Jade | POV
I was not the kind of person who ignored things.
My mom used to call it a gift. My last school called it a discipline problem. The truth was somewhere in the middle — I just had a very low tolerance for pretending not to notice what I clearly noticed.
And I clearly noticed that something was off.
It wasn't any single thing. That was what made it slippery. One bad day at work was a bad day. A broken locker was bad luck. Nina going quiet could have been Nina being Nina. But all three of them on the same afternoon, in the same week I started talking to Eli Voss — that stopped being coincidence and started being a shape.
I just couldn't name the shape yet.
I liked Eli. That part was simple and inconvenient and true.
He was the kind of quiet that wasn't emptiness — it was more like he'd learned to hold things carefully, the way you carry something breakable. When he actually talked, when he let himself, there was a realness to it that most people didn't bother with. He said what he meant. He thought before he answered. He laughed like it surprised him every time.
I liked that. I liked him.
Which made the other thing more frustrating, not less.
Because every time I got a foot closer something happened. Nothing dramatic. Nothing I could point to and say — there, that, that is the problem. Just small collapses. Small redirections. Like invisible hands quietly rearranging things so that the path toward Eli kept curving away from me right when I thought I was on it.
I sat on my bed Thursday night with my laptop and did what I always did when something was bothering me.
I started pulling at the thread.
I typed Eli's name first, just to orient myself. School paper mentions, a sports result from sophomore year, a group photo from some fundraiser. Normal. Present. The online footprint of a real person who existed in the world.
Then I typed Sable Lorne.
I don't know exactly why I typed her name. Instinct, maybe. Or the specific memory of her standing in my third period class on my first day, absolutely still, watching me for almost two full minutes without speaking or looking away. Most people, when you catch them staring, glance off. Pretend they weren't. Sable had just kept looking, steady and calm, like she had every right to assess me and had already decided I didn't concern her.
That feeling had stayed with me like a smell.
So I typed her name.
And got almost nothing.
No social media. No tagged photos. No club mentions, no comments on anyone's posts, no digital footprint beyond a single mention in a school honor roll list from three years ago. Just her name, in a list, and then — nothing.
I sat with that for a moment.
Because here was the thing. Complete invisibility online at seventeen wasn't natural. It wasn't even really possible without effort. You showed up somewhere — a friend's photo, a team roster, a birthday post. You existed in someone else's digital life even if you didn't have your own.
Sable Lorne existed nowhere.
That wasn't privacy. Privacy was a private account, limited posts, a small circle. This was erasure. Deliberate and thorough.
Someone had worked to make sure she couldn't be found.
Or she had.
I closed the laptop and lay back on my bed and looked at the ceiling and thought about Eli's face at that bus stop. Open. Unguarded. Happy in a way that seemed unfamiliar to him, like a muscle he didn't use much.
I thought about Sable watching me from two rows over.
I thought about Nina not texting back.
I decided to pay attention. Properly. The way I paid attention when something actually mattered.
Friday I found her.
Not Sable — a girl named Courtney, a senior, who I'd noticed talking to Sable twice in the hallway in a way that looked less like friendship and more like habit. Like she talked to Sable because not talking to her had consequences she'd already learned.
I caught Courtney alone near the library after third period.
"Hey," I said. Friendly. Easy. "You know Sable Lorne, right? The junior?"
Courtney's face did something immediate and specific. The color left it — not gradually, not subtly, just gone — and her eyes did a quick sweep of the hallway in both directions before they came back to me.
"Why?" she said.
"I'm new. Just trying to figure out who's who."
"She's just —" Courtney stopped. Reset. "She's Eli's friend. That's all. They've been close forever."
"Sure, but what's she like? People seem —"
"I have class." Courtney's voice had changed. Flattened out, all the casual friendliness drained from it. "I have to go."
She left fast. Not running, but close.
I stood in the hallway and watched her go and felt the shape I couldn't name get one degree clearer.
I went through the rest of the day turning it over. Telling myself Courtney was just private, or dramatic, or having a bad day. Trying on the explanations that made the world make normal sense.
None of them fit right.
At nine-thirty that night my phone buzzed.
Unknown number. But the text had Courtney's specific punctuation style — I'd noticed it in the three messages she'd sent our group chat earlier that week.
Don't ask about her again. I mean it.
I read it once.
Then the next text came in, thirty seconds later, same number.
I'm serious Jade. Some things at this school you leave alone. She is one of them. Please.
That last word.
Please.
Not a warning. A plea. From a senior girl who'd gone white at the mention of a name, who'd checked both ends of a hallway before answering a simple question, who was now texting me from a number she'd clearly kept separate for a reason.
I set my phone face-down on my desk.
My hands were steady. My brain was not.
Because scared people didn't beg strangers to stay away from things unless they already knew exactly what happened to people who got too close.
And Courtney knew.
Whatever Sable Lorne was — whatever she'd done, whatever she was still doing — someone at this school already knew.
And was terrified to say it out loud.