There should be some sort of caution that should be adhered by everyone in the morning. Something like WARNING: attempting interaction before 8 a.m could result in rash decisions, humiliation, and a lifelong aversion to eye contact. I wonder if i could get that on a sticker and attach it to my things If that isn't possible, then at least make i'd like a banner flying over my bus stop so everyone knows to not bother me.
I shuffle through the streets with a piece of toast clamped between my teeth and my backpack hanging off one shoulder. The air is colder than I expected thin, sharp and very unfriendly unlike summer. This is the kind that sneaks under your jacket making it impossible to be warm no matter how many layers of clothing you have on. My breath fogs and i notice the street is still waking up.
I stop at the corner where the sidewalk tilts up toward the bus sign, It's the same bus stop from yesterday, the one where I learned that someone could definitely be on their way home and my self absorbed self will think they were interested in stalking me. Today I'm trying a radical plan called REMAIN INVISIBLE. It's part of a larger strategy I came up with last night before i fell asleep.
Kayla's Guide on how Not to Crash, Burn or Die of EMBARRASSMENT (NEW HIGH SCHOOL EDITION)
1. Stand at least two steps away from every body. Ten if they're quite chatty.
2. Headphones in, Volume off and ZERO eye contact.
3. Do not trip, spill, sneeze, or exist in a way that invites commentary or condemnation.
4. If you must speak, keep it short. And no answering questions in class. Don't need any need thinking i'm here to take their place.
Waiting at the bus stop sign it's obvious I'm technically present but spiritually absent. By the time other people come around to wait for the bus i'm feeling quite proud that no one looked my way or even attempted any sort of communication with me.. with that I rate myself an 8/10 on invisibility for the first two minutes.
And then he appears.
My very bright grin went flat Jayden turns the corner with his backpack strap hooked on two fingers, that effortless slouch like gravity is his best friend and I'm just an embarrassment, it's evident the world revolves around one of us. He's halfway between blank and thoughtful, like he's listening to music you can't hear.
Our eyes don't meet thank God but I can tell the exact second he notices me. It's a shift, a sneeze of energy. His jaw tightens. I watch it happen in the reflective surface of the bus sign because I'm a coward with an excellent grasp of peripheral vision.
He slows. That alone makes me question my stance, as if physical stillness might somehow move me out of the moment. He doesn't stop close; I'm not that unlucky. Instead, he steps sideways one, two, three deliberate paces like he needs to mark his territory, which apparently includes not sharing air molecules with me. well that works well for me, i don't want any thing to do with him or men.. especially after… shaking my head to get rid of those thoughts. i'm here to heal not to be drowned out.
My brain scribbles a new rule so fast the ink smears.
Rule #5: STAY AWAY FROM ALL MEN. ALTHOUGH THAT SHOULD EVEN BE NO.1 ON THE LIST.
I focus hard on the "no eye contact" clause and stare at a crack in the sidewalk that, if you squint might look like a map of a country where no one knows your name. He masks his expression fast I'll give him that. There's a taste in my mouth like I licked a battery.
The bus groans up to the curb, and this time I don't trip on the stairs. Small victories. I flash my pass, bee line for the safest square footage on wheels: second row, window seat, aisle barrier, driver adjacent. People underestimate the defensive benefits of proximity to authority figures. From here, I can also watch the reflection in the windshield without obviously watching the people behind me, which is a bonus because curiosity is truly my most embarrassing trait.
He heads for the back like the back owes him money, and of course the cliche hungry teen girls peel away from the rest of the humanity pile as if choreographed. One touches his arm with a laugh that belongs in a commercial for toothpaste. Another slides into the seat across from him with her knees angled just so, and the third drapes herself on the backrest with expert casualness. They make a semi circle of interest, a solar system where he is the sun and that is so disgusting. Do they all intend to get a piece of him?
Here's the thing: he looks uncomfortable almost as if he's not used to letting anyone stay this close to him. I snort oh well enjoy the attention Mr gloomy.
