After Grade 9, nothing felt light anymore.
Life didn't announce its heaviness with drama. It arrived quietly, settled into Aiden's shoulders, and stayed there. Every decision felt denser now. Every mistake seemed to cost more than before.
Grade 10 came with expectations stitched into the uniform.
Teachers watched him closely—not suspiciously, but with assumption. Friends leaned on him without asking. His father expected maturity without explaining what it looked like. And beneath all of it, Aiden carried an unspoken demand of his own: to become something solid, even if he didn't yet know what that meant.
School grew quieter in his head.
Not easier. Just quieter.
Bentley remained close. Still calm. Still sharp. Still the kind of person who thought several steps ahead while others reacted. They spoke less about dreams and more about reality now—subjects, grades, futures that no longer felt imaginary. What once sounded like ambition now sounded like planning.
Sashelle drifted in and out of his orbit, familiar but distant. She belonged to an earlier version of him—one that hadn't learned how quickly things could be taken away. Seeing her reminded him of who he almost stayed.
Rhianna faded without ceremony. No arguments. No final scene. Just distance. The chain disappeared. So did the certainty. What remained was memory, and memory visited whenever it pleased.
Home looked stable on the surface. Marriage had that effect. Structure without peace. Aiden learned quickly which conversations to avoid and which silences to respect. He became fluent in restraint.
He spent more time outside—not to escape, but to breathe where walls couldn't close in.
Track returned, no longer as an escape, but as discipline. His running changed. No showing off. No racing anger. Every stride was measured. Controlled. He learned something important: speed without control always ended badly.
Football remained dangerous, but he played smarter now. No volunteering for goal. No proving anything to anyone who wouldn't remember his name next year.
Money stayed tight. Hunger still visited. But Aiden understood it differently now. He knew how to manage it. When to endure. When to stretch what little there was. Survival stopped feeling embarrassing and started feeling strategic.
At school, pressure sharpened him.
Grades mattered—not for praise, but for leverage. Every test felt like a negotiation with the future. Every pass was a quiet step forward.
Teachers noticed—not loudly, not with applause, but with trust.
"Handle this."
"Help him."
"Read this."
Small responsibilities. Heavy meaning.
Girls still noticed him. But he noticed himself more. He watched instead of chasing. Listened instead of rushing. Attraction became something he understood rather than something he needed.
There were nights when old memories resurfaced—words that shouldn't have been said, choices made too early, losses that still ached. But the spirals didn't last as long. He learned how to interrupt his own thoughts before they took him under.
Faith returned slowly. Not loud. Not confident. Quiet. Steady. The kind that didn't explain everything, but kept him upright.
He started writing again—not pain this time, but observation. People. Patterns. Snippets of conversations in corridors. Life recorded without judgment.
By the end of the year, Aiden wasn't the loudest.
Wasn't the softest.
Wasn't the smartest either.
But he was solid.
Pressure hadn't crushed him.
It had shaped him.
And for the first time, he understood something that mattered:
Survival was the beginning.
Control was the lesson.
Purpose was coming.
The boy who wouldn't break was learning how to bend—
on his own terms.