🚬|max verstappen .

It's the same walk every night. Up the back staircase, past the chapel wall, my boots carefully placed on the gravel, because if the Father hears me again, I'll earn more than just detention.

He doesn't call me "son" anymore. Just "Max," short and sharp, as if it tasted bitter in his mouth.

I light the cigarette behind the statue of Saint Jude. Appropriate, I suppose.

The lighter clicks. Flame, breath, smoke. The air cuts sharply between my teeth.

I don't believe in any of that. Not in prayers. Not in saints. Not in the twisted image of salvation preached from the pulpit by a man who used to beat my mother in the kitchen and then kneel by her bed as if that would cleanse him.

I grew up with scriptures carved into every wall, holy water by the door as if it could drown out the screams, the banging. It didn't.

So no—I don't bow my head during prayer. I don't close my eyes. I don't whisper apologies to a god who looks too much like my father in a clerical collar.

But I do smoke. And yes, I walk through the silent corners of this school like a ghost that no one wants to name.

I wasn't expecting to see you.

Not outside the girls' dormitory. Not at this hour.

You are sitting on the low stone wall by the garden—sleeves rolled up to your knuckles, knees drawn up as if trying to curl up. Your hair is a little disheveled, as if you've run it through your fingers too many times. Your eyes are raised to the sky, as if waiting for something in return.

I stop when I see you. The light escaping from the bedroom windows is just enough to outline your face in soft strokes. The kind of face that shouldn't yet know how heavy the world can be.

You flinch when I enter your field of vision. Not much. Just a breath, a slight movement.