Seen
Gabrielle POV
I’m at the lockers after lunch when I catch my reflection in the thin strip of mirror taped to the inside of the door. Same face. Same hair. Same mouth I’ve always had. Nothing new.
But the corridor feels tighter somehow. There's a charge in the air.
“Happy birthday, Gabi,” Ellie calls, her tone bright enough to pass as friendly.
I turn.
She’s leaning against the radiator with two of the girls from netball – arms folded, expressions carefully neutral.
“Thanks.”
“Eighteen now, yeah?” she asks. “Bet the boys are thrilled.”
There it is.
I shrug lightly, “I wouldn't know.”
A flicker crosses her face. Not quite annoyance. Not quite amusement. Her eyes linger longer than they should.
Wolves don't miss much.
“Well,” she says, adjusting the strap of her bag higher on her shoulder, “Connor seems very invested in your personal milestones.”
Heat crawls up my neck.
“I think he just likes an excuse to hear his own voice,” I reply evenly.
“Mm.” She tilts her head, “Funny how he always finds one.”
Behind her, Mia lets out a quiet laugh.
I’m not stupid. I know what this is. It’s the recalculation. The moment a line is drawn, even if no one says it out loud. Not welcoming, still leaving me on the edge of the pack.
One of the netball girls glances past me, then back at Ellie. “He was staring at you in Bio.”
I close my locker slowly.
“I was dissecting a frog,” I say. “That tends to attract attention.”
They don’t laugh.
Ellie studies me for a second longer – like she’s waiting for me to claim something. To smirk. To preen.
I don’t.
The silence stretches.
“Anyway,” she says eventually, pushing off the radiator. “Just don’t act surprised when people start getting the wrong idea.”
“And what idea is that?” I ask, before I can stop myself.
Her smile is small. Polite. Sharp at the edges.
“That you like being looked at.”
They walk off together, their voices lowering the second they’re out of arm’s reach.
I stand there for a moment, the corridor noise swelling around me.
I don’t like being looked at.
I like being chosen, included.
There’s a difference.
And today, apparently, everyone can see me. Just not for the reasons I wish they would.
As I head to class, someone whistles quietly under their breath as I walk down the corridor, and I feel the sound like a brush of fingers along my spine.
“Happy birthday,” a boy from my class says when he catches up with me outside English. His smile lingers too long. “Eighteen, right?”
“Yes.”
“Finally legal,” He smirks, probably expecting me not to hear – but somehow, I did.
The word makes my stomach tighten.
What's with everyone today.
I shrug it off because that’s what’s expected of me – because I’ve learned that discomfort, when wrapped in humour, passes faster. The human, ever the source of amusement. Disposable. Entertaining.
The attention feels sharper now.
Like being placed under brighter lights.
Still not part of the fold, just an interesting plaything.
I notice a difference there too in the way people are looking at me. Boys I’ve known for years glance twice now. Conversations pause as I pass by to my desk.
In English, my senses overload for half a heartbeat – chalk scraping the board, the scent of rain drifting in through an open window.
For a fleeting moment I feel a change – like earlier in the bathroom mirror.
I wait. Hopeful.
For warmth. For strength. For anything.
But the feeling passes.
Just like that.
By home-time, the truth settles in.
Nothing has changed.
It's all in your head, Gabi.
No shift. No awakening. No sudden understanding of the world I orbit but never quite touch. Wolves come into their full power by eighteen. They feel it in their bones.
The dream was just that, a dream.
It presses into my thoughts – not as promise, but as reminder.
Of what I am not.
I don’t know why I thought I’d be different.
But I did.
And that, more than anything else, hurts.