The breakup with Flash is already over when Liz Allan finds herself sitting on her bed, staring at her phone like it might spontaneously generate answers to questions she hasn't figured out how to ask yet.
No shouting. No slammed doors. No dramatic scene in the hallway at school with everyone watching and taking sides.
Just Flash saying "I think we're done here" with that particular tone that suggested he'd been planning the line for maximum impact, and Liz nodding because what else was there to do? Fight for a relationship that had stopped feeling like a relationship months ago and started feeling like a performance neither of them particularly wanted to keep giving?
So: done.
Flash had walked away looking vindicated, like he'd won something by being the one to end it first.
Liz had stood there for approximately thirty seconds processing the fact that she should probably feel worse than she did.
Then she'd gone to class.
Finished her homework during study hall.
Come home.
And now she's here, sitting on her bed at 7:43 PM on a Tuesday, staring at her phone's lock screen—a photo from three months ago, Flash's arm around her shoulders, both of them smiling for the camera at some party she barely remembers—waiting for something to hit.
Grief. Relief. Anger. Something.
Flash hasn't texted.
She tells herself she's relieved about that.
She doesn't quite believe it.
Liz's mind does what minds do when given silence and nothing productive to focus on: it rewinds.
Not the good moments—those are easy, performative, the highlights reel everyone sees. Flash buying her coffee. Flash's arm around her in the cafeteria. Flash making everyone laugh and her being the person he chose to sit next to while doing it.
The real moments. The ones nobody photographs.
Flash showing off during lunch—louder each time someone walked past, performing dominance for an audience that didn't care—and Liz laughing along even when the joke wasn't funny, even when the whole display made her cringe internally, because that's what you did. You supported your boyfriend. You laughed at his jokes. You validated him.
Even when validation felt like a full-time job with no breaks.
Arguments she let slide because it was easier. Times he'd talked over her and she'd just... stopped talking. Not because he was threatening or mean—Flash wasn't abusive, wasn't cruel, wasn't anything dramatic enough to justify leaving.
He was just loud.
Took up space easily. Made decisions without asking. Assumed his preferences were default and hers were negotiable.
And she'd let him.
Not because she loved him—though she'd told herself she did, or could, or would eventually if she just tried harder.
Because it was easier.
Easier to shrink herself to fit the space he left available than to fight for more space.
Easier to be chosen by someone loud and confident and visible than to risk being alone and invisible.
Easier to let Flash define the relationship than to define herself.
Liz pulls her knees up to her chest, wraps her arms around them, and stares at the wall.
The realization sits heavy and uncomfortable in her chest: she'd spent eighteen months making herself smaller to keep the peace with someone she didn't even particularly like.
Not because she was afraid of him.
Because she was afraid of being un-chosen.
The truth—the part Liz doesn't want to admit even to herself, the part that makes her feel shallow and weak and exactly like the kind of person she swore she'd never be—is this:
Flash made her feel important.
Not respected. God, definitely not respected.
Not understood. Flash barely listened when she talked, always waiting for his turn to speak, always steering conversations back to himself.
Not valued for who she was.
But important.
Like being next to him meant she mattered by association.
Flash Thompson was loud, visible, the kind of guy everyone knew even if they didn't like him. And being his girlfriend meant being seen. Being talked about. Being relevant in the social ecosystem of Midtown High where relevance felt like survival.
It was pathetic.
She knows it's pathetic.
But sitting here in her room at 7:56 PM with no texts from Flash and no tears on her face and no actual feelings about the relationship ending except vague relief mixed with vaguer dread—
She can't pretend it's not true.
She didn't love Flash.
She loved being chosen by him.
Loved the validation of someone that visible, that confident, that certain about everything picking her out of everyone else and saying "you're worth my attention."
Even when his attention felt more like performance than connection.
Even when she had to shrink to fit into the space his ego left available.
Even when she knew—knew—that she was using him as proof that she mattered instead of figuring out how to matter on her own terms.
The phone buzzes.
Liz's heart jumps—stupid, reflexive hope that it's Flash texting to say he made a mistake, that he wants her back, that she matters enough to fight for—
It's her mom asking if she wants Thai or pizza for dinner.
Liz types back "either's fine" and drops the phone on her bed.
The disappointment that it wasn't Flash is almost worse than the breakup itself.
