It started small. A smile in the hallway, a shared notebook, a conversation about homework that stretched longer than it needed to. Bella felt her chest tighten in ways she hadn't expected. Leo, her childhood friend who had always been steady but distant, was suddenly here, in ways that made the edges of her carefully built world feel brighter and sharper.
Palms' whispers were still there, snaking through the school, but Bella tried to ignore them. Leo, for a fleeting moment, seemed unaware of the rumors, or maybe he just didn't care. It felt like old times at first, the way he laughed at her jokes, nudged her gently in the hallway, remembered the tiniest details she mentioned months ago.
Then came the confession.
"I like you, Bella," Leo texted one afternoon, the text quiet, almost vulnerable, as if saying it out loud made it real for the first time.
Her heart leapt, stumbled, and landed in her throat. She didn't know whether to smile, cry, or run away. All she could do was nod, and in the silence that followed, the world felt like it had tilted just for them.
For a week, they existed in a fragile bubble. They walked home together, shared lunch, whispered jokes no one else could hear. For Bella, every moment was electric a dream she wasn't sure she deserved. For Leo, it seemed effortless, natural, though Bella caught glimpses of something behind his eyes that hinted he wasn't telling her everything.
And then, the truth fell like a stone.
"I didn't really like you," Leo admitted, sitting across from her in the empty classroom. "It was… a boy's thing. Something we decided to do with a girl. I didn't mean to… I didn't think it would matter."
Bella felt the air leave her lungs. A week of laughter, smiles, and stolen glances gone. She wanted to scream, to cry, to make him feel the jagged pieces he had left behind. But she couldn't. She had no one to tell. No one who would understand the layers of betrayal, the quiet devastation that settled into her chest.
So, she smiled instead. Acted like it was okay. Folded the hurt into herself like a secret she couldn't share.
The days that followed were a blur of careful facades. Rose, now in another school, remained close with Yuri, while Bella watched from the edges, feeling the gap widen. Rumors swirled, some planted by Palms, some whispered by those who didn't understand. And Bella kept quiet, protecting the secret she had unwillingly inherited the knowledge of Leo and Rose's distant, hidden affair, the truth behind the smiles she had once trusted.
Through it all, Bella felt the sting of loneliness sharpen. Yuri, once her anchor, had feelings for Leo too, though none of them knew how to navigate it. And when the whispers and the teasing came, Bella learned to carry the weight silently, to act okay when everything inside her was breaking.
By the time the school day ended, by the time she walked through the hallways where everyone's eyes seemed to judge, to whisper, to point, Bella had learned something she didn't want to know so soon: people could hurt you without touching you, and sometimes protecting others meant swallowing your own pain whole.
And in that swallowing, she realized .... she was done pretending.