His mouth tilts, not the smirk from yesterday (which had the energy of "I noticed you, but through protective glass"). This is softer and crazy looking . His shoulders are tight. He doesn't say much, but what he does say lands like it matters to them, to him. The laugh that leaks out of him is low and hurried. It kicks me in the ribs from ridiculous this is, oh well if he wants to put up with a bunch of strangers for the sake of being polite that's up to him or whatever reason could be behind this.
I fold my arms and bury my chin in my jacket collar. Trying to catch a few more seconds of sleep before school.
The bus ride is a collage of things that grate: giggles that pierce, a phone speaker playing a song about bodies and forever, a gum snap timed with red lights, the driver humming radio static. Trees blur past. Houses trade places. I count how many mailboxes are shaped like fish. Four. My brain hugs the number like a tiny, safe fact.
At school, the bus vomits us onto the curb. The building is a wide mouthed creature swallowing kids by the dozens. I keep my head down, slide into the current, and let it carry me inside. The hallways are already packed: locker doors slam, someone drops a binder with the sound of a continent breaking, there's a distinct aroma of cafeteria hash browns, cold perfume, and anxiety.
Rule #6: Choose the seat nearest the door in every classroom. Quick escape routes are more important than good lighting or educational achievement.
First period passes at the speed of light. The teacher's voice is a gentle yet relentless metronome. I take notes that will, three hours from now, look like hieroglyphs. When my name is called, it's only to confirm I exist. I say "Here" like I'm not sure that's true.
Second period is math, and math responds to uncertainty by being certain without me. The equations climb the board in smug little steps, and the one time the teacher asks if anyone wants to "walk through the logic," I develop sudden, dramatic allergies that require me to look down and sneeze into my sleeve. Everyone believes me because I'm new, and novelty confers small mercies.
Between classes, I saw him.
I don't look for him. I swear I don't. He just runs on the same schedule I do in the sense that we are both prisoners of institutional time and occasionally our paths intersect. He's near the stairwell when a girl with heavy eyeliner says something that makes him tilt his head and blink slow. The expression is new; curiosity lives there. It occurs to me that I'm moping at him without consent, the very opposite of what my guidelines suggest, im like a cartographer drawing coastlines no one asked for.
By third period, my brain is tired. I doodle in the margin of my notebook: a cartoon Kayla holding a shield labeled "CUPCAKE" and a sword labeled "FROSTING," facing a dragon labeled "OVEN." The dragon smiles with Jayden's mouth, which is alarming even to me, so I fold the page over and pretend it's not evidence.
Fourth period is English, and the teacher's enthusiasm for sonnets should be studied by scientists in a lab. She glows. She quotes lines like they are incantations. She also loves cold calling, which I discover when she says, "Kayla, any thoughts?" and my brain files for temporary unemployment.
"Love… is… complicated," I say, because that's true of both sonnets and my inability to correctly interpret human facial expressions.
There's a snicker from the back. I don't turn to see if it's him. Turning would suggest interest in conversing.
The bell finally releases us, which is greatly generous of it. The hallway gushes again. I navigate. It's like moving through water.No matter where i go he's there and so are the girls, they shy smile at him, tilt their heads, adjust their posture like he's gravity and their leaves. I pretend not to see because truly i could care less.
Lunchtime finally comes around. The cafeteria is a combination of noise, the smell of greasy foods and a monarchy of tables. The cool kids that sit beneath the bright windows and dress in splashy everything. The art kids sprawling by the edge with their sketches and tangled hair. The gamers huddle around a Nintendo Switch imitating a shrine consisting of monks performing a ritual. The rest of us settle around the empty spaces and try not to bump into anything or anyone that can bite and make life miserable.
I join the queue and build a tray that consists of fries, apple, water very bland but i'm not touching that strange looking pasta and sauce. No chance of sauce disasters. The cashier's ring clicks into the void and I turn to face the battlefield of cranky teenagers.
Turning around i see him again, DAMN DOES HE OWN THE SCHOOL OR SOMETHING, HE'S LITERALLY EVERY WHERE. The girls laugh too hard, but he doesn't ask them to. They just do. There's a cold leaking off that table I can feel from here, and it is stupidly humiliating to be one of the ladies there. He's literally not interested in having around people. I want to go over there and speak some sense into them even for just a second just to see if it changes the way they go around glorifying a man.
