The Heartbreaker’s Gamble

The silence in my bedroom is oppressive. The cosiness of those rooms has vanished. Soft sheets, expensive candles.The unwavering belief that I was the queen of the universe, all of that belonged to a girl who no longer exists. I used to think I could conquer anything.

The moment I hit the ground, my legs buckle, and the force goes through my body. The force is enough to remind me that I'm alive, or at least existing when I should not.

Tears stream down my cheeks. I can't catch my breath, it feels as though I have been hit with a thousand stones. The pain in my chest is suffocating, a heavy, rhythmic pounding in my head. It won't stop! My lungs tighten, every breath feels like fire climbing through my throat.

Sitting on the floor, staring at the wall, I can't stop thinking about everything: the video, the laughter, the look on his face when he thought no one else was looking. The expression on his face when I was still a mystery and not just someone he believed he had already mastered. I keep seeing those images in my head until I lose the ability to distinguish between nightmares and memories.

I can't believe he would ruin me like this. The hardest part is I didn't see this coming. I've spent months defending him. I would tell everyone they didn't understand him, that he was not what they thought he was. I was a fool to walk into a minefield with a blindfold and smile in people's faces while he was holding my hand.

Not only does it hurt to be betrayed, but there is also a void in my chest as if someone has taken a piece of me and left me with an open wound. Breathing has become a chore; my heartbeats remind me of the space where there should be something.

I lie on the hard floor. Outside my window, the world continues its daily routine as if nothing has changed. The sun slowly disappears behind the horizon, and shadows grow long across the street. People are still doing what they do, eating, arguing, and laughing.

I don't move until I can't see anymore because my eyes have swollen shut, and I have become extremely thirsty. My tears have stopped running, my face is dry, tight, and salty. My head is pounding. My body is empty, exhausted, and almost weightless.

Eventually, I reach for my phone; it is the only thing that connects me to the rest of the world. It is on the floor in front of me, turned upside down, vibrating, waiting for me to turn it over.

I switch on the phone, and the bright light blinds me. Notifications begin to come in and pile on top of each other, like a mountain of snow getting higher than I can run.

"Is this true?"

"Look at the link!! OMG."

"I knew she was desperate for him from day one!"

"Look at her in picture two. She is so pathetic."

Each notification hits me as a physical blow. Each hits me even harder as they push my face underwater until I cannot catch my breath.

My world is crumbling around me. People I considered my best friends, my anchor are picking me apart like a giant jigsaw puzzle, piece by piece, comment by comment. They zoom in on my face, analyse my words, and have turned my pain into their amusement. The girls I thought I could trust, the ones I shared my secrets with at 3 a.m., won't say anything to defend me. Some of them even like the posts, feeding the fire and pretending they don't know me while they stand on the sidelines and watch. 

I stopped reading. I can't take any more hits! Each line is another bruise, adding to the weight of all the others I have. My thumb hovers nervously and then finds the power button. Long-press until the screen turns black. 

Power off.

I let the phone slip from my fingers, and nothing sounds louder than the phone hitting the floor, containing everything I am, all my shame, all my history, and the ghost of who I was the day before. Letting go of the phone feels like part of me is also going down with it. I can almost breathe for one second.

I can't continue like this indefinitely. I can't walk down the street and look into eyes that sparkle with predatory satisfaction or eyes that shine with sympathy. I'm not the scandal girl. I can't let people use my name as a cheap spectacle. They can't use me as a warning about the untouchable bad boy.

Slowly, I crawl toward my bed. My limbs feel like lead. Exhaustion drags at me like a heavy iron chain. I don’t bother stripping off my clothes or washing the salt from my skin; I’m too tired to care what I look like. Instead, I pull the heavy duvet over my head, curling into a tight cocoon of thick fabric.

In the pitch black of my bedroom, I construct a new reality. I convince myself that the previous 24-hours never happened. force my mind to focus on insignificant, domestic sounds, the rhythmic hum of the refrigerator cycling on and off, the distant sputter of a car passing the street. Evidence that the universe keeps moving forward, completely indifferent to my wreckage.

I am the girl whose ultimate humiliation was spilled across social media like cheap champagne. More than anything, I just want to shrink until I am completely invisible. I rock gently in the dark, rubbing the fresh tears from my eyes until my cheeks are damp and freezing, waiting for a deep, pitiless sleep to claim me. I pray to God that tomorrow morning I wake up and find out it was all a dream.

But I know it's a lie. It's delusional.

When I wake up tomorrow, the sun will still be rising. The internet will still be there to mock me. There will still be whispers waiting at the school's gates, hungry, vicious creatures licking their lips at my name.

Being with the school point guard, the untouchable bad boy everyone worshipped, was the single worst decision of my life. He didn't just break my heart; he broke my identity. He turned my name into a punchline that makes guys smile drunkenly at parties. He turned my reputation into something shameful that girls whisper about behind manicured hands.

Surviving this won't be easy. I know that much. If I want to make it out alive, I have to kill the girl they think they know. I have to destroy the blonde hair, the designer clothes, and the girl who ever cared about being admired in the first place.

I will learn to move silently through the hallways. I will learn how to press my spine against the walls and disappear into the shadows.

But in this city, at that academy, I will always be their gossip.

So, I must disappear. I must become invisible. I must bury the San Francisco girl under the floorboards, and pack a suitcase for a girl who doesn't exist.