Kayla pov
I sat alone at our usual cafeteria table, pushing food around my plate without much interest in actually eating it, my ankle throbbing dully beneath the table from the awkward twist it had taken in the hallway.
The cafeteria buzzed around me the way it always did, loud and ordinary, trays clattering, laughter rising and falling in waves, none of it matching the unsettled hum still sitting low in my chest.
I kept replaying Chelsea's voice, the particular cadence of that murmured apology, trying to place it against some memory that refused to fully surface no matter how hard I chased it.
Maybe I was overthinking everything. Maybe grief and stress and weeks of feeling watched had finally curdled into something closer to paranoia than genuine instinct.
"How bad is it?"
I looked
