Chapter 13
TRU
The cruelest heartbreak isn’t being left behind—it’s being looked at like you were never worth staying for.
The hallway buzzed with end-of-period energy.
Sneakers squeaked, locker doors slammed, and someone shouted across the corridor about lunch plans.
I kept my head down, focused on the open-book math quiz waiting for me next period, and tried to summon some kind of calm.
My locker gave its usual metallic groan when I spun the combination and wrenched open the door.
The scent of paper and graphite wafted out, familiar but somehow suffocating.
I snatched the book, hugged it to my chest like a shield, and stepped back.
The temperature in the hallway dropped considerably, as if someone had opened a door to winter.
Darien stood there, looming, looking like an angry god who’d made hating me his personal creed.
He didn’t just carry the grudge; he worshipped it.
Lived by it. And judging by the look in his eyes, he was devout as hell.
I slammed the door hard, and the echo that reverberated down the hall was almost satisfying. His posture was casual, one shoulder propped against the row of lockers, arms folded like this was just another Tuesday. But his eyes told a different story. Hard. Calculating. Mean.
“That Tanner kid says you begged to suck his dick.”
He said it like a weather report. Like he wasn’t detonating my entire existence right there in front of everyone.
I blinked. Swallowed. My pulse pounded in my ears as I clutched my math book tighter to my chest as if it could block the words from landing.
Ignore him. Don’t rise to the bait. Don’t give him what he wants.
I turned to leave, shouldering past him with the kind of solid, deliberate hit you aim to feel. It rattled through me, bone deep, like I needed proof I could still hurt back.
“Answer me, dammit,” he barked louder, his voice echoing down the corridor like I owed him something. I didn’t owe him shit.
“Truen,” he persisted. His voice was cold and sharp. I was Truen now, not Tru. Not someone he pretended to know intimately.
I turned, jaw clenched. “Is what true, Dare?” I said his name with emphasis, reminding him that we had been on a nickname basis at one time.
His face twisted. “Don’t call me that. It's D now.”
I didn't miss the way his eyes darted frantically around the hall, checking to see if anyone overheard. Was he ashamed of the fact that he once allowed me to know him that well? As if we didn’t live together, right across the hall from each other.
I heard him showering, brushing his teeth, and taking a leak.
God forbid someone heard me use the name he used to let slip out between laughter and breathless late-night secrets.
“D?” I asked. “That's fucking stupid.”
As if he was too cool for an entire name, and he was down to one letter now. Maybe he'd ditch the consonants altogether and adopt a symbol as his name, like Prince did.
I hitched my backpack up on my shoulder and started down the hall, hoping he would disappear or lose interest. He followed, close enough that I could smell his body spray. Just not close enough to make it look like what it was—an obsession.
“Are you going to answer me?” he snapped, “or let me assume the worst?”
I stopped walking and spun around. Fuck you. Fuck you for making me even say it. “You already do, so what’s the difference?” He knew damn well it was a lie.
I could feel people watching us now, lingering just far enough away to pretend they weren’t eavesdropping, but close enough to hang on every word.
I hate you so fucking hard. The Darien I used to know would never humiliate me like this.
“If I did want to suck someone’s dick,” I said slowly, carefully, every syllable dipped in venom, “it wouldn’t be yours.”
He shoulder-checked me on the way past, not bothering to hide his malice.
“We both know that’s not true,” he hissed, so close I felt his breath on my ear.
I stood frozen in the hallway, throat tight, vision stinging.
I loathed confrontation. That churn of adrenaline in my gut. The electric wrongness of being seen too much and not enough all at once.
Every time I came face to face with Dare, I felt it again, like stepping onto thin ice and waiting for the crack. He looked at me like I was filth. As if I’d committed some unspeakable betrayal. Or that I was something he had to scrape off the bottom of his shoe.
And the worst part? The silence afterward. Because I knew that silence. I’d lived in it for years. It was the space between us that used to hold secrets and jokes and summer nights and promises sealed in piss and spit.
Now it held nothing but shame, disgust, and loneliness so deep it echoed.
I watched him walk away, laughing too loudly with his new friends. That wasn’t his real laugh. It didn’t reach his eyes. I used to know his real smile.
Used to.
Now I didn’t know what made me sadder, that I’d been the only one to ever see it, or that it was gone forever. And somehow, I still missed him. Even when all he did was ruin me.
My sneakers squeaked on the linoleum as I rounded the corner toward my class, lungs burning for air, heart aching in ways an A+ on my math quiz couldn’t fix.
