Everyone Wants Me Careful

I hate how quickly the threat became ordinary. I took one photograph of my building, checked the street, closed the blinds, and then kept working. That discipline is useful. It is also how I avoid admitting that someone has reached the place where I sleep.

The worst part was not the message. It was how quickly I started constructing a version of myself who could handle it: burner phone, copied records, evidence backed up, no trail through my regular computer. I can make myself untouchable in theory. At street level, I still know which window is mine.

Destiny asked for time. I granted it because there was nothing clean to say. I wanted to tell her that silence could erase her twice: once by the school and again by the story everyone pretends is not happening. Instead, I gave her room to be afraid. I keep doing that—making space for other people's fear while pretending mine is just logistics.

~~I am scared.~~ I am alert. There is a difference, and I am choosing the better word.

I checked the lobby and the entrance anyway. I hate that my first thought upon seeing the building was not who sent the threat, but whether I had made myself easy to find. Years of solving other people's messes taught me how to locate vulnerabilities. Apparently, that knowledge works in both directions.