The girls were chattering over one another, their voices bubbling with excitement as they gushed about the long-anticipated ball—a celebration they had heard so much about but never experienced themselves. None of them had ever attended such an event; all their knowledge came from whispered fragments overheard from those who worked above us. From those scraps of gossip, they constructed elaborate fantasies of what the ball might be like, twisting every detail until their stories became unbelievable fairy tales. Yet they believed every word, and the more outrageous their inventions became, the more eagerly they competed for attention, desperate for their version to be the one everyone listened to.
I simply sat back with a faint smile, listening to their increasingly absurd stories. A quiet sense of relief settled over me, gratitude swelling in my chest that I had not been chosen to attend—just as I had hoped.