Because it means she's still doing it.
Still measuring her worth by whether someone loud and certain chooses to validate her existence.
Her mind drifts—unexpectedly, unwelcome—to Peter Parker.
Not romantically. That ship sailed, sank, and is currently decomposing on the ocean floor of her past. She's not pining for her ex-friend. That's not what this is.
But the encounter outside the pharmacy keeps replaying in her head.
The way he didn't flinch.
The way he didn't shrink when she spoke.
The way he was just... there. Present. Polite. Completely unbothered by her presence or her opinions or her attempted apology.
The old Peter—the one she was friends with briefly before things imploded her need for attention, something more—that Peter would've stammered. Would've apologized reflexively. Would've made himself smaller in conversation, shoulders hunching, voice dropping, like he was perpetually bracing for criticism.
She'd found it endearing at first. Sweet. Proof that she had power in the relationship.
Then it became annoying. Then exhausting. Then a reason to leave, because how could you respect someone who apologized for existing?
But outside the pharmacy, Peter had been... different.
Not performing confidence. Not overcompensating. Not trying to prove anything.
Just calm. Neutral. The kind of presence that didn't need validation because it wasn't seeking any.
And it had unsettled her more than Flash's entire eighteen-month performance of dominance ever did.
Because Flash's loudness was predictable. Expected. The kind of behavior that fit neatly into social scripts Liz knew how to navigate.
Peter's quiet self-possession? That was something else entirely.
That was someone who'd figured out how to exist without needing external validation.
Someone who'd stopped shrinking because they'd stopped caring what other people thought of their size.
Liz envies it.
Hates that she envies it.
Hates more that she has no idea how to get there herself.
She sits with that thought for longer than comfortable.
Lets it turn over in her mind like a rock she's inspecting for the first time, seeing all the ugly things living underneath.
And slowly—painfully—a pattern emerges:
She gravitates toward loud certainty.
Toward people who take up space easily, who make decisions without hesitation, who project confidence like it's a superpower.
Flash. Before Flash, there was Marcus junior year—captain of the debate team, always three steps ahead in every argument, always right even when he was wrong. Before Marcus, there was the guy from summer camp whose name she can't even remember but whose presence had filled every room he entered.
Loud. Certain. Visible.
And Liz, orbiting around them like a moon with no light of her own, reflecting their brightness back at them and calling it identity.
She never had to define herself in those relationships.
Just be the person they chose. The proof that they were worth choosing. The validation that their confidence was justified.
Flash wasn't the problem.
He was the excuse.
The excuse not to figure out who she was when nobody was watching.
The excuse not to build an identity that didn't require someone else's attention to feel real.
The excuse not to sit with herself—with her own thoughts, her own wants, her own definition of worth—because sitting with yourself is uncomfortable and hard and requires honesty she didn't want to provide.
Easier to date someone loud.
Easier to shrink.
Easier to let their certainty fill the spaces where her uncertainty lived.
Liz drops her head to her knees, breath coming slightly harder than it should.
This is worse than the breakup.
This is realizing the breakup doesn't matter because the relationship was never about Flash at all—it was about her own inability to exist without someone else defining her existence.
Her phone is face-up on the bed, screen dark, waiting.
Liz picks it up without consciously deciding to.
Opens messages.
Scrolls to Flash's name.
Hovers over the keyboard.
She could text him. Say she overreacted. Say they should talk. Say she misses him, or misses what they had, or misses the version of herself who didn't have to think about any of this because she was too busy being Flash Thompson's girlfriend to question what that meant.
She types: *Hey*
Deletes it.
Types: *Can we talk?*
Deletes it.
Types: *I think we made a mistake*
Stares at it for ten seconds.
Deletes it.
Not out of pride.
Not because she's too stubborn to reach out first.
But because she's exhausted.
Tired of performing. Tired of shrinking. Tired of using other people as proof that she matters.
Tired of being someone's validation project while having no idea how to validate herself.
If she texts Flash, he'll respond. Probably. Maybe not immediately, but eventually, because Flash likes winning and getting his girlfriend back would feel like winning.
And they'd get back together.
And nothing would change.
She'd still be orbiting. Still reflecting. Still using his certainty to avoid confronting her own lack of it.
Still avoiding herself.
