. People rushed around us in every direction. Doors slammed shut. Alarms blared. The sky—split open like a wound—rained danger.
My lungs should've burned.
They didn't.
My legs should've been shaky.
They weren't.
Each time fear tried to rise, that warmth settled it back down.
I didn't understand it then.
I barely do now.
By the time we reached my building, I could hear my mother yelling my name from the balcony. The relief in her voice cut sharper than any of the panic around us. My father pulled us all inside and locked the door behind us. My siblings crowded around, each talking louder than the last.
The news had already switched to emergency coverage.
All grainy footage and frantic anchors.
Smoke and falling debris.
Figures leaping between buildings.
A flash of red and gold passing through fire.
A green shape plowing through a street like a nightmare.
I stood behind the couch with my hand still on my chest, waiting for my heartbeat to catch up to the fear I was supposed to feel. It didn't. It grew in ways I couldn't understand.
It stayed through the night.
While the city shook.
While buildings fell.
While heroes I had never imagined were real flashed across every screen in America.
Even when exhaustion dimmed everything else, that warmth kept flickering like a candle that refused to go out.
The changes didn't start immediately.
At least, I didn't notice them immediately.
For the first few days after the invasion, everything was tense. Police sirens became background noise. People walked faster, talked quieter, and left their curtains closed. My school reopened two days later, but no one cared about math worksheets or reading logs. Everyone was still replaying the sky in their minds.
I didn't say much,but I felt different, and I didn't know how to explain it without sounding insane.
The first sign was the bruises.
An injury from my kickboxing match left a deep purple mark—or so I thought. By night, it had faded to a faint yellow. By the next morning, it was gone. Completely gone.
I stared at the skin in the bathroom mirror, turning under the light, trying to catch the fading outline. Nothing.
I didn't tell anyone.
Then came the breathing.
We ran laps in gym class later that week. Kids dropped like exhausted dominoes. I waited for the stitch in my side, the burn in my chest.
It didn't come.
My breath came smoothly, even for how fast I was moving. The gym teacher and others thought puberty.
I shrugged it off, didn't explain, as I myself didn't understand it much.
A week later, my voice changed.
Not the normal puberty cracking—this was different. My words came out clearer, rounder at the edges. People turned when I spoke. It was subtle, but not subtle enough.
By the end of the month, my face in the mirror didn't match the one in my head. My jaw had sharpened. My cheekbones sat higher. Even my eyes looked brighter, like the whites had cleared overnight. My mother mentioned it casually at breakfast.
"You're growing fast," she said. "Handsome, too. Just like your father."
I smiled and kept my head down, pretending not to panic.
Then my strength began climbing.
Reflexes sharper.
Movements smoother.
I caught a falling glass in the kitchen one morning before it hit the floor. I didn't realize until afterward that I'd moved without thinking.
Then I started getting the urge to help, to chase that state of being whole.
moments like when a kid tripped on the sidewalk and cried while his mother looked overwhelmed.
When the neighbor is struggling to lift a heavy box from her trunk, a stray dog is stuck behind a fence, or a teacher is dropping a stack of papers in the hallway.
Small things.
Ordinary.
But whenever I hesitated, the warmth stirred—soft pressure, gentle insistence.
Go.
Help.
Fix it.
The first time I followed it on purpose, I felt ridiculous. A grown man—our neighbor—was wrestling with a flat tire. I wasn't strong enough to fix anything myself, but I grabbed the tools he needed and held the flashlight steady until he finished.
When he thanked me, the warmth bloomed fully, deep in my chest, filling every space between my ribs with something bright and calming. I stood there longer than necessary, absorbing it.
It faded slowly, as a breath exhaled late.
After that, helping became harder not to do.
When someone needed something, my legs moved before I told them to.
When someone struggled, my hand lifted automatically.
Every time I did—even the smallest thing—that warmth rewarded me again.
Not addictive.
Not dramatic.
Just… right.
Like a compass clicking into alignment.
I wasn't becoming reckless yet.
I wasn't chasing danger.
Not then.
But I started stepping toward problems instead of away from them, and that alone was enough to make Gwen watch me differently. She didn't say anything at first.
The day I removed a sticky note from a kid, she stared at me for a full minute without speaking.
"What?" I asked.
"You're weird lately," she said. "Weirder than usual."
I didn't argue.
Something in me felt like it had stepped out of line with the version of myself everyone else remembered. The version of me I remembered.
But I couldn't bring myself to stop.
Every time I did something good, the world felt less chaotic for a moment.
Less sharp.
Less overwhelming.
The warmth curled under my ribs like a satisfied breath.
Looking back now, years later, I can still pinpoint the exact second everything began shifting: the moment I looked up and saw the sky tear open.
That first warmth—it wasn't excitement. It wasn't courage. It wasn't a heroic spark or anything close.
It was a connection.
Like something inside me had been waiting for that exact moment, that exact noise, that exact crack of light across the clouds.
I didn't become someone new that day.
I didn't suddenly gain strength or clarity or purpose.
But I did feel something more, though I still don't know what or how.
For weeks, I pretended nothing had changed.
For months, I tried to ignore the strange confidence that came and went like tides.
For years, I downplayed the sense of rightness I felt when helping someone.
But the truth is simple:
The day the sky opened, something else opened too.
Not outside.
Inside.
And nothing—not childhood, not fear, not time—ever fully closed it again.