One showing faint fingerprint bruises blooming across my collarbone.
Another picture’s bruising around my wrists Another of my back with every bleeding belt gash I endured that night. More pictures plastered of all the scars on my body.
X-rays showing bones that never healed properly.
My stomach drops.
The world narrows. My breath catches.
The pictures multiply the more I look around. Another on the girls’ bathroom door. Multiple pasted to lockers. One fluttering from a stairwell railing like a flag.
They’re everywhere.
Each one is a crime scene. Each one is me.
I don’t know how I move. I don’t know when I tear one from a wall, hands shaking. My fingers smudge the cheap ink like blood. My own wide eyes stare back at me from the paper — dazed, haunted.
Someone walks past me, laughing. Another turns their face away. I hear the shutter of a phone camera click.
“She’s in the hallway. She saw it!”
“Someone go get a picture—no, video it!”
A voice I don’t recognize mimics a moan. Another says loud enough for me to hear, “I heard she wanted it.”
A hand brushes my shoulder as someone walks past, whispering too close in my ear, “Did it feel good? Or just familiar?”
I whip around — no one’s there. They’re already blending into the crowd, grinning. Phones are out everywhere. Recording. Laughing.
Screens light up with my face, my body, my trauma. Spliced apart into ink and paper, like I’m not even human.
I stagger toward the nearest wall and tear another one down. My fingers tremble so hard I can’t rip it clean. The paper folds and bends and creases and still, there’s so many more.
The hallway closes in around me. Too many eyes. Too many voices.
The ground tilts. My stomach lurches. It’s hard to breathe.
And that’s when I see them. The four boys. Lined up like a painting of apathy and judgment.
Jace in his usual stance, watching a test unfold. Luca’s lips twitch with something that might be amusement or regret. I can’t tell. Noah doesn’t even blink. And Tex… his fists are balled, eyes dark, like he’s ready to swing at the world. But he doesn’t move.
Not one of them does anything. Because they did this. They wanted me to break. To leave.
I push past the whispers. Past the photos. Past the laughter and the horror and the stares. I won’t cry. Not now. Not here.
But every step burns. Every photo is a wound flayed open again. And every photo message screams the same thing:
You are not safe. You are not wanted. You are broken.
I don’t even know how I get back to my room.
Every inch of my body is buzzing.
I kick off my shoes and crawl into bed fully dressed. I drag my blanket up over my head and let the darkness swallow me whole.
For the next week,I order all my meals to my room. I email teachers saying I’m sick. Dakota comes to check on me every day, but I just can’t let her in.
I show up to training because I’m determined to keep improving. But I say nothing. I run drills. I take hits. I hit back harder. Then I leave.
