It’s crazy how the one person who is suppose to love you the most, is the one who destroys you the fastest.
I just hate that for me, it’s my mom.
Chapter Six
Fake Friends
B
y senioryear, everything feels different. The halls I used to run through with my friends feel smaller now, tighter—like the walls themselves are trying to push me out. We’re still technically a group—but it’s not the same.
Little things I used to brush off, now stings.
A side comment. A secret laugh. An inside joke I’m not part of. It all piles up like bricks on my chest.
Senior year is suppose to be the time of our lives. But instead, it feels like a countdown. My independence is coming sure, but every time I’m home—or stuck alone with my thoughts—the weight of it all gets heavier.
My mom never lets me forget how much she can’t wait for me to turn eighteen. Consistently reminding me I’ll never be enough. Not for her or anyone. And atschool I start to wonder if my friends will even be around after graduation or if they’ll just fade into my past like everybody says high school friends do.
On the surface, I play it safe and act normal.
But underneath, I feel myself falling apart.
The first thing my mom forced me to do after I turned sixteen was get a job at Eddie’s Fries and Shakes—and I hate her everyday for it.
A job meant no more after-school hanging out with boys, no more weekend parties—-no more teenage freedom. And since I completed summer school, I get out of school earlier than most of the other students, which makes me their perfect candidate for afternoon shifts.
Translation—no fucking life.
But making my own money also meant power—real power. It’s how I bought my first car.
Still, the more I work, the more it feels like I’m the only one who has to grow up fast. My friends keep living like nothing’s changed, while I’m scrubbing counters and serving fries too assholes.
Weeks blur into months, and somewhere along the way, I get pushed to the side. The group chat that used to blow up my phone is now dead quiet, filled with plans that clearly don’t include me.
And when I do chime in, their replies are dry—if they even bother replying at all.
They say I’m always working, but really it’s just an excuse to leave me out.
They didn’t used to be like this. We were supposed to be close—real friends, the kind who showed up no matter what. But lately, it’s like something’s switched. It even shifts at school too—Jordan and Samantha are suddenly attached at the fucking hip, whispering at lunch, posting pictures of movie nights—parties I wasn’t invited to.
And that’s what cuts the deepest—Jordan, my so-called best friend. Of everyone, she’s the one I thought would never switch up.
But now she looks right through me, like I was never anything to lose in the first place.
I can’t stop myself from questioning it all. Am I really that easy to replace? Is it because of my job—because I can’t hang out like I used to? Did I ruin things without even realizing it? Do all those years mean nothing—sleepovers, vacations with her family, sharing the same fucking bed for a whole summer? Did it all really vanish the second I couldn’t be her full-time sidekick anymore?
The questions eat me alive. And I don’t dare ask her—not when her actions already say everything. Hearing the rejection out loud would hurt worse than the silence. So I stay quiet and just watch, pretending I’m okay, even though deep down I already know—the girl who once felt like my sister found someone better.
? ? ?
Now that it’s senior year, the betrayal’s impossible to ignore. I’ve got first period with Samantha.
Just my fucking luck.
Thankfully, Miss Hernandez is our teacher—and she’s the coolest teacher I’ve had since second grade. She wears jeans every day like the dress code stopped applying to her years ago, which, honestly, it probably has—she’s been teaching for over sixteen years. That’s almost as long as I’ve been alive, which is crazy to think about.
Her classroom feels more like a museum than a high school classroom, every inch of the walls covered in posters and random fake ancient artifacts.
