The Last Story

If you ever want to know how rich someone is, count how many choices they have.

The truly wealthy don’t even notice the choices laid before them.

They don’t weigh each decision like a stone in their palm, wondering if it will sink or float. They simply move, light as air, from one possibility to the next.

I never had that luxury.

There was only one school my family could afford. One neighborhood where we could scrape by. One fragile version of a life, stitched together with whatever scraps of stability my parents could salvage. Then the war came, and even those few choices crumbled into dust.

Now, my options boil down to swallowing the single ration of cornbread I get each morning—if I’m lucky—or going hungry. Wearing the only pair of shoes I own, even though they bite into my skin, or walking barefoot and letting the earth carve into me instead.

The war and I grew up together. I was five when it started, the same year I learned to write. While the other kids in the refugee camps fought over the few battered toys available, I never had to. There was always pen and paper.

At first, I didn’t think much of it. The boys would sketch stick figures in the dirt or on scraps of paper, but drawing never made sense to me. It felt like trying to trap something that wanted to move. But words—words could go anywhere. They could twist and grow, build whole worlds, bring people to life. They could build bridges out of nothing, carve doorways into places I had never been.

I wrote because I had nothing else. Then, I wrote because I needed to.

Ms. Maya, one of the aid workers, was the first to notice. When I was eight, she read one of my stories and told me she'd give me a coin for each one I wrote next. I think she expected one story per week. When she returned, I had six neatly stacked stories in my hands. She laughed, tousled my hair, and gave me one coin.

For months, I wrote obsessively, not realizing she was only paying me a cent per story. By the time I understood just how terrible my wages were, it was too late—I was already addicted. Writing had become my survival.

Now, I am fifteen. The war never ended. Our asylum papers never arrived. And at some point, we stopped believing they ever would. The number of times we had to relocate to a new camp blurred together. I stopped counting after twenty-one.

I write so much that I’ve learned to write through anything. I’ve written through the wail of sirens slicing through the air, through the tremor of distant explosions, through the rattling of gunfire that makes the walls vibrate like a drum.

At first, I’d freeze, my pen hovering above the page, my eyes darting to my parents, waiting for that one look that meant we had to run. But now I know the sounds too well.

The distant explosions growl beneath the earth, like a sleeping monster turning over in its slumber. The closer ones rip through the sky, shattering glass, sending dust and screams rolling through the streets. They shake the ground, make the floors buckle beneath my feet.

I know the difference too well now. I know which blasts are far enough to keep writing through, which ones will shake the walls but leave us standing, and which ones mean I have to drop my pen immediately and run. I have grown used to all of it. The sirens, the rattling windows, the voices crying out in the night. The war doesn’t wait for me to write, but I can write through the war.

My father says I am almost a man now, that I should care about more important things than “scribbling nonsense.” He wants me to learn how to hold a rifle, how to defend what’s left of our people, and understand the fight our ancestors have waged for generations.

He’s taken me to the trenches, shown me weapons hidden beneath floorboards, traced the barbed wire that slashes through the camp like an open wound no one bothers to stitch.

I hate everything about the war. I tell him that one day, I will write a book so good it will take me away from this place forever. He laughs.

Grandma Cece was the only one who ever believed me.

Before she died, she helped me craft stories, told me about heroes and revolutions, and spoke of books that changed people’s lives. She once knew a man who wrote a book and became very rich, she said.

That was our plan—I’d write my best story, find an aid worker who would smuggle it out, send it to a publisher. People on the outside would become so obsessed with my story, they’d have no choice but to rescue me. I’d say I could not leave my family behind, so we’d all be out of here. I’d make enough money to take Grandma Cece to the best doctors in the world. She would walk again. I had it all figured out.

But now she’s gone, and there’s no one left to tell me my words matter.

I still write. I have to.

I don’t understand how anyone survives this life without writing. Where do they put the thoughts that become too heavy to carry? What do they do in the nights that stretch too long, too dark, too loud?

My mom used to drink every night, staring at nothing, as if waiting for some invisible door to open and let her out of her own mind. But now alcohol is hard to come by. When she finds it, she drinks it all in one sitting and passes out.

My father copes by fighting. He gathers with the men, their voices shaking the walls as they argue about politics, about enemies, about justice. Sometimes the arguments turn violent—fists slam into jaws, blood staining the dust—but by morning, they sit together again, bound by something I don’t understand. He sometimes vanishes for days, returns with new scars. People call him a hero. I don’t know what he’s done. I don’t ask.

