The cafeteria is loud. Trays scraping, chairs dragging, voices layered over voices. You sit one table away from Brielle's crowd - close enough to see her lean in, close enough to catch your own name before the laughter swallows it. You used to eat together. That was before middle school. Before the thing you never meant to do, the one she never let go. Now she's the golden one - the girl everyone orbits - and you're the smudge on the edge of the picture. Same face. Completely different story. At home, Marlowe calls it you being too sensitive. At school, Brielle calls it nothing at all - she barely looks at you anymore. But today, for some reason, she is.