One week later
Chapter 32
SOPHIA
(One week later )
The lock clicked into place.
The sound was tiny, but in the sterile silence of the Weststarr Academy bathroom, it felt like a gunshot. I slid down the cold plastic of the cubicle door until my knees hit the floor.
You know what hurts more than the actual pain?
I curled my knees to my chest, burying my face in my school skirt.
It's pretending that it doesn't hurt at all. It's the sheer, suffocating exhaustion of having to act fine just to survive the next hour. Smiling through the stares. Walking through the whispers. Forcing your face to stay blank while a thousand wrong assumptions rip you apart from the inside out.
My hands started shaking when I balled them into fists, pressing them hard against my ribs, but the trembling wouldn't stop. My own feet had barely carried me through the hallways today, heavy as lead, betraying me with every step.
You hide the tears in front of everyone because you know crying won't change a damn thing. It won't buy your way into their world. So you swallow the acid in your throat. You choke it down until you can find a locked door.
Because this is the pain no one talks about.
It doesn't bleed.
There is no visible wound for people to pity.
It's just the quiet realization that you are utterly, completely alone in a crowded room. You are trapped on a bathroom floor because your iron shield finally shattered into pieces.
The moment I stepped into Weststarr Academy, I was a nobody .
Either ignored or judged. Bullied by classmates who smile like angels to the teachers and turn into monsters the second the door closes.
And the administration? Money speaks louder than a student's broken spirit here.
If you don't have enough of it, you don't exist.
Day after day, I wore the mask. I told myself I didn't care. I told myself the hours I spent crying myself to sleep were just because I missed my parents.
And God, I do miss them. Every second of every day. But that was only half the lie.
The other half was the terrifying reality of being entirely alone in this world.
Realizing that when you move away, friendships don't just stretch, they completely snap.
Watching people you loved fade into strangers.
Finding out a bond you would have died for wasn't even strong enough to withstand a few miles of distance.
That hurts.
And then, this week.
A sob finally broke through my teeth , a raw, ugly sound that echoed off the tiled walls. I clamped my hand over my mouth, terrified someone would walk in.
Seven days.
Seven days of watching people hide my things. Seven days of hearing names hurled at me that I've never even heard spoken out loud. Seven days of screaming into a void, trying to explain that nothing happened that night.
Seven days of planning their stupid centenary completely by myself, balancing my internship, while Lorenzo acts like I don't even exist.
He just... ignored me. Like I am nothing. Like I am air.
That is what you wanted.
I remind myself And Stand up, unsteadily, leaning my weight against the sink, forcing myself to look in the mirror. The girl looking back at me was unrecognizable. My eyes were bloodshot, my skin pale and my shoulders slumped.
I stared at my own reflection, my voice cracking into a bare, breathless whisper.
So yes. I am crying.
A hot tear spilled over my eyelash, tracing a path through the dust on my cheek.
Yes, I am breaking.
I pressed my forehead against the cold glass of the mirror, closing my eyes against the sight of my own ruin.
Yes, I am so incredibly tired.
And I would love... God, I would love to just stop my mind from betraying me.
I don't know how long I've been in here.
Long enough to have missed a class, probably more than one. With what little strength I have left, I pull off a strip of toilet paper and wipe my nose. My blouse is soaked through with tears. My eyes burn like acid.
Calm down, Sophia.
Breathe in. Breathe out. Just two more hours and then it's the weekend.
Be kind and stay strong.
Slowly, the violent shaking in my hands begins to quiet.
I fix my hair and pat down my ruined makeup as best I can. I
"You can do this, Shopi," I whisper to my reflection, the words tasting like a lie.
"You can do this."
Be kind and strong.
I remind myself one last time bevor I shoulder my bag, straighten my collar, and open the bathroom door to face my executioners.
I make my way toward the art room, my legs feeling like hollow glass.
"There you are." James appears beside me, his signature easy smile lighting up his face. "You missed chemistry with Mr. Albert. It was hilarious... he tried to do an experiment and the whole thing went completely wrong." He laughs, shaking his head, but the sound cuts off abruptly.
His eyes find mine.
"Hey." His voice drops, all the easy humor instantly vanishing. "Are you okay?"
I say nothing. I can't. But I see the exact moment his face shifts... he already knows.
"Were you crying?" he asks softly. He reaches up, his fingers brushing my jawline to tilt my chin slightly toward him, forcing me to look at him properly.
"It was just a bit much this week," I whisper, praying he will let it go. Hoping he will just nod, move on, and grant me the beautiful charity of not making me explain myself.
"Look at this." Vivienne's sharp, venomous voice cuts through the air before he can respond. She is standing a few feet away, her phone already raised like a weapon, that slow, satisfied smile plastered on her face. "I love your passion, Sophia."
She laughs, a cruel, ringing sound.
James's fingers slide away from my chin.
The moment his touch leaves me, my grip tightens automatically around my textbooks.
