Sweet Romance11 min read
When the Heroine's Light Kept Stealing My Days
ButterPicks14 views
I woke up at eighteen and found out everything I had been living in was written by someone else.
"Is it ridiculous?" I told myself, sitting on the thin strip of mattress that had been mine since I was twelve. "Is it that silly?" The truth settled like a cold stone in my stomach: an entire world had a lead character who got favors the way rain gets puddles. Whenever she walked into a room, the air rearranged itself.
"She?" I said out loud. "She gets the doors opened. She gets second chances. She gets—" I stopped because the list could be endless. I was Elise Davies, and I had done everything the way I thought a person should. I studied until my eyes hurt. I tutored kids until my fingers cramped. I paid rent with the money I earned. I believed in work as a thing that paid life back.
But somebody had written a lead who did not need to earn much—Isabella Costa.
"Why her?" I whispered to the window. "Why can she bat her eyelashes and have a sky open for her?"
A month before the big national math competition, Mr. Henry Ash stood at the front of our classroom like he owned the Tuesday afternoon light. He threw a stack of papers on the lectern.
"Quiet!" he barked, true to himself. "Enough. This is high school. We're not here for chitchat."
"Mr. Ash," Tomas Vogel muttered from the second row, half-grinning, "some of us are committed to chitchat."
"You'll commit to the syllabus," Mr. Ash said, and the room straightened. He handed me a pile of test papers because I was class monitor and because I had never shied from showing other kids how to think through the hardest step.
I stood at the projector, walking the class through a dense, clever logic question. I made a neat diagram, explained it cleanly, and when I sat down Mr. Ash sat back in the last row with a relieved smile.
"Elise," he said, "come to the front tomorrow and explain the third one too. You do it better than I do."
"Okay," I said. I liked when things could be reduced to steps and lines.
It annoyed me that the school had one guaranteed spot to send to a top university—an automatic admission, a "gift" to one student. It annoyed me because when the school announced that one seat, the light in the room always seemed to settle on Isabella Costa as if it were her birthday every day.
"Elise," Tomas whispered later, "you're ace at this. If anyone's robbed by that system, it's you."
"Not robbed," I corrected. "The world is just badly written."
They smirked; nobody liked a classmate who said such things out loud. But being scolded by the narrative of life isn't a crime.
When Mr. Henry Ash announced there might be a second spot, my chest tightened but not the way it does for hopes. Isabella's cheeks colored, and she said softly, "I don't think I'm good enough."
"Try," Brock Wood—the boy who could sleep through a lecture and still ace it—said, with that careless lightness he wore like perfume. He meant well.
Brock had a face that made excuses mean less. He sat in the back with his hands in his pockets and could flip a whole atmosphere with a look.
"I'll help you," he added, not looking like it was a big deal. He had the kind of confidence that sat on shoulders like a warm coat.
"Thank you," Isabella whispered to him, and the class melted into applause for her regardless. I watched, tightened my grip on my pencil, and told myself the fair thing was to work. If there was going to be a fight for the slot, it would be honest and clean and measured.
Brock tutored Isabella. She came to the late sessions clutching small cookies. He corrected one error and she teared up; he softened, and she Googled angelic.
"You should ask Elise to help, too," Brock said during one of those tutoring nights, eyes on Isabella like he was holding a rare bird.
Elise. I could have corrected a thousand questions with math alone. I wrote out solution after solution in my spare time. When the practice test came, I scored nearly perfect—unfashionably proud, I flipped my mistakes over, fixed the process, and imagined the only thing that would be left was honesty.
And then the test scored two perfect papers.
"How?" Mr. Henry Ash said later, holding the two identical A-grade papers. One had my name. One had Isabella's.
"It must be the month of miracles," a kid said.
"Or one of you cheated," another said.
"Or one of you had help," Brock said, and he stared at my stoic hands and then at Isabella's blushing face.
People began to line up with opinions. Isabella's friends rallied. Tomas and a few others examined the papers and saw nothing wrong. Mr. Ash—practical, good-hearted—couldn't bring himself to accuse anyone.
"You two," he said at the end, "both went to the city next month, both will be judged. For now, we'll watch and let the tests decide."
I felt, in a small, private way, the world draft another convenient explanation. If I hadn't taken that seat, perhaps this would not have happened. If I had not been stubborn, perhaps no expansion would have been fabricated. The story had options, and it always preferred the one where the main lead fit in the spotlight.
"You don't have to fight this," Brock said to me once, when he caught me walking out of the classroom. We were both young enough to be dramatic and old enough to want things.
"I don't want to lose something I earned," I said. "I want things that are mine to stay mine."
"Then let me make it easy," Brock offered, as if the universe were a small favor he could grant on a whim.
"No favors. I prefer fairness." I smiled. "And math."
He laughed. "You are impossible."
