CHAPTER 2 – No One Tells Me Things
1100 Words
Imani West didn’t miss things.
That was kind of her whole thing. She noticed patterns before they formed. She corrected teachers’ typos without making them feel bad. She could tell when someone was lying by how they held their shoulders, how long they blinked.
So when she heard it—just a whisper, just behind her—she didn’t flinch, but she heard every word.
"That’s him, right? Jordan?"
"She posted it last night. He was with Imani after."
The molecules on the page stopped moving.
Imani stared at her AP Chem worksheet, pen poised. The equation she was balancing stared back, frozen in limbo: C3H8 + O2 → CO2 + H2O.
She tightened her grip on the pen, drew in a quiet breath, and finished the reaction without hesitation. Perfectly balanced, as always.
The girls behind her kept whispering, assuming Imani couldn’t hear them. Or worse—assuming she already knew.
So she let them.
Imani didn't turn. Didn't blink. She flipped to the next page in the packet, like the steady hum of her mind hadn’t just short-circuited.
Be unbothered. Be above it.
She could check later. Maybe it was old. Maybe it wasn’t even him. Jordan wasn’t exactly a unicorn. Guys had duplicates.
Except he didn’t.
Not the way he said her name. Not the way he touched her.
Not the way she felt when he looked at her like she wasn’t just smart—but rare.
The bell rang.
Papers shuffled. Backpacks zipped. Laughter flared, too sharp. Imani filed everything into its correct folder, slipped her phone into her lab coat pocket, and walked out without saying a word.
The girls' third-floor bathroom had frosted windows and a light buzz in the ceiling. Most students avoided it because the lighting made selfies look weird and no one cleaned the mirrors.
Imani liked it precisely for those reasons.
She locked the door to the last stall, sat on the closed toilet lid, and pulled out her phone. Her hands didn’t shake. They never did.
Snapchat was already open.
The video had been saved. Downloaded. Screen-recorded. Reposted.
The clip was chaotic—a pep rally, Rio Del Sol High, probably Friday. Someone had stitched it into a montage set to a sped-up pop song. Glitter. Cheerleaders. A marching band line.
And then: the kiss.
Not front and center. Not the focus. Just in the background, like it wasn’t supposed to be the thing.
But it was Jordan.
Jordan Maddox, tilted slightly, one hand on the waist of a girl Imani had never seen before. He kissed her like it was easy. Familiar. Not a secret.
Imani froze the frame. Zoomed in.
The girl wore a Rio Del Sol T-shirt, coral-tipped ponytail high on her head. She looked comfortable. Effortless. Like she belonged.
Imani checked the timestamp.
Friday. 2:38 PM.
He had kissed her two hours later.
Behind the robotics lab.
He’d brought boba and a sweater she’d once said she liked. They’d talked about solar flares. He’d kissed her slow, like the world could wait.
Imani stared at the screen. Tried to do the math. Tried to find a loophole.
But the numbers didn’t lie.
She’d just never asked the right questions.
The stall door in front of her was covered in carved initials and marker swirls. Someone had drawn a raccoon with a crown and labeled it: "Queen of Trash."
Imani closed her eyes.
Queen of Trash.
God.
She wasn’t even mad yet. Just—
Stupid.
That was the part that stung. Not that he kissed someone else. But that she didn’t know. That she hadn’t even suspected.
No one told her things.
Not because she wasn’t observant. But because people just… assumed she wouldn’t care. Or worse, that she was too busy to be included.
Maybe she was.
Maybe she should’ve paid more attention. Noticed when he stopped texting first. When his replies got shorter. When he smiled at her like he was memorizing her—not savoring her.
She unlocked her camera roll. Scrolled until she found it.
A photo from last week. Jordan, blurry from laughing, sitting on the hood of her car, holding up a test tube she’d stolen from the chem lab as a joke.
She deleted it.
The phone asked:
Also delete from Recently Deleted?
She hit yes.
It wasn’t rage. Not yet.
It was precision.
One file at a time.
Back in the hallway, voices blurred together. Someone mentioned the video again near the lockers. Imani didn’t look.
She pulled her curls into a tighter puff, pressed her earbuds in, and walked down the stairs like she wasn’t bleeding internally.
In the STEM wing, everything smelled like whiteboard cleaner and old carpet. She headed toward the engineering lab, then paused.
Her hand dipped into her pocket.
There it was.
The tiny enamel pin Jordan gave her a month ago. A blue molecule—benzene ring—with a smiling face in the center. “Because you’re chemistry, baby,” he’d said, stupidly, grinning like he knew it was corny.
She’d kept it in her lab coat. Used to glance at it before every exam. A ritual.
Now it just felt radioactive.
Imani walked to the trash can outside the lab.
Dropped it in.
Didn’t look back.
Third period was already halfway over. She slid into her seat without apology.
Mr. Brennan raised an eyebrow. “Nice of you to join us, Imani.”
“Had to recalibrate,” she said simply.
The class chuckled. Brennan didn’t push it.
Her lab partner, Jordan (not that Jordan, thank god), passed her a set of notes. She nodded.
As the lesson resumed, Imani took out her notebook. Opened to a fresh page.
She didn’t write the date. Didn’t copy the warm-up prompt.
Instead, she wrote a name:
Lia?
That was the guess floating in her feed. Rio Del Sol. Ponytail. Laughing.
Imani didn’t know her.
But someone had to.
And next time?
She wasn’t going to be last to know.
⋆⸻⸻⋆
That night, in her room, Imani lay on her bed staring at the ceiling. Her LED lights glowed soft green. Her laptop hummed quietly on her desk, half a screen away from solving a physics problem she no longer cared about.
Her phone buzzed.
A notification: someone had reposted the kiss again. This time with slow-mo edits and a remix. The comments were vicious.
She watched it. One last time.
Then she saved it.
Not because she wanted to dwell.
But because evidence matters.
And she wanted to know what else Jordan was hiding.
Imani West didn’t miss things.
Not anymore.
- Writer
