Chapter 1: The Fall

My father is a disgraced senator. His name still echoes in every news alert, even when I shut off my phone.

The guy who froze our bank accounts—yeah, he’s also the man I was supposed to marry.

When he snapped the cold metal handcuffs around my wrists, the cuffs bit into my wrists, colder than his hands ever were, even when he crowned me homecoming queen.

There was something surreal about that moment: the click of the cuffs, the ghost of old warmth in his touch, and my memory of rose petals falling in the gym that night, the crowd chanting my name. Now, he avoided my eyes, as if my wrists burned him.

On the day my father was executed and his name splashed across every news channel, I calmly picked lint from my mother’s sweater. My hands shook so bad I almost pulled a hole in the sleeve. But I kept my face blank. Someone had to.

It was the kind of news that crawled along every screen in America—giant block letters, talking heads, video loops of the courthouse steps. My mom didn’t say a word, just sat there trembling, so I fussed over her sweater, letting my fingers keep busy while my mind circled grief.

I said, “If the world was burning, at least we’d have lint for s’mores.”

The words tumbled out, brittle and absurd, the sort of dark humor only someone on the brink might make. I almost expected my mother to snap at me, but she just blinked, so I kept plucking at her sleeve.

To my surprise, the young general next door, who was hanging by his arms in his cell, actually laughed.

His laugh was raw and sudden, echoing off the cinderblock walls. For a moment, everyone in the holding cells stopped breathing, even the guards. I glanced sideways at him, and in that flickering light, his face almost looked human again.

Is it really that funny?

I wondered if humor was the last thing left for any of us.