Because standing right behind Vivienne, completely silent, is him.
Lorenzo.
He isn't laughing. He is just standing there, dark hair falling slightly across his forehead, his jaw clenched so tight a muscle ticks in his cheek. His hands are shoved deep into his pockets.
His eyes lock onto mine with an intensity that does something sudden, violent, and entirely unwelcome to the air in my chest.
I look back. God help me, I can't stop looking back.
"Does James know you're hooking up with other guys too?" Vivienne continues, filling the suffocating silence with her own poison, the way she always does when nobody gives her the reaction she wants.
I feel James's questioning gaze drill into the side of my face.
On the other side, Lorenzo's angry glare presses in even heavier, hot and demanding.
Say something, Sophia. The voice in my head is sharp, frustrated, and frantic.
Say something!
But before I can force my lips to part, I feel something warm wrap around my trembling hand.
My eyes snap away from Lorenzo.
To James.
His fingers slide between mine.
"We don't have time for your theater, Vivienne," James says. And turns on his heel, pulling me along with him down the crowded corridor.
I follow him without a single thought, completely ignoring the dead stares throwing daggers from Lorenzo. I am more grateful than I have the words to say.
But to my surprise, he doesn't take me to the art room.
I realize it only when we stop in front of a door I don't recognize—one of the smaller, private teacher's offices. It is completely empty at this hour, the blinds half-drawn, letting in slanting bars of dusty light. He pushes the door open, waits for me to step inside, and shuts it firmly behind us.
"This isn't the art room," I say, my voice echoing in the small space.
"No," he agrees, crossing his arms over his chest.
I turn around to face him. "So, what are we doing here, James?"
"I want you to tell me the truth."
My heart drops like a stone into an abyss.
Please, James. Not now. I don't have the strength.
"I... it was just Vivienne being herself," I start, but the lie tastes ash-dry, and I can tell by the hard look in his eyes that it wasn't going to work. "It was nothing."
"Shopi." He takes a step closer, closing the distance between us.
The scent of his aftershave wraps around me.
I have to tilt my head back to look up at him.
He is much taller than I usually realize, or maybe it is just that I have never stood this dangerously close to him before.
"You've been disappearing between classes. You barely come to lunch anymore. And you just walked out of a bathroom with bloodshot eyes and hands that won't stop shaking."
He watches my face, looking for the cracks.
"What is going on between you and Lorenzo?"
Nothing.
That is the honest answer, and yet it is the ultimate lie. Nothing or at least, nothing I can ever explain, which is somehow a million times worse. Because the agonizing truth is that we have just been completely ignoring each other for a whole week.
"Nothing," I force myself to say, keeping my voice steady. "It's all just rumors."
I reach out, pressing my palm lightly against his chest to ground myself.
He stares down at me for a long, agonizing moment weighing my words, turning them over quietly in his mind. Finally, he lets out a slow, accepting nod. It is a nod that tells me he doesn't believe me for a second, but loves me enough to let it go anyway.
"Promise me," he whispers, his tone fierce. "If anything is going on... you come to me."
"I promise," I say. And I mean it. The small, relieved smile that breaks across my face is the only real thing left of me.
But the real reason I don't ask James or Maria for help, the reason I turn the agony over alone in the dark at night instead of handing it to the people who would gladly carry it for me is because I know how full their hands already are.
Maria is running herself ragged organizing the school's centenary next week.
James has the football team's final match coming up, drowning in endless schedules, strategy meetings, and brutal early-morning practices.
Both of them are already stretched to their absolute breaking points.
I can't be the thing that breaks them.
So, I carry it.
The exact same way I've been carrying everything since the day my world ended.
Art class is the only hour of the day that asks nothing of me except to be alive inside it.
I sit in my usual spot, crack open my sketchbook, and let the silence do what it always does it sink in, making the weight of the world shrink just enough for me to breathe.
For sixty minutes, my hands have a job that isn't just survival.
The room carries a heavy, productive quiet; twenty different people completely lost inside their own universes.
I don't decide what to sketch. I just let the graphite bleed onto the blank white page, drifting.
But my hands betray me. Entirely without my permission, the lines map out a sharp jawline. Then, dark hair falling messy across a forehead. Finally, a pair of eyes that stare back at me with a raw, demanding intensity.
Lorenzo.
The realization hits me like a physical blow. My pencil slips from my numb fingers, clattering loudly against the linoleum floor. I throw myself out of my seat so fast the chair legs screech against the tile.
A few heads snap up in alarm. Beside me, James looks up in confusion, his gaze already drifting down toward my desk. Before his eyes can land on the page, I slam the sketchbook closed. The sound echoes like a gunshot.
"I need the restroom," I choke out to the teacher, not waiting for an answer as I stumble backward.
I bolt from the room, my heart hammering a frantic rhythm against my ribs, entirely terrified of the truth my own hands just confessed.
What in the world is wrong with me?