Instead I choose a corner table whose main feature is a wobbly leg and a peeling sticker that says GO TEAM in a font i've never seen before. I wedge my foot against the leg to stop the table's nervous habit. The fries are too salty, but i'm sure that pasta was going to be more atrocious. The apple is a little mealy, which feels correct for my life.
Rule #7: Chew slower than your thoughts. It gives you a chance to tire yourself out.
From here, I can't hear what he's saying, but I can read a little body language. A guy leans over and taps his phone screen. He shakes his head, smiling with the corner of his mouth like he knows a joke no one else gets. Someone across from him imitates a teacher's voice, and laughter bursts around the table like popcorn. He doesn't laugh as loud as the rest, but he laughs like he means it. At least we know he likes something, not women but men.
I look down and stab a fry, and the ketchup stain on my tray looks like a continent i could make happen. I'm the kind of person who names the continents of spilled condiments because it's better than naming the shapes my feelings are making. It's also less pathetic than admitting that the disgust on his face at the bus stop still hangs around me like a cheap perfume.
I finish half the food and do the internal math if I leave now, I beat the worst of the hallway jam. If I stay, I'll have to watch the table again and that would be very very creepy. It would draw too much attention to me.
As I stand. My chair squeaks, a sound so loud several heads turn automatically. I freeze, the animal part of my brain screaming, Don't move, predator vision is based on motion. No one important is looking except for one of the lunch ladies, who gives me a tired nod that says she too thinks about running away sometimes.
I dump my tray. On my way out, my gaze skitters, slips, lands for a nanosecond.
He's not looking at me.
There's relief in that. I push the door open with my shoulder and let the hallway swallow me whole.
The afternoon drags less cruelly than the morning. In P.E we take a lap around the gym and then pretend to learn a sport that relies on people throwing balls at your head. I do a very good impression of a person who is extremely okay standing near the bleachers and occasionally participate in "team strategy." When a ball rockets past my ear, I flinch hard enough to almost pull something in my neck. My teammate says "You good?" in a voice broadcasting not actually caring. I give a thumbs up indicating that i'm good but i was very far from it.
Rule #8: When you can't be good at something, be unremarkable at it. People don't want to be around unremarkable.
Last period is a study hall I did not ask for and do not want. The room is too quiet for thoughts that are louder than they should be. I work on exactly zero assignments and instead copy my own rules into the back of my notebook in small, neat handwriting, like neatness can trap the chaos on the page. Every couple of minutes, my pen stalls and I stare at the clock, then the window, then my reflection in it.
The final bell smacks me out of my thoughts. I pack up at a leisurely speed that is actually a strategic delay to avoid being trapped in the slow stampede toward freedom. The hallway empties in a series of shivers. Locker doors slam with the bassline of the end. Outside, the air is softer, the earlier bite traded for a shrug. The bus line already coils like a pet snake. I spot my safe seat before I get on. See? Learning. Growth.
He's there again, on the same vehicle, living in the same small universe where proximity looks like fate and is actually just zoning.
This time, he doesn't glance my way at all. Not once. The girls do their orbit. The bus does its route. I survive.
When my stop sputters into the present, I stand, nod a thank you to the driver, and spill onto my street. The walk home is short enough to pretend I'm walking into a movie scene where something meaningful will happen, but long enough that nothing meaningful happens. My house waits with its off white siding and modest lawn and a porch light that's on too early because my mother is always at least two hours ahead of whatever could go wrong.
Inside smells like lemon cleaner, which is both comforting and a warning. There's a particular gleam to the sink when my mom has had a certain kind of day, the kind shaped forever by last summer and the things we don't say. Today the sink is a mirror. My face looks smaller in it.
"Hey," I say, dropping my backpack by the stairs
"Shoes," Mom says automatically from the kitchen. Her voice isn't sharp, just… vigilant. It has edges but no malice.
I toe my sneakers off and kick them neatly under the bench, then follow the sound of clinking dishes.
