Lunch break used to mean shared chips, loud laughter, and secrets whispered over juice boxes. Now, it's watching Zara from a distance — her laughter echoing off the cafeteria walls like I'm the ghost.
She sits with her new group: Aaliyah, with the red braids and louder-than-life energy, and Tamira, who always speaks in that fake accent since her trip to the UK.
They laugh at things I don't understand anymore.
I pass their table, and for a second, Zara looks at me. Just a flicker. Then she leans into Aaliyah and says something, and they all burst into laughter.
I know that laugh.
I used to be the reason for it.
I sit alone. I open my lunch, but it tastes like nothing.
Across the hall, my brother Kamal is talking to a senior girl. He pretends not to see me — and I pretend I'm okay with it.
But the worst part of today?
I get a message from a number with no name.
"You should stop trying so hard. She's never coming back to you."
No punctuation. Just cruelty, wrapped in pixels.
I want to cry. Or scream. But I don't.
Instead, I write a single line in my journal:
"Some people don't just walk away. They kick you down first."
After school, I walk home slowly. At the gate, my neighbor Mrs. Imole gives me that pitying smile.
"Your friend Zara didn't come today?" she asks.
I nod vaguely. Lie.
"She's... just busy these days."
Busy building a world where I don't exist.
In my room, I close the curtains. Turn off my phone.
Then I do something I haven't done in months:
I open my old sketchpad.
The first page is filled with doodles of Zara and me — stick figures holding hands, a heart drawn in pencil.
But this time, I turn to a new page.
And I draw something different.
A girl walking through shattered glass. Bleeding, but still standing.