Chapter 1 –
Fracture
“Gabriel
Jensen, you’re still in bed! Get up and get dressed, we’re running late!”
“Okay,
Mom, I’m coming!”
It
was Saturday morning, and even though Gabriel knew this was the day the family
always went to church, he never felt particularly excited about waking up early
on a weekend.
Still,
he obeyed—not just out of habit, but because deep down he admired his parents
and knew their advice always came from a place of love.
At
nineteen, Haline no longer raced Gabriel down the stairs, but she stood waiting
for him in the lobby, holding a thick stack of stapled pages—her Public
Administration notes, which she reviewed even during breakfast.
As
their father pulled the car out of Vila Romana, she spoke enthusiastically
about a social urban planning project, her eyes shining with that almost
impatient desire to fix the world.
To
Gabriel, watching his sister plan her future with that blend of technical
precision and the gentleness she had inherited from their mother was simply
part of the scenery. He didn't know it yet, but Haline was his blueprint for
the person he hoped to become once the world finally got serious.
Vila
Romana. Alto da Lapa.
Gabriel
bolts down the apartment stairs, trying to be the first one to reach the ground
floor, as if an unspoken competition existed between him, his father, his
mother, and his sister.
His
lungs burning.
Sneakers
pounding against concrete.
The
thrill of winning.
But
the elevator carrying the others gets there first, and when Gabriel pushes open
the stairwell door, there they are, smiling and waiting for him.
On
the way down, José had even stopped to leave the newspaper at the door of the
woman in apartment 42, who had recently undergone hip surgery.
That
was the rhythm of their home: quiet acts of care that Gabriel saw as natural,
almost invisible.
Carmem,
Haline’s mother, carried a carefully wrapped box of homemade bread to give to a
friend at church.
“Oh,
come on—that doesn’t count!” Gabriel protested between breaths, laughing. “You
got there first, but next Saturday I’m winning!”
Everyone
smiles.
Haline
messes up his hair.
Carmem
straightens the collar of his shirt.
And
José, with his calm and steady way about him, simply says:
“No
cheating.”
Gabriel
bursts into laughter.
At
that moment, life feels perfect—natural and certain, like sunlight spilling
into the morning.
A
simple happiness. Almost endless.
As
if nothing could ever threaten that routine.
As
if the four of them were meant to walk through life together forever.
But
sometimes eternity fits inside a single second.
On
the way to church, the car moves through the busy avenue.
Light
conversations.
Muffled
laughter.
Comments
about Saturday lunch.
Gabriel
sits in the back seat, watching daylight dance across the window, lost in the
thoughts of a child who still knows nothing of fractures.
Then
suddenly everything collapses into one single sound:
A
hard impact.
Brutal.
Final.
The
sudden glare of headlights through the side window.
The
smell of burning metal before he even understands what happened.
A
truck, speeding through a red light.
The
world spins.
Glass
explodes.
Screams.
The
metallic sound of something that will never be repaired.
The
world that had once felt so safe folds in on itself.
Cracks.
Shatters.
When
silence finally comes, Gabriel opens his eyes.
Nothing
hurts.
No
wounds.
No
blood.
Only
the smell of gasoline, the ringing in his ears, and the distant sound of people
running, shouting for help.
He
tries to understand.
He
sees his mother’s body in the front seat, motionless.
His
father slumped over the steering wheel.
Haline
beside him, still breathing, but injured, trapped beneath twisted metal, her
eyes half-open as she struggles to say her brother’s name.
Gabriel
feels no pain at all.
Not
even a scratch.
And
standing before that impossible scene, a question begins to form inside him—a
question that will follow him for the rest of his life:
Why
me?
Why
am I the only one left alive?
He
doesn't know it yet, but something had begun there—
something
far greater than grief, greater than loss, greater than explanation.
That
Saturday would forever be remembered as the day the boy stopped being only a
son, a brother, a student—
and
began carrying an invisible burden:
the
burden of being the only survivor.
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