At the back of the room, Amira had already claimed her usual corner table. Her braid slid over one shoulder as she bent over her notes, highlighter cap tucked between her teeth. She glanced up the second I walked in, her sharp eyes softening in a way that made me want to collapse.
“What happened?” she asked without hesitation.
I dropped into the chair across from my best friend and shook my head. “Nothing.”
She snorted. “Bullshit.”
But she didn’t push. Just slid a granola bar across the table like it was medicine and turned back to her notes.
That small act of kindness made something squeeze behind my ribs.
She was a good friend. The kind of person who notices things.
Who made space for you to fall apart without needing to know the full story.
But she wasn’t him. And no matter how hard she tried, she never could be.
It wasn’t just his absence that hurt or his air of cruel indifference. It was the idea that he looked at me now and saw something wrong.
Tainted.
Less than.
As if the very parts of me he used to laugh with, dream with, and swear loyalty to, were now the things that disgusted him most. He used to tell me I was the best person he knew. Now I’d become something he had to prove he never wanted.
I tore open the granola bar with more force than necessary.
“You want to talk about it?” Amira asked quietly.
I shook my head again, eyes fixed on the table. “No,” I said. “Not today.”
She nodded, already knowing that would be the answer. And somehow, her silence was almost enough. Almost. She capped her highlighter and leaned her chin into her palm, studying me. “You still going this weekend?”
It took me a second to realize what she meant. “The exhibition?” I asked.
“Yeah. The gallery thing. Are you still going?”
I nodded slowly. “Yeah. We leave Friday.”
“Your mom excited?”
“She won’t stop talking about it,” I said, trying to sound amused. It came out flat.
“I bet.” Amira hesitated, then added, “She’s proud of you, you know. I heard her bragging about it at the PTA meeting. Something about you being gifted.” She grinned, teasing lightly. “God, you’re insufferable.”
I gave her a half-hearted smile, but it didn’t stick.
Then she sighed and flopped her pencil down. “I still can’t believe the wedding is next week. Like… Darien Carter is about to officially become your stepbrother. That’s wild.”
The sound of his name hit me like a sucker punch.
She tilted her head. “You okay with all of that?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” I said, too fast, too stiff.
Amira stared at me. “I mean, it’s weird, right? The guy who used to be your best friend is now gonna be your stepbrother? You two are oil and water. Spark and kerosene. Vinegar and—”
“I’m fine with it,” I said, sharper than I meant to.
She held up her hands in surrender. “Okay. Not pushing. Just saying, I’d be weirded out. Just watch your back.”
My eyes dropped to my textbook, not really seeing it. Weird didn’t even begin to cover it. There wasn’t a word for this kind of constant anguish.
Dare haunted every corner of my life now.
The kitchen. The backyard. The stupid hallway by the laundry room, where we used to race to see who could do the dumbest trick slide across the tile.
Now his toothbrush sat next to mine. His shoes are by the door.
His father’s annoying laughter echoed in the house.
I missed him.
And I resented him.
And I missed him even more because of it.
Amira watched me for a second longer, like she was deciding whether to let me keep pretending I was fine.
She didn’t.
“Okay,” she said, voice softer now. “So you’re spiraling. That’s fine. But we’re still getting frozen cocoa after school. I’m not letting you sit in your room all night, staring daggers at your door every time he makes a sound across the hall.”
I cracked a real smile this time, small and tired, but real. She grinned back, victorious.
“Come on,” she said. “We’ll get whipped cream and sit in the booth by the window. You can talk or not talk. I’ll do dramatic readings of math word problems in a British accent if I have to.”
“I’d pay money to hear that.”
“I accept money.” She held out her hand and wiggled her fingers. “Venmo me. Or, you know, promise to come with me to that alien invasion movie next weekend and we’ll call it even.”
I paused, then nodded. “Okay.”
“Okay, as in sci-fi movie, or okay as in frozen cocoa?”
“Both,” I said.
“Hell yes.” She leaned back in her chair, triumphant. “You’re buying the popcorn. And if you cry, I will be telling everyone you sobbed like a Victorian widow.”
“Can’t wait.”
We both lapsed into silence, our books open but untouched. My fingers rested on the edge of the page without turning it. Amira didn’t ask anything else. She didn’t need to. She just existed beside me, which was enough. And in that moment, I realized something I’d been too wounded to admit before.
I wasn’t completely alone.
I just wasn’t with the person I wanted most.
But like my mom promised me years ago, I was surviving. Maybe not thriving, not yet, but I’d get there, eventually.