Liz closes the messaging app.
Drops the phone face-down on the bed.
Breathes.
The quiet is worse than the breakup.
Worse than the relationship.
Worse than anything Liz has felt in months, maybe years, because quiet means no distraction, no performance, no external validation to drown out the internal questions she's been avoiding.
Questions like:
Who is she when nobody's watching?
What does she actually want instead of wanting to be wanted?
What would she do if she couldn't define herself through other people's choices?
She doesn't know.
And that terrifies her more than being alone ever could.
Being alone is circumstantial. Temporary. Something that happens between relationships, between moments of visibility, between performances.
But not knowing who you are when you're alone?
That's structural.
That's the foundation being unstable.
That's realizing you've built your entire identity on other people's attention and you have no idea what's left when the attention stops.
Liz sits cross-legged on her bed, phone face-down, room quiet except for the ambient noise of her parents moving around downstairs.
No music. No TV. No scrolling through social media to see what everyone else is doing.
Just herself.
And the uncomfortable realization that she's been avoiding this exact moment—this exact silence—for years.
Using relationships as shields. Using other people's certainty as scaffolding. Using visibility as proof of existence.
Because sitting with yourself requires honesty.
Requires acknowledging the parts you don't like.
Requires building something from nothing instead of borrowing someone else's something and calling it yours.
And Liz has no idea how to do that.
Doesn't even know where to start.
Just knows that she can't keep doing this—dating loud people, shrinking herself, measuring worth by whether someone chooses to pay attention—and expecting different results.
The definition of insanity, right?
Doing the same thing over and over and expecting change?
She's been insane for years.
Just didn't notice because she was too busy being chosen.
Her phone buzzes again—mom, asking a follow-up question about dinner timing.
Liz picks up the phone, types a response, then deliberately places it face-down on her nightstand instead of keeping it in her hand.
A small thing.
Barely significant.
But it feels like something.
She doesn't feel better.
The discomfort hasn't passed. The questions haven't been answered. The pattern hasn't broken just because she's recognized it.
But she feels honest.
For the first time in years—maybe longer—she's not performing for anyone.
Not pretending to be okay when she's not.
Not using someone else's presence to avoid her own absence.
Just sitting here.
In the quiet.
With herself.
And all the uncomfortable truths that come with that.
Being alone isn't what scares her.
It never was.
What scares her—what's always scared her, underneath all the relationships and performances and desperate grabs for visibility—is the thought that she's been using other people to avoid meeting herself.
That she has no idea who she is when nobody's watching.
That all the noise and certainty and loudness she's surrounded herself with was just distraction from the silence inside her own head.
And now the distraction is gone.
Flash is gone.
The relationship is gone.
And Liz is here.
Just Liz.
Not Flash's girlfriend. Not Peter's friend. Not Marcus's debate partner or anyone's validation project.
Just herself.
And she has no idea who that is.
But maybe—maybe—that's where you start.
Not with certainty.
Not with someone else's definition.
Just with the willingness to sit in the uncomfortable silence and figure it out.
Liz pulls her laptop onto her bed, opens it, stares at the blank document she's supposed to be using for her essay.
The prompt: "Describe a time when you learned something important about yourself."
She's been avoiding it for weeks.
Kept writing bullshit about extracurriculars and leadership and all the things that sound good on paper but mean nothing.
Now, sitting here in the aftermath of a breakup that doesn't hurt the way breakups are supposed to, she types:
*I don't know who I am when nobody's watching.*
Deletes it.
Types: *I've spent years using other people to avoid myself.*
Deletes it.
Types: *Being alone scares me less than realizing I don't know how to be anything else.*
Stares at it.
Doesn't delete it.
It's honest.
Raw. Uncomfortable. Not the kind of thing admissions officers probably want to read.
But it's true.
And maybe that's enough.
Maybe honesty is where you start when you've spent years performing.
Maybe sitting with the discomfort is how you learn who you are underneath all the noise.
Maybe—
Liz saves the document.
Closes the laptop.
Lies back on her bed and stares at the ceiling.
Outside, the city continues. People moving, living, existing without needing her participation or validation.
Inside, Liz breathes.
Still uncomfortable.
Still uncertain.
Still scared.
But honest.
For the first time in longer than she wants to admit.
And that—for now—will have to be enough.