Chap­ter 2 begins with Leighton stand­ing by her bed­room win­dow, observ­ing the unset­tling scene unfold­ing out­side. The trees and rooftops sur­round­ing her house are crowd­ed with a large gath­er­ing of crows, their omi­nous pres­ence thick in the morn­ing air. Leighton watch­es as her broth­er returns home, the sight of him only adding to her unease. She hur­ries through her morn­ing show­er, hop­ing that the rou­tine will bring some sem­blance of nor­mal­cy to the chaot­ic morn­ing. How­ev­er, this year feels dif­fer­ent for Leighton; it marks her final year before she faces the immense pres­sure of not only secur­ing her future but also tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ty for her younger sis­ters. The weight of need­ing to pro­tect them and find a way to man­age her family’s com­pli­cat­ed dynam­ics looms large, over­shad­ow­ing the excite­ment and antic­i­pa­tion that usu­al­ly come with senior year. The expec­ta­tions she faces from both her home life and her aca­d­e­m­ic respon­si­bil­i­ties make the com­ing months feel espe­cial­ly heavy.

When Leighton steps into the kitchen, she is greet­ed by her moth­er, who is star­tled by her arrival, caus­ing her to spill cof­fee on her­self. The awk­ward­ness of the moment is tan­gi­ble, and although her moth­er tries to smile and greet Leighton warm­ly, the ges­ture feels forced and hol­low. The warmth they once shared seems to have fad­ed, replaced by a cold, strained atmos­phere that Leighton can­not ignore. On the kitchen counter sits a chipped vase hold­ing scar­let roses—an attempt at an apol­o­gy from her broth­er, whose past actions have com­pli­cat­ed the fam­i­ly dynam­ic even fur­ther. This small offer­ing, meant to smooth over the ten­sion, only adds to the con­fu­sion Leighton feels about the state of their home life. The con­trast between the appar­ent ges­ture of rec­on­cil­i­a­tion and the emo­tion­al dis­tance between the fam­i­ly mem­bers cre­ates an over­whelm­ing sense of unease for Leighton. She strug­gles inter­nal­ly, caught between the desire to con­front her moth­er about the unre­solved issues at home and the urge to smooth over the ten­sion, pre­serv­ing the frag­ile peace they have left.

As Leighton attempts to nav­i­gate this dif­fi­cult moment, she asks her moth­er about her brother’s recent behav­ior, hop­ing to gain some clar­i­ty. How­ev­er, her moth­er quick­ly deflects the ques­tion and insists that they con­tin­ue with the nor­mal morn­ing rou­tine, an attempt to avoid address­ing the under­ly­ing issues. Leighton rec­og­nizes this tac­tic, one that has been used in their house­hold count­less times to avoid dif­fi­cult con­ver­sa­tions. The attempt to main­tain the appear­ance of nor­mal­cy only ampli­fies the ten­sion that fills the house, and the emo­tion­al dis­tance between them becomes even more appar­ent. Signs of dis­tress are everywhere—disarray in the pic­ture frames, an unspo­ken sense of dread hang­ing in the air—particularly dur­ing the qui­et evenings when things should feel calm. The dis­com­fort Leighton feels is pal­pa­ble, and the weight of the sit­u­a­tion becomes too much to bear, leav­ing her torn between push­ing her moth­er for answers or retreat­ing into silence to avoid fur­ther con­fronta­tion.

As the grow­ing anx­i­ety in the house­hold inten­si­fies, Leighton takes a moment to reflect on her iden­ti­ty and the ver­sion of her­self she once saw in a pho­to­graph of a younger girl. The girl in the pic­ture appears care­free, full of hope, a stark con­trast to the per­son she has become under the strain of her cur­rent life. This moment of reflec­tion leads Leighton to ques­tion her abil­i­ty to forgive—both oth­ers and herself—amid the chaos of her family’s exis­tence. Her sense of self feels frac­tured, and the weight of her past actions and the bur­dens of the present leave her uncer­tain about how to move for­ward. As Leighton pre­pares to send her sis­ters off to the bus stop, she resolves to face the rem­nants of their bro­ken life, sym­bol­ized by the old, unused house phone that sits in their home. This phone, once a life­line to the out­side world, now rep­re­sents the frag­ile con­nec­tion they main­tain to a world beyond their home. When the dial tone hums in the back­ground, it reminds Leighton of the ten­u­ous thread of com­mu­ni­ca­tion that still exists with­in her fam­i­ly, even as the com­plex­i­ty of their rela­tion­ships and the ten­sion between them con­tin­ue to grow. The chap­ter con­cludes with Leighton acknowl­edg­ing the frag­ile bal­ance of fam­i­ly life, love, and the ongo­ing fight for safe­ty amidst the chaos they face.