Content Warning:
This chapter contains depictions of bullying, institutional abuse, sexual humiliation, self-harm ideation, physical assault, and online harassment. Reader discretion is advised.
The next morning, the school descended into chaos.
"My grandson—he's missing!"
Grandma's voice tore through the administration office, raw with panic. Her weathered hands trembled as she thrust my school photo at anyone who would look—at faces that turned away too quickly, at eyes that held no answers.
By the time they found me, the damage was already done.
The girls' locker room was already loud—metal doors slamming, laughter echoing—until a scream shattered the fluorescent quiet. Sharp. Primal. The kind that comes from genuine violation. A girl, half-dressed and getting ready for PE, had opened her locker for her uniform and found something that shouldn't exist:
A naked boy, folded into the metal cavity like discarded evidence.
Me.
Her scream set off a chain reaction of horror. The room erupted—shrieks, panic, someone sobbing, someone calling for a teacher.
The PE teacher burst through the doors, face flushed with alarm. She threw me a tracksuit from lost & found, then marched me through the halls.
We didn't move fast enough to outrun the whispers.
Pervert.
Freak.
Found naked in a girl's locker.
By the time we reached the headmaster's office, the story had already evolved into something grotesque and irreversible.
The headmaster didn't look at me like a student. He looked at me like a stain requiring removal.
"YOU AGAIN!" Spittle flew with the words. "You've humiliated this institution—again."
His voice dropped to something colder than shouting, more final.
"I won't be lenient this time.
"You're suspended—effective immediately. And your scholarship?"
A pause designed to wound.
"Consider it hanging by a thread."
Logic collapsed under accusation. How could I have locked myself inside? The physics alone were impossible—the locker latched from the outside. And what student would voluntarily spend a winter night cramped in a metal box without going home, without telling anyone?
But the more I protested, the guiltier I appeared. Nobody listened—not the teachers, not the headmaster, not even when Grandma raised her voice in my defense, her dignity crumbling into pleading I'd never heard before.
Blake might as well have owned the world.
My world, anyway.
In their eyes, I wasn't a victim awaiting justice.
I was guilty awaiting punishment.
Just like that, they took everything.
At home, Grandma kept touching the back of my neck, my shoulder, my wrist—making sure I wasn't hurt. Her voice carried the gentleness of someone who'd seen too much suffering and learned when to soften.
"I'm sorry you had to endure this." She touched my shoulder—the first touch in days that didn't make me flinch. "If only this old woman could protect you from all the harm in this world."
Maeve clung to my arm, her forehead pressed against it. She looked up, tears caught in her lashes.
"Just tell me who it was."
"It doesn't matter," I said.
"It matters to me. Please." She reached for my hand and whispered, "I don't want to lose you too."
I shook my head once.
I didn't answer. Even if I had, what could they do? Two women against an institution that had already chosen its side. If they fought back, Blake's cruelty would simply expand to include them.
Some battles you fight alone—or not at all.
The week of suspension moved like cold honey—slow, thick, suffocating.
When Grandma presented the phone on day seven, I recognized it immediately as second-hand. The screen was cracked, proof it had lived a life before me—but I knew how hard she'd worked to afford even this much.
The moment I inserted my SIM card, my new phone became a weapon turned against me.
132 unread messages.
Group chats I'd never been invited to.
Anonymous numbers.
All screaming the same variations:
Die.
Freak.
Pervert.
Kill yourself.
Each notification arrived with a bright ping—cheerful, incongruous—tightening the vise around my chest. Anxiety didn't crash over me in waves. It dripped. Cold and relentless. Accumulating until I could barely breathe.
But one notification stood apart.
My writing app.
The novel I'd been posting chapter by chapter for months. And there, in the comments: Reader.
For months, her responses had been my only light—encouragement wrapped in humor, observations that proved someone actually understood what I was trying to create. She was a stranger who felt like a lifelong companion, someone who knew me through words alone.
