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.

Kendel walks through the school gates with one earbud in, bass low against her pulse, the same playlist looping for the third week straight. Jasmine calls it emotionally concerning girl music. Kendel calls it necessary. Music leaves less room for thinking.

The music follows her through the noise of Ashford High; lockers slamming, sneakers squeaking against polished floors, someone yelling about unfinished homework, laughter breaking open somewhere near the gym block. Loud, chaotic, alive.

Kendel doesn’t mind school noise. School noise has rules. She knows how to move through it. Kendel knows how to look fine too. She’s had years to practise. At Ashford High, survival looks like a neat ponytail, a pressed uniform, and a smile that never asks too many questions.

Kendel wears all three like armour.

Blending in is an art; laughing at the right moments, making eye contact, remembering homework. It looks like being the girl who’s easy to sit beside. Nobody notices quiet when it performs well.

She walks through the courtyard like she belongs there, like she hasn’t already checked her reflection three times this morning to make sure her face looked normal. Like she didn’t rehearse casual in the bathroom mirror while brushing her teeth.

The school is too clean, too beige, and 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.

A shoulder knocks against hers.

“Still listening to funeral music?”

Ashleigh plucks one earbud from Kendel’s ear before she can stop her. The music spills faintly between them. Ashleigh grimaces. “God. This sounds like someone staring out a rainy window waiting for a sailor who died at sea.”

Kendel snatches the earbud back. “That’s because you have no emotional depth.”

“I have heaps of emotional depth.”

“You cried because your oat milk was expired.”

“It was basically a hate crime.”

Kendel laughs quietly before she can stop herself.

Ashleigh glances sideways at her instantly, like she always notices when Kendel relaxes for half a second.

Ashleigh is soft and watchful, the one who remembers favourite colours and how people take their coffee. 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 for that, but the gratitude is always present.

The others are already outside the music block when they arrive. Jasmine is sitting cross-legged on the bench stealing a chip from Maddy’s hand.

“Oi,” Maddy says. “Get your own.”

“You always steal my food, this is payback.”

The conversation rolls around Kendel easily; stupid comments about teachers, someone getting caught vaping behind the gym, Jasmine insisting maths violates basic human rights.

Kendel joins in automatically. Smiling, talking, laughing at the right moments. That’s the thing people misunderstand. She isn’t the quiet girl sitting alone in corners. She knows how to be normal, how to look easy, how to make herself fit. That’s part of surviving too.

Still, some part of her stays alert underneath it all. Enough noise to blur the edges, not enough to miss danger. Sometimes Kendel watches the others talking over each other and feels like she’s standing outside a house with all the lights on. Warm, easy, normal.

She still doesn’t fully understand how they let her in. Ashleigh did first. Two years ago, after another family move Kendel hadn’t been consulted about, Ashleigh sat beside her in assembly and whispered:

“Try not to let all the beige terrify you.”

Kendel laughed before she could stop herself.

Somehow, that had been enough to begin. Now they move around her naturally, like she’s always belonged there.

Maddy is glossy and confident, a walking magazine cover until she opens her mouth and says something unhinged. Georgia lives half inside her own brain, notebooks full of thoughts that start with Did you know? Jasmine is loud and loyal, the kind of girl who would absolutely punch someone for you and cry afterwards.

Ashleigh just stays.

Kendel loves them. She does. Which is terrifying.

Someone laughs too loudly behind her and Kendel’s body flinches before her brain catches up.

She corrects it fast. Shoulders loosening, face smoothing. Nobody comments. Ashleigh’s eyes find hers after a beat.

“You okay?” she whispers.

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.

The warning bell rings. Jasmine groans like she’s been personally betrayed by the education system.

“My story deserves to be told,” she says dramatically as they start walking.

“No one’s making a documentary about you failing algebra,” Maddy replies.

“They should.”

Kendel lets their voices wash around her as they move through the corridor. Kendel slides the earbud back in, the bassline syncing unconsciously with her footsteps.

Music has always done that, turned chaos into rhythm. Made everything inside her feel less sharp around the edges. At home she keeps one earbud in whenever she can. Volume low enough to hear footsteps and high enough to disappear a little.

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.”

Jasmine straightens immediately.

“Oh, I love new people.”

Maddy snorts. “You only love them if they’re hot.”

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 recognises the timing instinctively before she means to. Four-four. Slightly syncopated. The kind of rhythm that settles somewhere low in the body.

Music has always lived there for her first. Not in words, in pulse, in feeling.  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.

His fingers miss the rhythm against the guitar case. Just once. A tiny stumble in the beat. But Kendel notices it immediately. His eyes flick briefly to his own hand, then back to hers. The corner of his mouth shifts slightly. Not quite embarrassed, not quite amused. More like: well, that wasn’t supposed to happen.

The noise around them blurs strangely at the edges.

He doesn’t fit into any category she recognises. Not polished like the boys Maddy usually points out. Not loud, not trying. There’s something unfinished about him. Something slightly off-beat. He feels like a chord she doesn’t know how to play; unresolved, strange, and impossible to ignore.

And for one horrible second, Kendel has the terrifying feeling that he can see the outline of her beneath everything she carefully keeps in place. Not the version that laughs at the right moments. Not the girl with the neat ponytail and the carefully managed smile. Something else. Something frightened she spends most of her life smoothing over. Panic sparks low in her chest. Kendel looks away fast, heart hammering hard enough to make her feel stupid.

Jasmine appears beside her, 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 the first beat of a song through speakers. Kendel hates that immediately. Hates that some stranger with messy hair and a guitar has managed to get under her skin in under thirty seconds. He’s just a boy. An unusual one, maybe. Too observant. Too calm. Slightly off-beat. Still just a boy.

By the time they reach English, Kendel’s almost convinced herself the whole thing meant nothing. Just a weird moment in a hallway. A glance held half a second too long.  Mrs Henderson is already talking when they slide into their seats, something about essay structure and symbolism, but Kendel can’t seem to settle properly into her body again.

Her pulse still feels uneven. Like something shifted slightly out of place when he looked at her.

Ridiculous.

She forces herself to focus. Opens her notebook. Clicks her pen twice. Then catches herself tapping the same rhythm he’d been drumming against the guitar case earlier. Four-four. Slightly syncopated. Her hand stills instantly. Heat creeps up her neck.

Unsettled, Kendel presses her headphones back in before class starts properly and turns the music up louder than before. Like maybe she can drown the feeling out before it becomes something real.