drowned ✔️

• t h i r t y - t w o •

•TWO YEARS AGO•

Sunlight streamed into the room, glinting off of the blinding white cotton sheets I was wrapped in. It had been a few months since Leon and I had first met, and soon, too soon, I was spending every night in his bed.

"Leon?" I called out sleepily, finding my phone resting on his nightstand. The clock read a quarter past eight, and it took me a few seconds to realize how late I was for school.

Maybe Leon had gone to school without me?

I knew my thoughts were futile, but in that moment, I so desperately clung to my delusion that any other possibility seemed admissible.

School was long. I didn't see him in the hallways, at lunch, in his classes. It was like he had just disappeared.

He left me. I knew it when I saw him gone this morning and I knew it now, staring at his empty place next to me.

"Where's your boy toy?" Britney asked, smirking. She leaned against the paling brown lockers, an evilness flickering in her eyes.

"I'm not his keeper, Britney. Not everyone is as hyperactively possessive as you are," I sneered, slamming my locker door closed. I cut off her glare with my own, channeling all my anger into a fiery stare.

"He probably left you. Just like everyone else," Britney suggested smugly, shrugging as if the thought had just occurred to her. "There's just something about you, Nara. You drive people away."

I could feel my old self crawling back out, cowering, wanting to be submissive. Wanting to give in to her emotions. I fought her with every glimmer of strength I had left, pushing her down further until she wasn't more than a shadow of thought.

"Stay away from me, you bitch. At least I'm not a lifeless soul-sucker whose only goal in life is to make others feel like shit," I muttered scathingly, pushing against her surprised figure. She stumbled a few steps back, her back hitting the lockers with a clatter.

I didn't need him anymore. He had made me strong, and I was never going to be weak again. I was never going to be hurt again. Especially by him.