• • •
Cassian avoided me.
And I knew it immediately.
We’d spent every day together for eight years. Different schools — me at the overpriced prep school my parents paid too much for, him at public — but my parents picked us both up. He’d wait on the same corner every day, the one we passed on the way home.
He’d be there before we arrived, hands in his pockets, already talking before the door was fully open.
So the first day he wasn’t there —
I noticed.
I just didn’t say anything.
He texted me some excuse. I told myself it wasn’t a big deal.
The second day I was still fine.
My parents asked where he was and I lied.
“Said he joined a new club.”
I hated lying to them.
I never did.
But it wouldn’t be the last time I carved off a piece of myself just to keep from breaking.
• • •
The thing about anxiety is it doesn’t wait for a convenient moment.
It had been sitting on my chest all week like something with weight. Low and constant. The kind you learn to work around, to breathe through, to carry without letting it show. I’d gotten good at that. Years of practice.
I’d go through the motions.
School. Homework. Dinner. Smile when I was supposed to smile.
But underneath it the dread just — sat there.
Waiting.
Every time my parents asked about Cassian I felt it tighten.
Every time I checked my phone and there was nothing.
Every time I looked at the corner on the drive home.
Empty.
Always empty now.
By day four I stopped looking.
By day six I stopped checking my phone first thing in the morning.
I would give myself five minutes time out and then obsess the rest of the day.
