There is a silence that only power can buy.
It comes with the way people step aside before you've asked. With the way girls swallow their jealousy behind soft compliments. With the way boys make themselves a little dumber around you, as if fearing their own minds might offend you.
That silence is mine.
I wear it like perfume.
My name is Viera Hollow.
Yes, like the company. Yes, like the fragrance line. Yes, like the Hollow Towers downtown—the ones with the glass that never reflects anything but sky.
That's the family I come from.
Old money. New power. No softness.
My mother is a ghost with perfectly straight teeth. My father is a god in cufflinks, forged from steel and shadow. I learned to walk in rooms full of millionaires before I learned to braid my own hair.
But this—high school—this is my own little kingdom.
And I rule it like I was born for it.
It starts the moment I enter.
The doors swing open like something out of a movie. Sunlight catches on the gold in my earrings. My heels click against polished tile—click-click-click—until everyone is looking, whether they mean to or not.
I know how to command a room.
I don't have to speak. I am the atmosphere.
I smile, and girls smile back—too quickly, too tightly.
I frown, and boys scramble to make me laugh again.
Even the teachers know not to cross me. Not unless they want to find out how fast rumors can crawl up the legs of careers.
To most, I'm Viera the Untouchable.
The cheer captain. The It Girl. The golden standard.
But that's just the costume.
What they don't see is the cracks.
Because if I let them see, if I really opened the door, they'd run screaming.
Even I would.
Here's the truth: I am not kind. Not in the way people mean when they say that word.
I know how to smile sweetly and cut someone open in the same sentence.
I know which insecurities live behind every eyelash flutter and nervous laugh. I know what it costs to be desirable, and how to make someone desperate for approval.
I didn't ask to learn these things.
I was born watching people bleed under pressure and call it fashion.
My father doesn't believe in softness. He taught me early: "Weakness is bait. Never be prey. Never show the wound. If you're going to cry, do it in Italian leather."
I took that lesson to heart.
I have four girls around me at all times.
They're not friends. They're satellites. Accessories. Their names are interchangeable. They gossip, they copy my lip gloss, they watch my eyes like oracles trying to divine whether they're safe.
Sometimes I feel bad for them.
Most of the time, I don't.
The boys? They're worse. Walking peacocks. Grinning idiots. All muscle, no soul.
One of them thinks he's my boyfriend.
He isn't.
We go to parties. We pose for pictures. He touches me like I'm a brand he's trying to wear, not a person. I smile, and he thinks it means something.
It doesn't.
He bores me.
They all bore me.
No one sees me.
Not the real me.
They see the performance. The stage lights. The perfect outfits and the curated playlists and the 4.0 GPA and the elegant cruelty that makes teachers nervous to call on me.
But they don't know what my bedroom looks like at night, after the world forgets me.
They don't know about the hollow ache behind my ribs.
They don't know that sometimes, when I laugh too hard, I feel like I might burst open and spill out a silence no one wants to hear.
I am lonely in a room full of worship.
That is the cruelest kind of isolation.
I don't sleep much.
My mind is always spinning.
I keep a mental ledger of every word spoken to me each day. Did Maya mean it when she said I looked tired? Why did Logan touch my back when he passed me in the hall—did he do that to Jasmine too?
It's a war zone behind my smile.
Paranoia dressed as confidence.
Control disguised as charm.
But I survive. I thrive.
Because weakness is not an option. It's a luxury. And I was raised to believe luxury is earned, not given.
Still… sometimes…
I wonder what it would feel like to let it all down.
To laugh and not measure the echo.
To cry and not feel stupid for it.
To feel something without needing to weaponize it.
But those are dangerous thoughts.
Romantic ones.
The kind that get you killed in rooms like mine.
And then… there's him.
I don't know his name.
I've only caught glimpses.
A tall boy in black, always turned away.
I noticed him once, in the library. Not because of his size—though he is massive, built like a myth—but because of how still he was.
Not bored-still.
Not sleepy-still.
But controlled.
Like something dangerous holding its breath.
There was a sadness in the line of his back. A loneliness I recognized too well.
And for just a moment, I wondered—does he see me too?
But then Maya asked me a question, and I was pulled back into the tide of everything.
Still, I haven't stopped thinking about him.
Not because he's hot. Though he is.
But because… he didn't look at me.
Everyone looks at me. Eventually.
But he didn't.
He disappeared in crowds.
And now, I can't stop trying to find him again.
So here's the truth—my real confession, whispered between layers of lies:
I'm curious.
Curious about the boy who doesn't smile.
Curious about the ghost who walks like a soldier.
Curious about what kind of fire must've scorched his soul to make someone so quiet, so invisible, yet so heavy with presence.
I want to know him.
Not own him. Not tame him.
Just know.
And that's terrifying.
Because I've never wanted that before.
Not like this.
They call me the Queen of the School.
But what they don't know is that I'm already kneeling—
To a boy I've never met.
Not yet.
But soon.
End of Chapter 2
Next: Chapter 3 – First Glance