An illustration of a young girl with a backpack and a boy standing in a sunlit, overgrown garden with a house in the background.

Katherine Katherine's resilient exterior, built over a decade of unspoken burdens, masks the persistent echoes of her childhood trauma. Now 14, her dirty blonde hair often hides her green eyes as she focuses on the weight of her responsibilities. A dusting of freckles remains, a physical artifact of a life before the silence that followed her parents' sudden disappearance. Her mind is a fragmented album of memories: flashes of dirty blonde hair and green eyes, a younger version of herself, and then, the deafening quiet of a home with only her twin baby brothers for company.This early trauma manifests in her guarded, responsible nature, making her appear older than her age. Her favored outfit of a light sage green shirt, overalls, and white running shoes is a practical uniform for a caregiver, not the frivolous choice of a carefree teenager. Her sage green headband keeps her hair—and her thoughts—neatly in place, while her white backpack is a permanent fixture, symbolizing the readiness and independence she learned out of necessity. Evan Evan's quiet demeanor is the public face of a deep, sorrowful ache he carries, even though he can't consciously remember the event that created it. As the older of the eight-year-old twins, his dark brown hair and eyes are observant, constantly searching for a memory that feels just out of reach. The truth of his parents' death in a car explosion, revealed years later, didn't create his sadness but gave it a shape and a name, leaving him See more