She's at the counter wiping it even though it cannot get any cleaner without becoming imaginary. Her dark hair is pulled back in a no-nonsense knot, and she wears the cardigan that means "we're not going anywhere." On the stove, a pot of something red simmers.
"There you are," she says, turning. Her eyes check me for damage. "How was school?"
This used to be a question with room in it. Now it's a checkpoint.
"Fine," I say. It's the easiest truth adjacent to the actual truth.
She pauses like she wants to request a more detailed manifest, then decides to let that ship sail for now. "Good. I talked to Mrs. Reynolds today."
The name taps a memory. I met her at the grocery store last week, a whirlwind of flour-dusted friendliness who called me sweetheart even though she didn't know me. "From the bakery," I say.
"Right." Mom dries her hands on a towel even though they were already dry. "She's looking for after-school help. Just a few hours, a couple of days a week. Counter, basic prep, maybe boxing pastries if you're comfortable. I told her you might be interested."
I lean my hip against the counter and aim for casual. "Did you tell her I'm incompetent with all things food adjacent?
"You'd be trained. And it's close. You could walk there. I'd pick you up after if I needed to."
There are a few answers to this. One is No thanks, I have an appointment with my bed and a deep, committed relationship with not being perceived. Another is I don't want my schedule shrink-wrapped by your fear. A third is the quiet one, the one that tastes like guilt: If this helps you breathe.
"Is this about " I start, and stop. We don't put nouns on the past in this house if we can avoid it. It's a superstition I get. Words give things shape. Shapes can grow.
"It's about keeping busy," she says quickly, as if racing me to the end of the thought. "Structure is good. And it's a safe environment. People we know. Mrs. Reynolds is… she's good."
I look at the pot, at the gentle plop of bubbles. My hands find the edge of the counter and press, grounding. "I have homework."
"You'll have time," she says. "We'll make sure of it. We can try two afternoons this week, see how it goes. If you don't like it, we'll rethink."
She's trying so hard to sound flexible. I can hear the hinges creaking.
"Okay," I hear myself say. "I'll try it."
Relief unspools in her shoulders like a rope. "Thank you."
"You're welcome," I say, I don't resent her for it not in the clean way the word resent suggests. My feelings are messier than that. Tangled. But there's a strange steadiness in giving her something she can hold onto, even if it's just a schedule block with my name on it.
She turns the stove off and plates dinner like a magician producing something from a hidden pocket. "Sit," she says. "Eat."
We don't say grace, but there's a minute of silence that functions like one. The sauce is perfect bright, comforting, a red that could teach other reds how to be more themselves. I eat like I didn't do that already a few hours ago, and Mom watches from the corner of her eye like food is a shield. Maybe it is.
When she reaches for her phone, I know what it's for. "I'll text Mrs. Reynolds," she says. "She asked if you could start tomorrow, but I told her Friday might be better so we can go over details tonight."
"Friday's fine," I say. I imagine an apron. A hairnet. Me saying "That'll be $6.75" without making the numbers cry. I imagine the smell of sugar and butter and vanilla so thick it clings to your clothes like a memory. I imagine hands I don't know passing me money, not touching my skin. I imagine the little bell on the door and the way the street looks through a window framed in chalkboard paint and daily specials in curly handwriting.
The image softens something tight in my chest. I could live inside that little rectangle of a job for a few hours at a time. It might be a cage, but it has good lighting.
Upstairs, my room is a mess I recognize. Clothes colonize the chair. My desk is a topographical map of paper. There's a single sock on the bookshelf because why not. I kick a path to the bed and fall face-first onto it, the comforter muffling me into near-extinction. I lie there for one full minute, counting heartbeats, until my brain realizes that if I don't sit up, I will never sit up again.
I roll onto my back and stare at the ceiling. The popcorn texture looks like a sky of lumpy stars. I consider adding stargazing to my list of skills, then remember that all my stars are indoors.
I pull my notebook from my bag same one I used to write Kaylie's Survival Guide to Not Suck last night. I flip past that page. It looks like a joke someone left on my desk. My pen hovers. Land.
