Scarlet
The final bell of high school didn’t sound like a celebration. It wasn’t loud or triumphant, or some glorious echo that made me want to toss my books into the sky like confetti. It just rang—sharper than usual, maybe—and then faded into the stale silence of a classroom that had run out of time.
I sat at my desk, fingers curled around my pen, not writing. The last exam paper was still turned face-down in front of me, and for a second, I just stared at it, like flipping it over would confirm this was really it. The end.
When I did turn it over, the words blurred for a moment.
To the beginning.
To when I walked into this school for the first time with a backpack too heavy and a name nobody here knew how to pronounce. To the whispers. The accidental stares that turned deliberate.
