Chapter 23
Some Scars Don't Show Until You're Alone.
I don't know when it got worse.
The emptiness.
The exhaustion.
The way I'd stare at the ceiling for hours and feel like I wasn't even inside my body anymore.
I smiled in pictures.
Told people I was fine.
Made jokes, wore mascara, got good grades.
But underneath it all?
I was quietly falling apart.
Fatima didn't know.
Nobody did.
Because I never let them.
When the thoughts got too loud, I scratched at my arms beneath my sleeves.
that left scars.
Just enough to feel something.
So i felt in control of something. Anything.
I never told anyone.Not even Fatima
Not even her.
Because what would I even say?
"Hey, remember that boy I never got over? He broke me in ways I'm too ashamed to say out loud."
No.
I kept it in.
Where it belonged.
It was a weekend.
Almost the end of the year.
My last year of high school.
Before college.
Before freedom.
I had plans.
To leave.
To disappear.
To become someone new.
But fate had other plans.
We were in the car.
Me, my mom, and my little sister.
I was scrolling through my phone, trying not to feel anything.
Until I noticed the road.
My stomach dropped.
That curve.
That left turn.
That alleyway past the bakery.
No. No no no.
"Why are we going this way?" I asked, suddenly breathless.
"We need to pick up a few books near your old school," my mom said casually.
My chest tightened.
I couldn't breathe.
Not at all.
Everything came back.
The smell of the flowershop.
The classroom window I used to stare out of.
The cracked step where Keifer once tied his shoelace and grinned at me like I was a movie scene.
And that path.
The one we used to sneak through.
To get street food.
To spray-paint our names.
I looked out the window, heart racing.
And then—
I saw them.
A group of boys walking outside.
Familiar faces.
My old classmates.
But not him.
Not him.
My vision blurred.
I blinked hard.
But the ache in my chest — it didn't go away.
That night, I broke again.
Curled up in bed, hugging a pillow like it could hold me together.
No tears this time.
Just silence.
Numbness.
That hollow feeling that nothing — not grades, not makeup, not jokes — could fill.
The day after?
I buried myself in books.
In words.
In worlds.
I started writing stories.
Fiction.
Characters.
Loves that stayed.
Because if I couldn't have my happy ending, I'd give it to someone else.
And maybe, just maybe…
That would be enough to keep me breathing.
End of Chapter 23.