New Rules:
9. If you think you're about to spiral, eat something. Or count mailboxes. Or both.
I close the notebook and let it rest on my chest. My window faces the street, and if I sit up, I can see a slice of the world between the curtains. I don't plan to, but my body jittery, nosy drags me upright. I peel the curtain back with two fingers.
Across the way, a light clicks on in a house three doors down. The shape that moves past the window is tall enough that my stomach does a little flip of recognition and irritation. It could be anyone. It could be him. Lights go on and off. People live in boxes together trying not to hurt each other or themselves. Sometimes they fail. Sometimes they bake.
I let the curtain fall.
My phone chimes. A text from Mom: Friday 4–7 at Reynolds Bakery. We'll go ten minutes early. Bring a hair tie. Love you.
I type back: Okay. Love you too.
It's not a lie. It's also not the whole truth. The whole truth would need a bigger screen.
I set alarms because apparently I'm an adult who has auditioned for the role of Responsible Employee #2. One for school. One for the job. One for "don't forget to breathe." I consider making a fourth for "don't think about bus stop," but time is not a cure for thinking; it's just a different shape of it.
In the hall, there's the small domestic symphony of evening: water running, a drawer shutting, the TV murmuring something about weather. I stand, pick up the lone sock, and put it in the laundry basket with a flourish like I've won at life. Then I turn off my light and slide into bed early because I've decided to trick tomorrow into respecting me.
Sleep takes long enough to find me that I get mad at it. When it finally arrives, it comes with dreams that are structurally unsound. There's a bus that is also a bakery, a bell that rings like a school bell but tastes like sugar, a boy whose face flips between disgust and warmth depending on which way the light tilts. In the dream, I keep trying to sit in the second row and somehow end up at the back, and every time I do, the floor tilts like a ship and all the chairs slide forward.
I wake before my alarm, which is disrespectful. The sky is a grey dish of soup. For one second I forget what day it is, which is a relief that falls apart almost immediately. Then the relief rebuilds itself in a new shape: Friday is bakery day, but today isn't Friday yet. Today is just Thursday, which means I only have to survive school.
Only.
I lie there, my mind doing microrehearsals: bus stop, hallway, class, lunch, class, home. If I am a performer, I am also the audience I fear the most. A laugh from down the street floats in through the cracked window light, ordinary. The world is busy not caring about my internal monologue.
I sit up and gather my hair into a ponytail that aspires to competence. I choose clothes that make me feel like a person whose edges won't catch on things. I brush my teeth like they are a future someone might kiss, and then laugh at myself because that is not on the schedule and also illegal per house rules and also I don't want that and also shut up, brain.
Backpack, shoes, door. The morning smells like wet cement and possibility with a headache.
At the bus stop, I try a new technique: stand in the same place as yesterday but feel like I own it. It's subtle no one else will notice but it keeps my spine from curling. Headphones in, volume off. I look at the crack in the sidewalk that is still a country, but today it has a coastline. Improvement.
When Jayden turns the corner, I don't watch for his reaction. I look at the bus cresting the hill, a big yellow certainty. I decide not to notice how he slows. I decide not to notice anything. He could rearrange the entire atmosphere with his eyebrows and I would not adjust my weather.
The bus doors sigh open like a tired mouth, and I climb aboard, a girl made of small rules and salt.
By the time the afternoon arrives again and the house smells like lemon, I will say yes to another set of hours in a bakery window. I will learn where the sugar is kept and how to make a ribbon with a box of cookies so it looks like a present. I will practice saying "Next, please" like it's not a prayer. And maybe maybe there will be a day I look up from the counter and the face I have accidentally memorized walks in. Maybe my stomach will do whatever stupid thing it always does. Maybe he'll do that careful half-smile he saves for not-me. Or maybe he'll look like he looked at the bus stop, and I'll know what to do with that, too.
For now, I add one more line to the list, small enough to fit between the others.
Rule #10: Live small if you have to, but live.
I can do that. I can live in the little rectangles bus windows, classroom doors, bakery counters and collect the light where it lands. I can be a porch light instead of a flame.
And if some moths still choose someone else's glow, I'll try to remember that has nothing to do with whether I am bright.