The dull drone of Mrs. Davison's lecture on the westward expansion was a gentle lullaby, and I was deep in the sweet oblivion of not paying attention, my mind miles away, orbiting somewhere between a half-formed melody and the gnawing anxiety of another Tuesday. My pen danced across the page of my beat-up spiral notebook, tracing the outline of a distorted guitar, its strings dissolving into fragmented lyrics about feeling like a ghost in my own skin. These were the words I'd never share, the raw, clumsy confessions of a girl perpetually out of sync.
Suddenly, a sound, sharp and intrusive, tore through the classroom's hushed monotony. "Ellie Young. Please report to the office." The voice, tinny and devoid of emotion, sliced through the air like a razor, leaving a chill in its wake. It was the intercom voice, flat, tired, and so utterly bored it managed to shrink me down to an insignificant speck.
My hand froze mid-doodle, the pen tip hovering just above the page where a desperate verse about disappearing was about to be born. A ripple of whispers, a few curious glances. Heads swiveled in my direction, then quickly swiveled away. No one spoke. No one ever did. I was a momentary flicker on their radar, quickly dismissed.
With a deliberate slowness, I slid my notebook into my battered backpack, each movement measured, as if a sudden jerk would truly erase me from existence. Mrs. Davison, a woman whose life seemed to consist solely of grading papers and sighing, barely looked up from her desk. "Go ahead, Ellie," she murmured, her voice as flat as the intercom's.
I pushed back my chair. The screech of metal against linoleum echoed through the room, a jarring, unwelcome sound. A few more heads lifted, then dropped. No smiles. No worried glances. No one asked if I was okay, or if I needed anything. Not that I expected them to. I was Ellie, the transfer student, the one who existed on the periphery, a permanent outsider. I grabbed my bag, its familiar weight a small comfort, and walked out.
The hallway was a stark, almost blinding expanse of fluorescent light, the kind that leeches color from everything, turning healthy faces sallow and making everyone look like a character from a forgotten horror movie – ghosts who hadn't quite grasped their own demise. The instant the classroom door clicked shut behind me, the silence descended. It was a deep, echoing quiet, the kind that hums in your ears, making the world feel vast and empty, like walking inside a giant, humming refrigerator.
I didn't go to the office. Not right away. My feet, seemingly of their own accord, carried me a few paces down the hall. I leaned against a row of dented lockers, the cold metal a familiar comfort against my back, and just stood there. I breathed in the silence, letting it fill my lungs, a strange, suffocating peace.
Transferred again. The thought settled in my stomach, a cold, heavy knot. I knew. I always knew. It began like this every time: the sudden, unexplained call, the silent, tense ride home, and then, inevitably, a new zip code by Friday.
My mom. Her job was a mystery, cloaked in vague terms like "government-adjacent" and "classified." She'd deliver the latter with a conspiratorial wink, as if it were a thrilling secret rather than a perpetual disruption. She traveled like a shadow, packed with an unnerving efficiency, and dragged me along like an afterthought, a piece of necessary but inconvenient luggage.
I didn't bother asking what had happened this time. The script was already burned into my memory.
"Just trust me, honey."
"New opportunity."
"Better school."
"We'll settle soon."
Lies, all of them. Comforting lies, perhaps, but lies nonetheless. Soon was a word that had lost all meaning, stretched thin over years of temporary addresses and unfamiliar faces.
My locker was just a short distance away, and my legs carried me there before my mind caught up. It was one of those old-school combination locks, a finicky metal headache that always seemed to stick. I spun the dial out of habit, then paused, catching my reflection in the tiny, dented mirror taped inside the door.
The fluorescent lighting was brutally honest. My eyeliner, a feeble attempt at defiant self-expression, was smudged. My hair, usually a wild, untamed mess, had that too-clean, too-tamed look, like I hadn't even bothered to run my fingers through it, let alone intentionally mess it up. I looked like a girl trying desperately not to be seen, yet harboring a secret, aching desire to be noticed. I hated that about myself, that desperate push and pull.
My lips moved before I could stop them, a whisper so soft it was barely audible, even to me. "Walking Dead Girl." I said it quietly, just to the mirror, just to myself. No smile. No flicker of emotion. My reflection stared back, unblinking, confirming the truth.
I stuffed a few more notebooks into my bag, the weight of them strangely comforting, then slammed the locker shut with my hip, the metallic clang echoing sharply in the silent hall. As I turned, a sudden, jarring impact sent me stumbling.
A shoulder. Some guy, tall and oblivious, laughing with his friend. He didn't even glance back, didn't offer an apology, just kept walking as if I were nothing more than a minor obstruction, an invisible ripple in his path. I stumbled backward, my back hitting the locker behind me with a dull thud. He continued on, oblivious.
This was Winter Bulls High. Here, they didn't beat you up in the traditional sense. Here, they killed you with silence.
You were ignored so thoroughly, so consistently, that you started to believe you didn't exist. Being bumped in the hallway, skipped over for gym teams, left off group projects, erased in real-time. It was a slow, agonizing fade into nothingness.
I started walking, the familiar ache of invisibility settling over me. Two girls passed, their snickers like tiny needles. One of them glanced at me, her eyes lingering for a fraction of a second, and whispered something to her friend. I caught the word "emo" and pretended it didn't sting, pretended I hadn't heard.
I wouldn't cry. Not here. Not in these sterile, soul-crushing halls. I'd made that mistake in my first week, a single tear tracing a path down my cheek, and spent the rest of the month paying for it in silent snickers and pointed glares.
As I neared the front office, the muffled sounds of the world seeped through the closed doors: the incessant ringing of phones, the rhythmic tap-tap-tap of a keyboard, the faint, plasticy smell of new paper mingling with whatever sickly sweet air freshener the secretary used to mask the underlying stress.
I reached the door, my hand hovering over the cool metal knob. One more second. Just to breathe. Just to feel the suffocating weight of this school around me one last time. This was it. This was the last day I would ever walk through these hallways.
No one knew it but me. And no one would care.
That was fine. Let them keep ignoring me. Let them think I was a ghost, a shadow, an inconvenient presence.
Because today? Today, I had plans.