Saw Me 14

The hallway went tomb-silent before I even touched my locker. Like someone had hit pause on a movie everyone had already seen twelve times. Freshmen froze mid-whisper. Math class girl looked at me, then away like eye contact might give her third-degree burns.

I opened my locker anyway. Because apparently I’m a masochist with excellent time management skills.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught it—a girl next to me, phone tilted just enough for me to see the screen.

Bright white text. Huge. My name in bold.

There it was—my name blazing across someone’s phone screen like a neon sign advertising my social death.

Zoey Hale’s bucket list for getting railed.

I snatched the phone from surprised hands. Girl squeaked like a stepped-on toy, but honestly? Priorities.

My handwriting. My old paper. Butchered and Frankensteined back together with premium-grade lies.

#7: Get filmed.

#9: Screw a teacher.

#10: Three guys in one night.

I’d rather die than write that shit. But there it was—my rebellion, weaponized and served back to me with a side of public humiliation.

“Give that back,” the girl whispered.

Too late, sweetheart. The damage was already metastasizing across group chats and Insta stories captioned “good girls gone wild.”

Because the internet loves a fallen angel story.

I was performing in my very own social execution. Every eye tracked my movement like I was wildlife they’d never seen before. I didn’t speak. Just stared at the whiteboard and waited for something to snap.

Instead of snapping, I got summoned.

“Hale, you’re needed in guidance,” Mr. Peterson announced like I’d won a prize nobody wanted.

Mrs. Rodriguez’s office smelled like vanilla candles and institutional disappointment. She gestured to the chair across from her desk with the kind of smile that meant business.

“Zoey, honey, we need to talk about some concerning material that’s been circulating.”

Honey. Like sugar could soften the impact.

“It’s not real,” I said.

“I believe you.” She leaned forward, hands clasped. “But perception can be just as damaging as reality. We’re going to need to discuss some strategies for reputation management.”

Reputation management. Like I was a fucking brand instead of a seventeen-year-old girl getting digitally assassinated.

“What kind of strategies?”

“Well, first, we’d recommend staying off social media for a while. Second, maybe consider who you’re spending time with. Your association with certain… elements… might be contributing to these rumors.”

Elements. She meant Chase.

“So I should dump my friends to make other people more comfortable?”

“I’m just suggesting that your choices have consequences, and right now, those consequences are affecting your future prospects.”

I stared at her vanilla-scented concern and felt something crystallize in my chest. Not anger. Something colder.

“Are we done here?”

She handed me a pamphlet about “digital citizenship” and a hall pass back to class. Like homework could fix a character assassination.

I found Chase by his locker after third period. Not for comfort—for answers.

“Did you see it?” I asked.

He didn’t look up from shoving books around. “See what?”

“The list, Chase. My list. The one that’s now been edited into pornographic fan fiction.”

That got his attention. He glanced around, then back at me. “That’s fucked up.”

“Yeah, it is. And you know what else is fucked up? You walking past me like I don’t exist.”

His jaw tightened. “Maybe because associating with me is what got you into this mess.”

“So you’re protecting me now? How noble.”

“I’m protecting both of us.”

“From what?”

He slammed his locker shut. “From making this worse than it already is.”

The dismissal hit like a physical blow. Not anger—worse. Indifference.

I didn’t go to class. Didn’t go home. Left through the gym exit and walked until my legs burned. Past the tennis courts, through the soccer field, around to the back of the auditorium where the roof sloped low enough to be climbable.

Chase had shown me this spot once.

“Bet you won’t,” he’d said with that trademark smirk.

Now I would.

The shingles bit into my palms, but I kept climbing. Gray sky pressed down like a wool blanket. The roof felt like the last place on earth where no one could reach me with their opinions about my character.

I sat at the edge, knees pulled up, wind turning my hair into a tornado.

No one followed. No one cared.

The thing about rumors is they don’t give a shit about truth. They just care about volume. And right now, I felt like my entire existence was one big echo chamber of other people’s assumptions.

My list had been real once. Private. A secret I’d shared with exactly one person. Now the world had it—chewed up, twisted into something unrecognizable, and spit back out with a bow on top.

I wanted to burn something. Amber’s car. My old notebooks. The entire fucking internet.

Instead, I screamed.

Not loud enough for anyone to hear. Just loud enough to remember I still existed underneath all their noise.

The sound got swallowed by wind, but for thirty seconds, it filled my chest like oxygen. Like proof of life.

I stayed up there until the sky went black and the final bell rang and the world moved on without me.

Because apparently that’s what worlds do.