Adaora knew how to make herself small.
It was a skill she didn't talk about, not because she was ashamed of it but because no one ever asked. In fact, most people never noticed her long enough to wonder about anything at all.
She moved through the halls of St. Cyril's High School like fog barely there, always present. Not in the way loud girls were, with their perfect gelled edges and booming laughs. And not like the rebels, either, those who smoked behind the gym and had their names whispered like myth.
Adaora was just… the girl who never raised her hand.
Her teachers called her "quiet" on report cards, as if it were a compliment.
"Polite, respectful, but could contribute more in class discussions."
She'd read those words and wonder how to explain that silence wasn't something she chose. It was something she became.
Home wasn't much different. Her mother worked long hours as a cleaner, and by the time she got back in the evenings, she barely spoke except to ask if the rice had been cooked or if the boys had done their homework. Her twin brothers, ten and loud, ran the house like a carnival shouting, fighting, laughing, crying, then doing it all again in new combinations.
There was no room for someone like Adaora.
She didn't resent them. Not really. She just often felt like an extra in her own story. The girl in the background of family photos. The shadow at the dinner table.
And yet inside her chest, something lived. Something restless.
She didn't have a name for it.
Not yet.