I don’t drink. I don’t fight. I write.

I write until my fingers cramp, until my eyes blur, until the candle dies. I write until my story pulls me somewhere else, somewhere far away, even if only for the night. I hate the nights. Gunfire rattles so close, sometimes I swear the bullets might rip through our walls. But they don’t. It only feels that way. So I keep writing, my head so low my nose nearly brushes the paper.

My hands often tremble, but I press my pen harder against the paper, carving words into the page like they’re the only thing keeping me tethered. Sometimes, when the noise is too loud or too close, my body betrays me, shaking so badly on its own that I can’t stop it. The tremor starts in my fingers, creeping up my arms, spreading through my chest until my whole body quivers like a string pulled too tight.

I try to resist it, but sooner or later, my grip weakens, and the pen slips from my hand. I hate when it happens because it means I have no choice but to stop writing. And stopping means my heart will keep racing, my breath will stay shallow, my mind will keep writing the story even though my body refuses. And the only way to quiet it is to lay down, to close my eyes, to force myself into the world I was creating.

Last week, I started a new story that I think is my best yet. It’s about a boy my age named David. He lives on a planet called Juno.

In Juno, the sun never sets. At first, you’d think that sounds cool, but it isn’t—without night, your body never truly rests. People on Juno have powers. They still look human, but they aren’t exactly. They think David’s power is controlling the weather, which is a typical power to have in Juno. The citizens even have councils to negotiate the sky.  But David’s true power is far greater, he can control minds.

No one knows this, not even David, because he has unknowingly made them forget. I don’t know what he’ll do when he realizes his strength. Maybe he’ll save the world. Maybe he’ll destroy it. I know it will be something grand.

The day I started writing David’s story, I was so excited I wrote until morning. By the time I finally set my pen down, my wrist throbbed so badly I could feel the ache deep in my bones.

My eyes burned, but my mind wouldn’t slow down. I dragged myself through the next day, blinking against the sharp light. But none of it mattered. My head was still in Juno, spinning with all the details and possibilities. What would David do? What choices would he make? What kind of person would he become? I needed to know.

**

My father keeps the radio on all day. It is always crackling with emergency announcements, numbers of the dead, instructions to stay hidden. I know the man on the radio so well now, as soon as he starts speaking, I can tell from his tone whether the worst is still coming or has already passed.

Earlier this evening, a bomb fell so close that the signal cut out, as if the world itself had gone silent. The next second, the explosion tore through the air, shaking the walls. That one was too close. My mom grabbed my arm, dragging me toward the shelter as my father barked orders to the others. I barely noticed at first. I was thinking about Juno.

What would David be doing right now? Surely, he wouldn’t be running for cover. He would never need to run—he could make others run instead. If he couldn’t end this war, he could at least make people believe it was over. He could erase their memories and fear. He could make them believe they were already going home.

My fingers were still curled around my pen as we rushed toward the underground bunker, our bodies pressed against the damp walls, stumbling forward. The air smelled of sweat and earth, thick and stale. The shelter was just a few more steps away. Then—another bomb. Closer. Too close.

A blast tore through the air before we could reach the entrance. A suffocating, high-pitched shriek filled my skull, so sharp it felt like it was splitting my head open. My ears rang violently. My pen slipped from my fingers as I clutched my hands over my ears, but the noise wasn’t just around me. It was inside me, rattling my ribs, shoving into my lungs.

Everything disappeared into dust. Thick, blinding. I could barely breathe. I turned, searching, but I couldn’t see past the swirling gray. I couldn’t find my mom. My chest tightened. I reached out, grasping at nothing.

My body trembled, my jaw clenched so tight I thought my teeth might crack. The bunker had been right there. Just a few more steps.

The air was heavy with the stench of smoke and sweat. A baby cried. Someone whispered prayers.

And beneath it all, the distant, I imagined the fading echo of my pen hitting the ground.

Somewhere, in Juno, David was deciding the fate of his entire world. He had choices—real ones. He could change the weather with a thought, bend minds with a whisper, shape his world however he wanted.

I closed my eyes and imagined what I would be doing if I were him right now, standing beneath a sky that never darkens, no bombs fall, no voices scream in fear or agony. A place where my biggest problem would be finding blackout curtains dark enough to let me sleep.

Just golden light stretching endlessly in every direction. A world full of possibilities waiting to be shaped.