PART I: UNSEEN, UNSAID

CHAPTER ONE - I KEEP IT QUIET
I keep it quiet, like a prayer I don’t believe in. No one hears silence when it looks like success.

She keeps it quiet. That’s the rule, the reflex, the muscle memory that kicks in before she even thinks. Quiet is how you survive, quiet is how you get through the day without anyone noticing the cracks.

At Ashford High, quiet looks like success. It looks like a neat ponytail, a creased uniform, and a smile that doesn’t ask questions. It looks like being the girl who’s fine.

It’s a full-time job not to stand out.

She walks through the gates like she belongs there, like she’s always belonged, like she doesn’t rehearse her expression in the mirror before leaving the house. The school is too clean, too beige, too polished for the amount of chaos it holds. Teachers wear lanyards like armour and say things like grit and potential as if those words are magic spells.

The noise doesn’t scare her. It’s loud, but it isn’t targeted. It’s just part of life.

She slides into her school skin, her second uniform, the one that doesn’t leave bruises you can see.

Ashleigh finds her by the lockers. She always does.

“You good?”

“Yep.”

It’s the easiest lie she knows.

Ashleigh’s smile flickers, but she doesn’t press. She just falls into step beside her, like that’s what they do.

The others join them near the music block, their energy a loose swarm.

They’ve been friends since they were nine. She joined at fourteen, after another family move she hadn’t been asked about. By then, she was used to being the new kid, used to recalibrating who to be, how much space to take up, how quickly to disappear.

Ashleigh found her first. Just a quiet, “This place is aggressively beige,” and a shared smile at the pleated uniforms that made everyone look like they’d been folded wrong. Somehow, that was enough to begin.

Ashleigh is soft and watchful, the one who remembers birthdays and favorite colours. She worked out early that Kendel couldn’t stay late after school or invite people over. She never asked why, she just adjusted. Kendel never thanked her, but the gratitude stayed, constant and heavy.

Kendel longs for what the others seem to have without thinking. The ease. Staying late on someone’s floor eating popcorn. Talking about nothing. Laughing too loudly. Being dropped off at the gate without flinching.

Maddy is glossy and confident, a walking magazine cover. Georgia lives half in her head, notebooks full of thoughts that start with Did you know? Jasmine is loud and loyal, the kind of girl who would punch someone for you and cry afterwards.

Maddy intimidates her. Georgia notices too much, so Kendel keeps her distance. Jasmine makes her laugh, sudden and wild, like a song she didn’t know she needed.

Ashleigh and Kendel are the closest. Or maybe Ashleigh just waits better than the others. She doesn’t comment when Kendel gets startled at sudden noises or goes quiet mid-sentence. She doesn’t rush her back when she zones out. She just stays.

Kendel loves them. She does. Still, some nights she replays conversations, wondering if she said the wrong thing, if they remember she joined late. Sometimes she wonders what would happen if they really knew her.

Someone laughs too loudly behind her and Kendel’s body flinches before her brain catches up. She corrects it fast, shoulders loosening, face smoothing, as if nothing happened. Nobody comments. Nobody ever does.

Ashleigh’s eyes find hers anyway.

“You okay?”

There’s a half-second, a hairline crack in the day where Kendel could tell the truth. Not everything. Just a piece. Something harmless, like she’s tired in a way sleep won’t fix.

Her mouth moves before she can change her mind.

“Didn’t sleep.”

Ashleigh nods, accepting it for what it is. A door opened one centimetre. A door she won’t shove.

***

They’re halfway to class when the air shifts, like a breeze moving through a crowd.

Whispers slide past.

“Is that him?”
“Apparently he transferred.”
“He plays guitar. Like, properly.”

New people mean attention, and attention is unpredictable. Kendel keeps her eyes forward, lets the rumours roll over her like static.

Then she sees him.

He’s leaning against the wall outside the music room, hood up, hair falling out in every direction, guitar case at his feet like it’s part of him. He isn’t trying to be seen, which is exactly why people see him.

His fingers tap a rhythm against the case, not restless, intentional. Like his body is keeping time with something only he can hear.

Kendel’s breath stutters. She doesn’t know why.

He looks up.

And it’s like being caught in a spotlight she didn’t consent to. Not because he’s staring. Not because he’s flirting. But because his eyes hold hers for a beat too long, like he’s listening.

Not to the hallway.

To her.

He doesn’t fit into any category she recognises.

He feels like a chord she doesn’t know how to play;  slightly off, unresolved, and impossible to ignore.

Panic sparks low in her chest. Kendel looks away fast, heart hammering, as if he’s seen something she’s spent years hiding.

Jasmine appears at her side, popping her gum like punctuation.

“He’s dangerous,” she murmurs. “Which obviously means we’re obsessed.”

Maddy grins. “His name’s Aiden.”

Aiden.

The name lands heavier than it should, like a drumbeat under Kendel’s ribs.

She tells herself it doesn’t mean anything. He’s just a boy with a guitar and a stare that feels like a question.

Still, all through class, the memory of his eyes follows her.

Unsettling her, because being noticed is the first step toward being known, and being known is not safe.