SPOTLIGHT AND SHADOWS
735 Words
Chapter Eight: “Spotlights and Shadows”
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Raina was trying again.
New lip gloss, fresh eyeliner, a silly little charm bracelet she saw in a t****k — something that screamed “playful, not desperate.”
She caught Jayden near the lockers before rehearsal.
“Hey,” she said, walking beside him. “Wanna grab a drink before Lit club?”
Jayden barely looked her way. “Nah, I’m cool.”
She laughed anyway, pretending not to feel the sting. “We could run lines or whatever. I found this funny remix of Juliet’s monologue—”
Jayden kept walking.
She stood still, cheeks burning.
That’s when Malik slid beside her, slow and chill.
“You good?”
Raina forced a smile. “Yeah. Just trying to shine.”
Malik looked at her properly this time. Like really looked.
“You know, the you I knew last year wouldn’t chase someone who doesn’t see her.”
Raina blinked. “Who says I’m chasing?”
He smirked, soft. “Then let yourself be caught.”
---
Across the field, rehearsal chaos was in full swing.
Jayden sat sketching under a tree, earbuds in.
Janelle leaned near the edge of the basketball court, pretending not to scroll past Zeek’s i********:.
When he walked up with a speaker in hand, her expression didn’t change — but her thumb paused mid-scroll.
“I brought audio for the scene,” Zeek said, holding it out.
“You actually prepared?” she asked, raising a brow.
“I take things seriously. Sometimes.”
She c****d her head. “You know we’re not really friends, right?”
He met her gaze. Calm. Direct. “Yet.”
---
Under the bleachers, Nina was hiding. Again.
Not from people.
But from her past.
She sat with her hoodie halfway off, trying to write a poem that wouldn’t come out.
Her hands shook. Not visibly. But enough that she noticed.
She was doing better.
Mostly.
Until last week… when she heard someone behind her whisper:
> “Wonder if she’s still that freak from the video.”
That word — video — had the power to gut her instantly.
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FLASHBACK
8 months ago
“Turn the lights lower,” she giggled.
She was in his room. KC. Final year. Charming smile, smooth voice, way too old for her 15-year-old self.
They weren’t naked. Not fully.
But she was in his hoodie. Nothing under it.
They were tangled on his bed, kissing lazily, the camera resting on his nightstand — “just for us,” he’d said.
She trusted him.
She told him her fears.
Her family pressure.
How she sometimes cried in dance class when no one watched.
He recorded it all.
Even the moment she pulled the hoodie down slightly.
Even the soft moan she didn’t know escaped when he kissed her neck.
“I look ugly,” she laughed on camera.
“You look real,” he whispered back.
But after they broke up—after she found out he kissed some girl at a party—he leaked it. To his group chat.
For “proof.”
It spread within a day.
Eden Crest was vicious. Screenshots. Memes. Nicknames.
“Miss Netflix and Chill.”
“Naija Zendaya.”
“That choir girl turned cinema.”
Even girls turned on her.
Nobody defended her.
Nobody stopped it.
So she stopped… being her.
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PRESENT DAY
Nina closed her eyes.
The script in her hand blurred. Her throat burned.
“Hey.”
She turned. Jayden.
“You okay?”
“I said I don’t do this.”
“Do what?”
“Public things. Performance. Pretending like people don’t see me.”
Jayden frowned. “You don’t have to pretend anything.”
“You don’t get it.”
“Try me.”
She stared at him. Cold. Broken. Barely breathing.
“I gave someone a part of me. He turned it into a movie night.”
Jayden blinked. Realization hitting him harder than he expected.
“I didn’t mean—”
“You didn’t do it,” she said. “But you remind me of the type that would.”
Silence.
Then:
“I wouldn’t,” he said, quietly.
She looked away. “Everyone says that. Until they do.”
Then she walked past him, pulling the hoodie tighter.
Jayden didn’t follow.
For once, he knew silence was the only right answer.
- Writer
