She wore silence like a second skin.
In the crowded hallways of the university, she moved like a shadow — unnoticeable, barely there. Oversized sweaters swallowed her small frame, long sleeves stretched past her fingers, and her hair fell messily, a curtain she used to hide behind. The world around her was loud, bright, full of colors she felt she didn't belong to. But she watched. Always watching.
And today, like every day before, her eyes found him.
Lucas.
The boy she secretly loved.
He laughed with her best friend—Emily—the way the sun hits a broken glass, sparkling and blinding, careless and full of warmth. The sound was light and easy, but it tore through her chest like a knife.
She bit her lip to keep the sting from showing.
No one knew she watched. Or if they did, they looked right past her, treating her like a ghost. It wasn't just the clothes, or the way she kept her voice low. It was the way she never reached out, never fought for attention. She had learned long ago that silence was safer.
Emily was everything she was not: loud, radiant, unafraid. And Lucas was drawn to that light, the way she made him smile like no one else could.
She hated herself for envying her friend.
She hated herself for loving him.
A sudden shove startled her, and she stumbled back against a locker, heart racing. A group of students passed by, laughing loudly, their eyes flicking over her like she was a smudge on the glass. She shrank further into herself, wishing for invisibility.
"Hey, watch it," she whispered, barely loud enough to be heard. No one stopped. No one cared.
Her fingers twitched inside the sleeves, gripping the fabric like a lifeline. She wanted to scream — to yell at them for not seeing her, for ignoring her pain. But the words never came. They never did.
Instead, she turned back to watch them.
Lucas and Emily were talking about something funny—Lucas's smile stretching wide and real. She imagined how it would feel to hear him say her name, to look at her like she mattered. But those thoughts were dangerous, so she pushed them deep inside.
A voice inside her whispered: *You're nothing to him. Just the girl no one chose.*
She hated that voice the most.
Walking away slowly, she kept her eyes on the floor, pretending the world didn't exist outside her bubble of loneliness. But it did. The whispers followed her, the stares that weren't really stares — just casual dismissal.
At the cafeteria later, she sat alone, picking at her food without hunger. Around her, groups gathered — friends chatting, couples holding hands, laughter spilling like music. She felt like an outsider in a play she didn't know the script to.
Her phone buzzed.
A message from Emily.
*"Hey, you coming to the party tonight? It's gonna be fun!"*
She stared at the screen, fingers trembling. The invitation should have felt like hope. Instead, it was a cruel reminder — Emily's world was one she was never fully part of.
She typed a reply and deleted it twice before finally sending a simple:
*"No, thanks."*
Because the girl no one chose didn't get to say yes.
Her nights were spent in her small room, walls closing in, the only company her restless thoughts. She wrapped herself in the oversized clothes she wore every day — a shield against a world that looked but never really saw.
And somewhere, beneath the layers of silence and shadows, a fierce storm brewed — one that no one yet could hear.