Her second-to-last comment, posted a week ago, felt wrong:
What if someone who's a stranger spends so much time talking to you behind screens that it feels like you've known each other your whole lives—and then they just disappear? Would you try to find them, or let them go?
Below it, another comment. Three days old.
Goodbye, Luck.
We'd exchanged real names after weeks of conversation—me, Luck; her, Sky—but we'd never stopped calling each other Author and Reader. The formality had become our intimacy.
A chill crawled up my spine, instinctive and animal.
I typed quickly, fingers clumsy with dread.
"Hey, are you okay, Sky? If something's wrong, talk to me."
No reply.
Days bled into weeks. I posted new chapters like distress flares—messages in bottles cast into the void, hoping for any sign of her return.
There was none.
Too late.
Reader was gone.
Natalie didn't answer either. Her voicemail became a liturgy of absence, mechanical and distant, played so many times I could recite it by heart:
"Hi, you've reached Natalie. Sorry I missed your call—I might be busy or away from my phone right now. Please leave your name, number, and a short message, and I'll get back to you as soon as I can. Byeee!"
My world, already fragile, felt emptier without them both.
Three weeks later, they let me back.
The hallways smelled the same—floor wax, hormones, cafeteria grease—but the atmosphere had transformed. I'd become the center of attention in the worst possible way. Fingers pointed. Conversations stopped mid-sentence when I approached, then resumed in urgent whispers the moment I passed.
As the bell rang, Ms. Alstone stood at the doorway, dismissing her students with a polite, sharp smile.
"Have a lovely day, class," she said.
Then her gaze slid to me.
"And let's all try to stay out of other people's lockers, shall we?"
The classroom erupted—laughter that felt like fists.
Heat surged to my face. My heartbeat drowned out everything else, a timpani of shame and rage performed for an audience that wanted me destroyed.
She knew. She knew exactly how I'd ended up in that locker—knew Blake's fingerprints were all over my humiliation. But because Blake was hers—lover, plaything, whatever sordid arrangement they'd made—she protected him with silence and innuendo.
I could have exposed them. Their affair violated every rule, every ethical boundary. But who would believe the pervert over the beloved teacher and star athlete? I had no evidence, and in this place, Blake's word was scripture.
I'd lost before I began.
Then came the betrayal I never saw coming.
The final bell rang. I grabbed my bag, desperate to escape—and saw her.
Natalie.
Waving at me. Smiling that smile I'd memorized in childhood. Relief flooded through me, so intense it hurt.
I smiled back, waved, started toward her.
"Hey, Talia—I've been trying to call your pho—"
She walked past me.
Straight past.
Her smile wasn't meant for me at all.
I turned, confused, and watched her walk straight to Blake, who stood framed in the classroom doorway like a portrait of everything I'd never be.
I told myself to leave, to preserve whatever dignity remained.
Instead, I watched.
Days accumulated. They were everywhere together—the cafeteria, where she and her friends migrated to Blake's table; where he leaned close, brushed her thigh, and met my eyes across the room, mocking. She laughed at everything he said, performing delight with her whole body.
I sat alone at the table everyone avoided now—the contaminated zone.
They followed me everywhere. Or maybe I followed them. The distinction stopped mattering.
Morning bus rides where I stared through smudged windows and saw them in Blake's sports car. Hallways where they materialized mid-kiss against my locker as I reached for my books. Afternoons when I glanced out classroom windows and spotted them ditching school together, her head on his shoulder.
I tried once to speak to her.
Caught her wrist in the stairway, desperation making me rough.
She spun, eyes wide—then furious.
"You're hurting me!" she screamed, loud enough for heads to turn.
The slap came fast. Sharp.
"I'm in love with Blake. I don't want anything to do with you. Stop embarrassing yourself."
She walked away rubbing her wrist, as if I'd left fingerprints.
That was it.
Those were the last words we shared.
