Chapter 1: The Ghosts of Einderveld
The road to school used to smell like grain dust and warm bread. Now it smelled like wet rust and forgotten things.
Mira Verhoeven walked with her hands buried deep in her coat pockets, shoulders hunched not from the cold, but from habit. She passed by the silo first—its roof caved in like a collapsed lung. Then the Van der Kleins' old barn, once red, now sun-bleached into a dull rose, with boards falling off like scabs.
Most families with kids had already left Einderveld. What was left of the village was either too stubborn or too poor to escape.
She paused at the top of the hill and looked back at the Verhoeven farmhouse. From far away, it looked almost beautiful. Up close, it was exhausted.
The door creaked when she pushed it open. The television buzzed softly in the living room. Her father lay on the couch, mouth slightly open, a cigarette extinguished in the ashtray.
He wasn't dead. She checked every time.
"Papa?" she whispered. No answer.
She brushed a hand over his forehead. The sharp scent of his sweat mixed with something chemical. She covered him with the blanket and straightened the remote on the table like it mattered.
The kitchen was empty. Her mother had already left for work. Mira took the last apple and slipped it into her backpack.
She didn't cry. Not anymore.
At school, her classmates gossiped about TikToks and sneakers, weekend parties in nearby towns. Mira nodded politely but didn't join in. The moment she spoke, she imagined her words smelling like the inside of her house—of stale smoke and despair.
During lunch, she sat on the library steps and sketched in her notebook. Not pictures, but fragments of memory. Words like "sunflowers" and "sawdust" in looping script. It was easier to draw memories than feel them.
Chapter 2: Behind Closed Doors
Thomas Verhoeven had once been a man of the land. Hands thick with calluses, voice full of laughter. Mira remembered riding on his shoulders through the sunflower fields, her laughter blending with his as the golden blooms towered around them.
Now, those fields were barren. The government had cut subsidies, the co-op had gone bankrupt, and work dried up like water in August.
He tried. He always tried. In between the drinking and the pills, there were brief, shining glimpses of who he had been. He'd make pancakes on Sunday mornings, tell her stories about the time he chased off a fox from the chicken coop, or show her how to plant tulip bulbs in neat rows.
But the darkness always returned. And it was always heavier than before.
At school, Mira said little. She was polite, quiet, distant. No one knew what to make of her. She turned in assignments on time, earned decent grades, and kept to herself.
At home, she cleaned up after the chaos. Hid syringes in shoeboxes. Paid the electricity bill with tips her mother left on the kitchen counter. And sometimes, late at night, she wrote. Words she couldn't say out loud. Letters to a father who might never read them. Prayers to a god she wasn't sure she believed in.
Sometimes she listened to the walls. She could tell what kind of night it was by the way the house breathed. A heavy silence meant sleep. Uneven pacing upstairs meant danger.
One night, she found her father sitting outside in the dark, whispering an apology to no one. He didn't know she was there. He was crying.
She wanted to go to him. But her feet stayed planted.
Chapter 3: Paper Cranes
It started with a writing prompt at school. A visiting youth worker asked them to describe their village without naming it.
Mira wrote about rusted metal, dried-out soil, and the ache of waiting for rain. She wrote about a place where even ghosts had left.
After class, the woman pulled her aside. "You have a gift," she said. "You should keep writing."
It startled Mira. Compliments felt dangerous, like leaning on a cracked beam.
Still, she started folding paper cranes. One for every day her father stayed clean. The first week, she had five. Then three. Then one. But she kept folding.
At the library, she volunteered two afternoons a week. There she met Jonas, a boy with kind eyes and a quiet laugh. He didn't ask questions. He shelved books with her and talked about astronomy and comic books.
One day, he found one of her cranes. "This yours?" he asked.
She nodded.
He didn't press. Just smiled. "It's beautiful."
And somehow, that made everything inside her flutter.
Jonas started walking her home. They talked about leaving Einderveld, and what it might be like to live in a city, to go to university, to have a room with a lock and a window that opened onto something other than dead fields.
She didn't dare say it out loud, but she wanted those things. She wanted them badly.
Chapter 4: The Fall
Thomas had been clean for eleven days. Then he wasn't.
Mira came home to shattered plates and shouting. Elsa stood in the corner, red-faced and shaking. Thomas was slurring, demanding to know where the money went.
Mira screamed. She didn't remember what she said. Only the sound of her voice, breaking open the silence she had lived in for years.
She ran. Past the barn, past the silo, to the library. Jonas was there. She sat beside him and cried for the first time in months.
Later, at home, her mother was silent. Thomas had passed out in the shed. Mira went to her room, pulled a crane from the window sill, and lit a match.
It burned quickly.
She didn't cry again.
She just wrote. A letter.
"I can't fix you. I want to. But I can't. I still love you. But I need to live, too."
She left it on his pillow.
That night, she dreamt of a house with yellow curtains, and herself running barefoot through wild grass, untethered.
Chapter 5: Roots and Wings
Three weeks later, her father hadn't used. He went to meetings. He planted tomato seeds in the backyard. The house still held its cracks, but something had shifted. The air was lighter.
Mira began posting her stories online. Anonymously. People read them. People responded. They saw her.
She got an offer to attend a writing course in the city. All expenses paid.
She almost said no.
But Thomas took her hand. "You don't owe us your future, Mira. Go choose yourself."
Elsa packed her suitcase with quiet pride. Jonas gave her a notebook.
As the bus pulled away from Einderveld, Mira looked back.
The village was still crumbling. Still tired. But maybe not dead.
And maybe, just maybe, some things could grow again.
She opened her notebook. On the first page, she wrote:
This is where it begins. I choose me and it is alright...for once.