The art of disappearing doesn't start with walking away.
It starts with silence.
With eating less, laughing less, being the first to leave and the last to be noticed.
It starts when people stop asking how you are and start assuming you're always fine.
I mastered that art years ago.
---
It's Thursday, and Orion's campus buzzes like a beehive.
Group projects. Club fairs. Laughter everywhere.
I keep my steps quiet, my hood up. A shadow among noise.
Tari's message from last night lingers in my head.
*"Can I show you something tomorrow?"*
This is tomorrow.
---
He texts at 4:32 p.m.
*TARI:* *"Studio room. Basement floor. You'll know it."*
I almost don't go.
But curiosity has teeth, and it's been biting all day.
---
The room smells like paint, dust, and sweat.
It's wide and echoey—an unused drama studio with paint-splattered mirrors, sagging curtains, and old stage lights that flicker like drunk fireflies.
Tari sits in the middle of the floor with a speaker beside him.
He doesn't look up.
Just presses play.
A beat slides through the room—low, moody, full of heartbeat and hurt.
Then, without speaking, he starts to dance.
Not TikTok dance. Not clean, choreographed stuff.
It's raw.
His body moves like it's remembering pain it can't say out loud.
He throws, spins, crashes into air. Every step looks like it costs something.
For five minutes, he doesn't look at me.
He just dances.
And when it ends, he falls to his knees. Breathing heavy.
I clap once.
Then again.
He laughs, lying flat on the floor.
"That was your playlist?" I say.
He turns his head toward me. "Tragic enough for you?"
"Beyond."
We sit in silence for a moment.
Then I ask what I've been holding:
*"Why do you dance like that?"*
He shrugs. "Because I can't cry like that."
I get it.
Way too much.
---
I sit beside him on the cold floor. Close, but not touching.
"You know," he says, "when I was fifteen, my mom told me men don't get to fall apart."
I glance at him. "She's wrong."
"She's dead," he says quietly. "Cancer. Two years ago."
Silence.
"Sorry," I say.
He shrugs, eyes fixed on the ceiling. "I've been dancing ever since. Not for art. Just to survive."
I nod. "I write for the same reason."
"Then we're both bleeding creatively."
I almost laugh. Almost.
---
Later, as I walk back to the dorm in dusk light, I feel... strange.
Like someone saw me and didn't flinch.
Like maybe I don't have to vanish to feel safe.
That night, I write.
And this time, I don't tear the page out.
---
*Excerpt from Ayanna's journal:*
*Today someone danced their grief in front of me.
And I didn't look away.
Maybe pain shared isn't pain halved.
But it's pain heard.
And that's something.*
---
The next day, Nene reads the new poem taped above my bed.
She doesn't say anything.
Just leaves her own note under it:
*"Keep letting it out, Ayanna. You're more alive when you're honest."*
---
I don't reply.
But I fold her note and place it inside my old poetry journal—between pages I once thought no one would ever touch.
For the first time since arriving at Orion…
I don't feel invisible.
---