We became strangers who'd once shared everything—now just bodies passing in hallways, careful never to collide.
Natalie had been my childhood friend. My first love. My imagined future.
And now—nothing.
Maybe if I'd confessed earlier, we wouldn't be here. But I waited. And waiting was just another word for losing.
I told myself I didn't care. Didn't need her. Didn't need anyone.
But lies taste bitter no matter how many times you swallow them.
Mornings became predictable in their cruelty.
Conversations stopped when I entered classrooms—too abruptly, too synchronized. They'd been discussing me, and now they watched me know it.
Even my classmates had turned. Their silence weighed more than words.
Then the bullying metastasized.
Those who believed the narrative. Those who just enjoyed the sport of it.
Upperclassmen used my hands as ashtrays—cigarette tips pressed into flesh. Slaps followed when I flinched, leaving burns like warped rings. Proof I'd survived another day.
Blake took it further.
One afternoon, he held me down while someone handed him scissors.
He carved into my forearm, slow and deliberate, the blade scoring skin with an artist's concentration:
B + N
Blake and Natalie.
Their initials branded into me like lovers' names on a tree—except the tree was my body, and I hadn't consented to become their monument.
I started wearing long sleeves regardless of weather. Grandma and Maeve couldn't know. They carried enough weight already.
Pain became ambient—a constant frequency I learned to tune out.
The body adapts to anything given enough repetition.
One morning, a group caught me at the school gates.
Hands grabbed my waistband. Before I could react, they yanked my pants to my ankles.
Laughter detonated around me.
Phones appeared. Cameras aimed like weapons. Someone was already recording, already composing the caption:
"Pantsing the pervert found naked in the girls' locker."
It went viral by lunch. Millions of views by evening.
My humiliation became content for strangers who'd never bothered learning my name.
Thousands of comments. Strangers judging a story they didn't understand:
User123: Womp womp.
BurntToast44: Karma came faster than Amazonian Prime.
DeadInside99: Bro probably thought he was HIM… nah, you're just a villain.
MemeDealer69: Someone cue the "Curb Your Enthusiasm" music.
Mickey_Rat: SYBAU 🥀
Ghosted4Life: He really woke up and chose jail time.
Sasha_101: Serves him right. Naked in a girl's locker room?? Disgusting. 🤢
HotTeaSpiller: Imagine being THAT desperate. Couldn't be me.
BurnerAcc777: Bro really spawned in the wrong lobby. 🚪➡️🚫
CloudKid: This isn't Amerikan Pie, this is pending charges.
xXEdgeLordXx: Mans was speedrunning the offender registry.
TruthHurts: Bet he tells people it was "just a prank." 🤡
Kaylee22: Girls can't even change in peace anymore… pathetic.
WitchyVibes: May he forever be haunted by the sound of locker doors slamming. 🔒
Vrega007: Wait I'm confused—why would someone lock themselves in a locker naked?
That last comment almost made me laugh.
The absurdity of it.
The one person asking the right question—drowned out by thousands who'd already rendered a verdict.
Each day became an endurance test: wake up, survive school, go home, repeat.
Classroom walls pressed inward. Lessons felt written for people with futures.
I used to have one.
Now I didn't.
The bullying continued into senior year.
Blake became basketball captain—natural leader, everyone's friend. Girls orbited him like moons around a planet. By some cosmic joke or administrative incompetence, our class composition never changed. Ms. Alstone remained our homeroom teacher, her smile still sharp.
Just a little longer, I told myself when ending it all felt less like escape and more like inevitability.
Just until graduation.
I thought of Grandma and Maeve—their faces, their voices, the weight my absence would leave behind.
I thought of Grandma and Maeve whenever the urge surged strongest—their faces, their voices, the weight of what my absence would leave behind.
It was the only math that still made sense.
My pain versus theirs.
For now, theirs outweighed mine.
For now, I kept breathing.