The Boy That stayed

Chapter Seven - NOTHING FELT THE SAME AGAIN

I woke up the next morning with a headache.

remembered crying myself to sleep after everything that had happened the day before.

For a few seconds, I lay still, staring at the ceiling, trying not to remember.

But the memories came anyway.

The classroom, papers, whispers.

The way people had looked at me.

Tessa.

I closed my eyes again.

A tear slipped down my cheek.

I didn't wipe it away.

I was too tired.

Too tired to cry properly. Too tired to be angry. Too tired to understand how someone I had trusted so completely could have done something like that to me.

I had told her everything.

Not because I wanted attention.

Not because I wanted anyone to feel sorry for me.

I had told her because she was my friend.

Because for the first time in a long time, I thought I had someone I could trust.

My father had died when I was young. Long before Tessa ever came into my life.

The grief had followed me for years.

There were things about his death that I had never told anyone. Things I couldn't explain without feeling like the little girl who had lost him all over again.

And somewhere along the way, I had started taking pills.

Secretly.

Nobody knew.

Not even Mum.

She would never have allowed it. She didn't know because I had hidden it from her.

I had hidden everything.

Until Tessa.

I had trusted her enough to tell her.

And now the whole school knew.

I turned my face into my pillow.

For the first time, I wondered if trusting someone had been a mistake.

Maybe people were safer when they knew nothing about you.

Maybe secrets were safer inside your own heart.

Maybe I should have kept everything there.

When I finally got out of bed, Mum was already downstairs.

She looked at me as soon as I walked into the kitchen.

Her eyes softened.

"Maya."

"I'm fine."

She didn't even ask the question.

I knew what she wanted to ask.

She wanted to know why I looked like I hadn't slept.

She wanted to know why I hadn't spoken much the night before.

She wanted to know why something about me had suddenly changed.

But she didn't know.

She couldn't.

She didn't know about the pills.

She didn't know what Tessa had done.

She didn't know that I felt as though the entire world had seen a part of me that I had spent years trying to hide.

She only knew that her daughter was hurting.

And somehow, that made me feel worse.

Mum placed breakfast in front of me.

"Eat something."

I stared at the plate.

"I'm not hungry."

"You need to eat."

I picked up the spoon just to make her happy.

I took one bite.

She watched me.

"You know you can talk to me, right?"

My throat tightened.

I nodded.

"Yeah."

But I couldn't.

Not about this.

I couldn't tell her that Tessa had taken something I had trusted her with and turned it into something the entire school could laugh about.

So I finished pretending to eat.

Then I picked up my bag.

"I'm going to school."

Mum looked at me for a long moment.

"Okay."

I walked out before she could ask anything else.

School felt different.

Or maybe I was the one who had changed.

The moment I entered the gate, I felt eyes on me.

I kept my head down.

I heard whispers.

I heard laughter.

I didn't know whether every laugh was about me, but after what happened, it felt like it was.

I walked faster.

Someone said my name behind me.

I pretended not to hear.

Someone else whispered something.

I pretended not to hear that either.

I had learned something very quickly.

When people know your pain, they don't always treat it gently.

Sometimes they turn it into entertainment.

And I wasn't going to give them anything else.

I reached my classroom.

I sat down.

There was an empty seat beside me.

Tessa's seat.

I looked at it for a few seconds.

Then I looked away.

She wasn't there.

And somehow, that hurt.

I hated that it hurt.

After everything she had done, some stupid part of me still wanted her to walk through that door.

Maybe she would come and apologize.

Maybe she would say she hadn't meant it.

Maybe she would tell me that she was sorry.

Maybe she would somehow make everything right.

But she didn't.

And I knew she wasn't going to.

That was when I realized that I had really lost her.

Not because she had stopped being my friend.

But because the person I thought she was had never existed in the way I believed.

Or maybe she had.

Maybe that was what made it worse.

After that, I stopped talking.

Not just to Tessa.

To everyone.

But there wasn't really anyone left to talk to anyway.

Tessa had been my only friend.

I didn't have another person waiting for me at lunch.

No one saved me a seat.

No one called me after school.

No one asked me to hang out.

No one sent me messages asking if I was okay.

