CHAPTER 5
851 Words
The hoodie didn’t feel safe anymore.
Avery pulled it tighter around her face, but it was like trying to hide behind smoke. Useless. Everyone could still see her.
Everyone was seeing her.
Avery walked into school with her head low, her jaw tight, and a bruise still blooming along her cheekbone from yesterday’s gym class.
Yesterday.
She hated that word now.
Yesterday had been the day the invisible girl burned down the gym.
And today?
She felt like an inside joke and the world was in on it
And her hoodie? It didn’t hide her anymore. It highlighted her- the hunched shoulders, the stiff walk, the way she refused to look up.
She felt their eyes. Like blades. Like heat. Like spotlight.
She heard them, whispers on the edge of laughter.
“Is that her?”
“That’s the girl who screamed at Jackson.”
“She lost it.”
“I heard she cried. In front of everyone.”
Lola found her near the stairwell, grinning like she’d won the lottery.
“There she is,” she said, nudging her. “School’s favorite storm cloud.”
Avery didn’t respond.
“You, okay?” Lola asked, softer now.
“No.”
Lola gave her a look. “Wanna talk about it?”
“No.”
Lola sighed dramatically. “Then can I at least high-five you? You exploded. You were like, boom- ‘f**k you, Jackson’- and everyone just froze. It was hot.”
Avery didn’t answer. Her throat was closing again.
Lola paused, reading her silence.
“…You regret it?”
Avery’s eyes flicked up, scanning the hallway, the hallway that felt too loud and too quiet at the same time.
“I don’t know,” she whispered.
Because the truth was messier than she could say out loud. She’d wanted to disappear for years, and then POOF one explosion later, and now she was famous. Not the cool kind of famous. Just… exposed.
Naked. Vulnerable. Like everyone finally saw her, but only through the lens of a breakdown.
Lola offered her a quiet high-five.
Avery raised her hand, barely touched palms.
The bell rang.
The hallway split like a tide, and Avery got pulled along with it- locker doors clanging shut, shoes squeaking on tile, laughter bouncing off lockers like bullets.
She made it into her classroom, stepped in, and froze.
There he was.
Leaning against the teacher’s desk like he owned the place.
Jaxon creed.
In her classroom.
What the actual fuck
Her heart slammed so hard in her chest she thought it might bruise her ribs.
She almost turned around and walked out. Almost.
But she didn’t.
Because that would’ve been more humiliating.
He looked up like he’d been waiting.
His eyes flicked over her hoodie, her face, her hesitation.
Then, casual as a sunbeam: “Hey.”
She blinked.
He tilted his head. “You got a name?”
Avery stared at him, every nerve ending screaming you’ve got to be kidding me.
In her head, a thousand thoughts shouted at once:
Of course he didn’t know my name, we’ve been in the same school for years, we’ve had three classes together, and he doesn’t KNOW. MY NAME.
She swallowed hard.
But her voice came out anyway. Small. Bitter. “Avery.”
He nodded. Like he was saving it. Filing it away somewhere.
“I’m Jackson.”
“I know,” she snapped.
His smile didn’t flinch.
She just walked past him, heartbeat loud in her chest, and sat in the back where she always did- except now, it didn’t feel like the shadows. It felt like a spotlight.
She didn’t have time to spiral before her eyes caught movement, and then she felt it.
Tiara.
Standing by the door.
Flawless as always. Braids laid, nails blood-red, eyes like bullets.
And she was staring right at her.
Tiara wasn’t subtle. She didn’t need to be.
And everyone knew about her and Jackson’s thing.
Not a relationship, no.
It was worse than that.
It was a claim.
A possessive, toxic, unspoken contract that everyone at Haversely high respected. The kind of “thing” where Tiara showed up at Jackson’s parties without an invite and dared anyone to question it. The kind of “thing” that meant you didn’t breathe too close to him if you wanted to keep your social life intact.
She saw the way he looked at Avery, like he was curious.
Like she mattered.
And Tiara?
Tiara didn’t take kindly to curiosity.
Especially when it wasn’t aimed at her.
Avery looked away.
This wasn’t how she wanted to be noticed.
---
That day, classes blurred. Her stomach twisted. Her head buzzed. She couldn’t remember what subject she sat through after homeroom or what lunch even tasted like. She just knew the world had tilted.
And she wasn’t ready to live in it.
By the time the last bell rang, she was already walking fast down the back stairwell, hoodie up, headphones in, music off.
She didn’t want to hear anything, not even the noise she picked.
Because today had been loud enough.
- Writer
