The night stretched on endlessly as I sat alone in my room, the weight of everything pressing down on me like a suffocating fog. My phone buzzed intermittently, notifications from social media flooding the screen, but I couldn’t bring myself to answer a single one. I was paralyzed, staring at the glow of the screen, flicking through pictures of the girls at their sleepover.
There they were—Noor, Zenaida, Paisley, Sarai and Valencia—laughing, their faces lit up with genuine joy as if the world hadn’t just crumbled apart. They looked so at peace, so together, and it felt like the distance between us had never been greater. I saw the carefree way they embraced each other, the inside jokes, the bond that had once been mine, too. I couldn’t bring myself to scroll any further, the sting of exc
