The click of the office door shutting behind me was surprisingly loud in the hushed space. The receptionist, a woman whose smile seemed to stop short of her eyes, looked up, her expression a practiced blend of politeness and barely concealed boredom.
"Ellie, right?" she asked, her gaze already drifting back to the open file on her desk.
"Your mom called. Said to let you know you're being transferred. Again."
She delivered the news with the casualness of rescheduling a dentist appointment, as if moving schools multiple times a year was a perfectly normal teenage experience.
"Effective immediately," she added, almost as an afterthought.
Of course. Always "effective immediately." Never a moment to brace yourself, never a chance to say goodbye. Not that there was anyone to say goodbye to.
I offered a small nod, or maybe just the vague suggestion of one, and turned to leave. She didn't offer me a ride home, didn't ask if I needed help packing, or if I had any questions. She just went back to typing, and I could almost hear the satisfying check as she mentally crossed me off her to-do list.
I walked out of the office and stood in the empty hallway again, blinking against the flat, unyielding brightness. The silence pressed in, a familiar companion.
I was in Seventh grade when we moved to Winter Bulls.
Mom had called it "a good fit," her voice carefully neutral, like she already knew it wouldn't be.
Back then, I still tried. God, I tried. I had a lunchbox with a Barbie collections on it. I raised my hand in class, my voice timid but hopeful, asking questions about everything.
I smiled at people in the hallways, my face aching from the effort. I was—the memory now made me cringe—friendly and carefree.
And then I bumped into Matilda.
It was so stupid, so utterly trivial. The kind of thing that should've been forgettable. But it wasn't. It was the moment everything shifted.
The bell had just shrieked, announcing the end of lunch, and before I could even put my tray away, my name was called over the loudspeaker.
"Elizabeth Young, please report to the front office."
At first, I panicked—because I always did. Then the secretary told me, flat and cheerful.
"Your dad's outside. He wants to drive you home."
I swear my heart burst like fireworks in my chest.
It had been months since I'd seen him. He was always away for work—doing whatever top-secret thing my mom also did but never talked about. I used to wait up at night just to hear the garage open, even though it never did.
And now, suddenly, he was here.
I remember running down the hall like a girl in a movie, coat half-zipped, my backpack slamming into my spine. It was freezing that day—ice on the windows, frost in the corners of the lockers—so I still had my gloves on. The soft, knitted kind. Pale gray with little pearl beads stitched around the wrists.
I wasn't looking. I was just rushing. Smiling. Happy.
And then—bam.
I crashed into her.
Matilda Renley.
It wasn't just a bump. It was a full collision. I went down hard, my butt hitting the tile with a hollow slap. My math book slid down the hall like a hockey puck. And Matilda? She hit the floor, too.
There was a long, stunned silence. Just the sound of her phone skittering away and her coat rustling as she sat up.
I scrambled toward her, words tumbling out of me like a broken vending machine.
"I'm so sorry—I wasn't looking—I didn't mean—"
She didn't answer. Not at first.
She just sat there, staring at the sleeve of her cream-colored coat.
Her eyes narrowed. Slowly. Calculating.
There was a faint brownish smear on the wool—barely noticeable—but I knew what it was. It was her makeup, smudged from where my gloved hand had tried to catch her.
I looked down at myself—and that's when I saw it; my lip gloss, smeared across the shoulder of her coat. A bright, sticky pink streak.
My stomach dropped.
"I didn't mean to—seriously, I didn't see you—I just—my dad's—he's waiting—"
She still didn't say anything.
She stood up—graceful, slow, like she was royalty rising from battle. She smoothed her coat down with the back of her palm, like my touch had infected the fabric.
Then she looked at me.
Dead in the eyes.
Not angry. Not even annoyed.
Just… disgusted.
Like I was gum on the bottom of her shoe.
She didn't scream or shove me or say some bitchy one-liner. That would've been easier.
She just turned, picked up her phone, and walked away.
And that was all it took.
By fourth period the next day, people were laughing behind my back. Someone had made a fake meme—"Ellie the Elbow Strikes Again"—with a blurry screenshot from a hallway camera. A week later, someone shoved a pair of knit gloves into my locker with a note that said:
"Keep your peasant hands to yourself."
I didn't even wear lip gloss after that.
The ironic thing was, I wasn't poor. Not by a long shot. I was probably richer than Matilda, though you'd never know it by looking at me. I just didn't act like it. My parents didn't buy me glittery backpacks or ensure I had matching lip gloss and a curated collection of "matching friends." They bought me top-tier encryption software and arranged for sketchy private tutors from Zurich, their lessons delivered over encrypted video calls. Matilda had social clout. I had clearance.
Maybe that's why she hated me so much. Because I didn't want what she had, didn't covet her carefully constructed social hierarchy. Or worse—because I never asked to take it, never tried to displace her from her gilded throne.
No one ever touched me. It wasn't that kind of bullying, the kind with bruises and black eyes. It was the insidious kind, the kind you can't report to a teacher or principal. It was the kind you felt deep in your bones, a chilling ache of non-existence.
I made it through eighth, ninth, and half of tenth grade just by keeping my head down, burying myself in headphones, and praying no one saw me. I became a master of disappearance. I stopped raising my hand. I stopped smiling. I learned to eat my lunch in bathroom stalls, in empty hallways, in locked classrooms where no one could find me.
Invisible Girl Syndrome. It's a real disease. I diagnosed myself sometime last year. And no one wanted to cure it. Not even me.
I walked down the hallway now, slower this time. Classes were still in session, their muffled sounds a distant hum. My own steps felt too loud in the quiet, each one echoing in the cavernous space.
I passed the bulletin board. Someone had scrawled a crude message on a flyer for the upcoming winter formal with a thick red marker: "WINTER FORMAL IS FOR WHORES." The school, in its typical half-hearted effort, had taped a fresh sheet of paper over the offending word. It didn't even match fonts. Typical.
As I turned the corner, a cluster of younger girls spilled out of the bathroom in a cloud of sickly sweet perfume and screechy laughter. One of them glanced at me, her expression a mix of confusion and annoyance, as if I were nothing more than a smudge on a clean glass window. None of them said anything.
I kept walking.
My locker was still open. I must've forgotten to close it when I left the first time. One of my notebooks had fallen out, landing face-down on the cold linoleum floor. I bent down, picked it up, and flipped it shut, smoothing the corner where it had gotten bent.
I stared at myself through the split glass of the mirror, and for a second, I saw two different girls.
One was the Ellie who had arrived here in seventh grade—cheerful, friendly, apologetic, desperately wanting to belong. The other was the girl standing here now.
Cold.
Tired.
Done.
"No one ever remembers the quiet girls," I muttered, my voice barely a whisper.
Then I shut the locker, this time with a definitive thunk. A finality that echoed through the empty hall.
I pulled out the keychain from my pocket. It was the one my mom had given me for my birthday last year, a little silver charm with a tiny blade edge. Just decorative, supposedly. But I'd tested it on a pencil once. It left a line as clean and sharp as a razor cut.
I curled my fingers around it, feeling the cool metal.
I knew where Matilda parked. I'd passed her sleek black Lexus SUV a thousand times, usually while getting tripped or shoulder-checked by her entourage. She always parked near the side garden, a prime spot, as if she was afraid someone might breathe on her car if she used the student lot with the rest of the peons.
I headed that way now, a strange lightness in my step. Every stride felt like a release, every second a step closer to freedom. This was it. This was my goodbye kiss to Winter Bulls High, to Matilda, to the endless cycle of invisibility.
And Matilda Renley was about to get it, scratched right across her driver's side door.