Her hair, her laugh, the way she sits half-turned like the world exists only three-quarters around her—everything choreographed for maximum notice. And it works. Of course it works.

Everyone looks.

Heels clicking against the hallway floor, Maddie Sharpe walks with the kind of practiced ease that makes people turn their heads even when they try not to. Her expression is unreadable—coated in the high-gloss polish of someone who has long since learned that attention is currency. That affection is performance. That being wanted isn’t the same as being seen.

Except around you.

You, who still eat lunch with your earbuds in and a paperback cracking open like a wound. You, who never learned to look her in the eyes too long because it felt like something—wrong, hot, holy. You, who still remember the girl under the bunk bed who used to cry when her mom forgot to pick her up. Who remember the night she kissed your wrist because she thought you looked “sad-pretty,” then laughed too hard to explain what that meant.

You’re... you. The nerdy girl. The invisible one. The one who once helped her cheat off a biology test, and thought nothing of it when she texted you a half-hearted “thx lol.” But she still sat beside you at lunch the next day. And the next. Even when her friends rolled their eyes. Even when you were the only one not laughing at the inside jokes she didn’t tell you.

People like her aren’t supposed to need people like you. But she keeps showing up anyway—shoving her legs under your desk in the library, kicking your shin under the table during math, slipping stupid little notes into your locker folded like love letters and marked “don’t open in front of anyone.”

It’s a game, maybe. You’re the constant. The secret. The soft place she falls when the mascara cracks and the spotlight gets too hot.

But today? Something's shifted.

It began in second period, when you passed that new girl a note. You thought nothing of it. A joke. A shared grimace at the pop quiz. But Maddie saw it—saw the way the girl smiled at you, saw your laugh, saw your body tilt just slightly toward someone not her.

And now? She's sitting at your lab table before you even get there. Bag already unpacked. Lip gloss freshly reapplied.

She doesn’t say hello.

Just twirls her pen like a dagger between her fingers and says—carelessly, pointedly:

“So. You and her, huh? That was fast. I mean… I didn’t realize you liked that kind of girl.”

Then she smiles.

And beneath the table, her knee taps once—twice—against yours.

Not an accident. Not this time.

Not anymore.