Chapter Twelve:Exposed
767 Words
The storm came sooner than Racheal expected.
It was a Monday morning, heavy with clouds, the kind of day when the air itself felt tired. She trudged into school, clutching her worn bag to her chest, bracing herself for the usual stares and whispers. But the silence that greeted her was worse.
Students lined the hallway, their eyes fixed on her, their mouths twisted into cruel smirks. Some held their phones high, screens glowing. Others covered their mouths, laughing into their palms.
"What?" she whispered, her steps faltering.
And then she saw it. Her phone buzzed in her pocket, and when she pulled it out, the school group chat lit up the screen. Dozens of messages scrolled past, each one louder than the last. Screenshots. Pages. Her handwriting. Her journal.
Every word she had ever written was there—her crush on Jason, her dreams of singing, her prayers to disappear, her deepest wounds.
> "I wish I wasn't here. I wish I could disappear. Even my family hates me."
"Sometimes I wonder if anyone will ever love me, or if I'm too ugly, too fat, too worthless."
Her secrets, ripped out of her soul, now passed around like cheap gossip.
The laughter started slowly, then rose into a wave.
"Did you see what she wrote? She actually thinks she can sing!"
"She said Jason was her first love—oh my God, that's hilarious!"
"She literally begged to disappear. Honestly, she should."
Jason himself stood at the far end of the hall, his arm slung casually around another girl's shoulders. He smirked when their eyes met. "Told you she was pathetic."
The words hit harder than fists.
Racheal's knees buckled. Her bag slipped from her shoulder, spilling books across the floor. No one bent to help. Phones hovered above her like vultures circling a dying body, recording every second of her humiliation.
Her supposed best friend, Liam, pushed through the crowd. For a brief, desperate second, her heart leapt—maybe he'd defend her, maybe someone would finally stand by her.
But then he smirked too. "You should've been more careful, Rach. Not everything's meant to be written down." His voice carried, sharp and cold. "Honestly, I don't blame them for laughing."
It felt like a knife straight through her chest. Liam, the one person she had trusted, had betrayed her too. She didn't know if he had shared the journal himself or simply abandoned her when she needed him most, but the result was the same: she was utterly alone.
Tears blurred her vision, but she refused to let them see her break. Gathering her books with shaking hands, she forced herself to stand.
"Aw, don't cry, fatty," someone jeered.
"Maybe she'll write another poem about it!" another laughed.
The world tilted around her. She wanted to scream, to claw at her skin, to vanish into the ground. But her legs carried her forward, one stumbling step at a time, until she broke through the crowd and fled.
In the bathroom, she locked herself into the farthest stall and collapsed onto the toilet seat, her chest heaving, her face buried in her hands. The walls felt like they were closing in. Every laugh from the hallway echoed through the tiles, every whisper another blade.
How could they be so cruel? How could her own family do this to her?
Her hands trembled as she reached for her bag. The journal was gone, stolen, violated. The only safe place she had ever known had been turned into a weapon.
She wanted to tear herself apart, to scream until her voice broke. Instead, she pulled out a scrap of paper from her notebook and began to write. Her words shook across the page:
> They win. I don't matter. Maybe they're right. Maybe I should disappear.
But then, as the ink smeared beneath her tears, another thought came. A whisper inside her chest, small but stubborn: Sing.
She closed her eyes, pressing her hand against her throat, feeling the vibration of her breath. Even here, even shattered, her voice was still hers. It was the only thing no one could steal—yet.
The bell rang. She stayed in the stall, gripping the scrap of paper in her hand, her heart in pieces.
Somewhere out there, her siblings were laughing. Somewhere out there, Jason was bragging. Somewhere out there, Liam was pretending to be innocent.
And Racheal sat in the silence, broken but alive, clinging to the fragile thread of her voice.
She didn't know it yet, but this was only the beginning of her darkest days.
- Writer