The friendship I had depended on had disappeared, and I didn't have another one to fall back on.

So I learned to be alone.

I ate alone.

Walked alone.

Studied alone.

Went home alone.

At first, being alone felt unbearable.

Eventually, it became normal.

I stopped expecting people to notice me.

I stopped expecting anyone to care.

And most importantly, I stopped giving anyone a reason to know me.

Because if nobody knew me, nobody could use my secrets against me.

The rest of senior year passed strangely.

I was there every day.

But I wasn't really there.

I attended classes.

I copied notes.

I wrote examinations.

I submitted assignments.

I answered questions when teachers called my name.

But I felt like I was watching someone else live my life.

I would sit in class and stare at the board without hearing a word.

Sometimes a teacher would call my name twice before I realized they were speaking to me.

"Maya?"

I would blink.

"Yes, ma."

"Are you listening?"

"Yes."

Another lie.

I became very good at lying.

"I'm fine."

"I'm just tired."

"I forgot."

"I didn't hear you."

"I'm okay."

Those words became easier to say than the truth.

Sometimes, in the middle of class, my thoughts would wander back to Dad.

It happened without warning.

I would see something—a father picking up his daughter after school, a man laughing with his child, someone wearing a shirt that reminded me of him—and suddenly my chest would hurt.

I missed him.

I had always missed him.

But after what happened with Tessa, the grief felt different.

It felt raw again.

Because she had exposed something that wasn't just about pills.

She had exposed the reason behind them.

She had exposed the part of me that had never learned how to live with losing him.

That was the part nobody understood.

I wasn't just ashamed.

I was heartbroken.

And sometimes I was angry.

Sometimes I was angry at Dad for dying.

Sometimes I was angry at myself for not being stronger.

And sometimes I was angry at Tessa for knowing exactly where I was most vulnerable and hurting me there anyway.

Mum noticed the change.

She noticed everything.

She noticed that Tessa's name disappeared from our house.

Before, I used to talk about her all the time.

"Tessa said this."

"Tessa and I did that."

"Tessa thinks..."

Then suddenly, nothing.

One evening, Mum asked,

"How's Tessa?"

My hands stopped moving.

I looked down at my food.

"She's fine."

"Are you two still close?"

"No."

She looked at me.

"Did something happen?"

I shook my head.

"Nothing."

She didn't believe me.

I could see it in her face.

But she didn't force me.

Maybe she knew I wasn't ready.

Maybe she was afraid that if she pushed too hard, I would shut her out completely.

So she simply nodded.

"Okay."

That night, when I went to my room, I cried.

Not because Mum had asked.

Because she hadn't asked again.

Because a part of me wished she would have forced me to talk.

As the months passed, I became quieter.

The school year moved toward its end.

Everyone talked about what came next.

University.

Graduation.

Prom.

The future.

I listened to them talk about their lives while feeling as though mine had been paused.

People seemed excited.

I wasn't.

I couldn't even imagine being excited about anything.

I was just trying to make it through each day.

There were mornings when I didn't want to get out of bed.

There were afternoons when I couldn't wait to go home.

There were nights when I stared at the ceiling and wondered if I would ever feel normal again.

Sometimes I asked myself whether I would ever trust someone again.

The thought scared me.

Because I didn't know.

Tessa had been the one person I thought I could tell anything.

If I couldn't trust her, who could I trust?

I didn't know.

Maybe I couldn't trust anyone.

Maybe I shouldn't.

So I stopped trying.

One afternoon, I walked through the school corridor alone.

Students were laughing around me.

Someone was talking about plans for after graduation.

Someone else was excited about university.

I passed a group of girls taking pictures.

I watched them for a second.

They looked happy.

Carefree.

Normal.

I wondered what it felt like to be that kind of person.

To have friends.

To laugh without wondering who was watching.

To have someone you could call when you were hurting.

I looked away.

I didn't want to feel jealous.

But I did.

Then I heard laughter behind me.

My heart tightened automatically.

I kept walking.

I didn't turn around.

I wasn't going to give anyone the satisfaction of seeing me react anymore.

That was how I survived.

I became a ghost.

I went to school.

I did what I needed to do.

And I left.

Every day.

Over and over again.

Until senior year was almost over.