I ran to the exam hall the day of the national contest because the bus—everything that could go wrong—did. Traffic snarled. A bungled dispatch had left the other two teammates still trapped somewhere in a jam. Brock scrambled out of his motorcycle helmet and offered a ride to Isabella. I ran, because the bus sat, because Brock could not take everyone, and because I refused to let inaction be an excuse.
At a corner, where a dashed crosswalk kept perfect time with my breath, a cyclist came out of nowhere and slid across my path. I hit the pavement. The right hand smashed, the knee shredded—my palm spattered with dust and red. Pain lit the circuits of my face clean through.
I stood up, blood on my sock, and listened as everything used to run like clockwork suddenly sputtered.
"Are you okay?" a voice said through my fog. A crowd gathered; someone called for an ambulance that wasn't necessary. I had never thought my stubbornness would become an argument for something like danger.
"I'll go," I told them. "I will still go."
I did. I limped into the hall twenty-five minutes late, clutching my board, my wrist done up in an emergency cast, and the proctors stared until one of them, with surprising softness, motioned me in.
"You have three minutes left to enter," he said in a voice that carried the weight of someone who has watched a lot of people give up.
I sat. My right hand shook when I tried to hold a pencil; the pain was a living thing that made my fingers useless. I swallowed the scream and used my left hand.
"Just write what you can," I told myself.
I wrote until my shoulders drooped and the left hand cramped and could not keep pace with the thoughts screaming to be scribbled. In the end, when they called time and collected the sheets, I had left one big block of the final section blank. I had done everything else as if the answers were bricks I stacked quickly—neat, concise, enough to show I understood.
When results came out, I scored well—good enough to make anyone else proud—but the final rank was not the glitter I had planned. Someone else had better timing that day.
Back home, a package waited. It was a plain box at first, then the weight of the lid lifted to reveal a laptop and a heavy, beautifully made thermos. A small card lay tucked under the thermos, and one tidy line read:
"Congratulations on your admission. May you get what you wish for. —G."
"G."—a single initial, a single signature. I traced that letter until the paper warmed under my finger. Whoever G was, they had watched me and given me something warm and practical and honest.
That G would become an important anchor later. I did not know who Gallagher Ziegler was then. I only knew the watch of relief—and a small sense of being seen.
The return to school was a warzone of whispers. A group of girls in the cafeteria decided I was the reason Isabella missed some classes. The leader—Katrina Brandt—was loud. She enjoyed the taste of other people's discomfort.
"You should see her," Katrina said with a laugh, "she walks like nobody noticed. She claims pain to get attention."
"That's a lie," I said. "My injuries are real."
"You always make everything about you," Katrina hissed, loud enough for the table to hear. A bottle flew, intended to humiliate, and my tray flipped. Sauce splattered my shoes and the linoleum.
Someone shouted for the teacher. Someone else shrieked in delight. I did not shout. I cleaned the mess. Thomas—Tomas Vogel—said something sharp at Katrina. Mr. Henry Ash saw the tail end of it and asked for me in the dean's office.
"I want to file a complaint," I told the school social worker. "This isn't right. They targeted me."
"You could have told me first," Mr. Ash said, soft and disappointed. "We're here for you."
"I did tell you the problem existed," I said. "But telling is different from punishment. She needs to understand the harm."
"Are you sure?" Tomas whispered later. "This could blow up."
"I'm sure," I answered.
At noon the phones began to buzz. Katrina's mother and father were called to the school. The police came to record a statement. The principal convened the assembly. I was told to sit in the back and let the adults do what they had to do.
"Students," the principal said later, with a voice that trimmed the room of jokes. "We will not tolerate harassment. What happened in the cafeteria is not a school prank. We also want to educate about the damage bullying does."
Katrina was brought forward. Her face paled under the hall lights. Parents sat stiff as chairs. Cameras—phones—already pointed.
"Is this true?" the principal asked, plain as a ruler.
Katrina swallowed. "I—" she began, and then she "was only going to humiliate her a bit," she said in a voice that sounded like paper tearing. "I didn't think it would be such a big deal."
"Did you think about Elise?" the principal asked. "About how humiliation is not a game?"
Katrina's face folded.
I had been asked not to speak, but I stood anyway. "It isn't a game," I said. My voice was small at first and then carried like a bell. "Bullying is not a laugh. It's a wound. You throw something at someone's dignity, and you don't know if they'll stand up again."
A hush settled. Phones recorded. Teachers looked relieved that something was being done.
The principal laid out the consequences: community service for Katrina in the school kitchen and at the after-school program; a formal mark on her record; a requirement for Katrina to write a public apology and attend counseling sessions; and school-wide anti-bullying workshops devised by the staff. Katrina's parents were asked to sign a binding behavioral contract.
Katrina's reaction changed like a slide under a light. First, she was smug. Then, when told of the police report, she blinked, and the smirk fell. When the principal read the camera footage timeline and the number of witnesses—ten students, three teachers—she went stiffly numb. Then she tried to deny parts of it.
"It wasn't me!" she said at one point, voice wobbling. "I only— I didn't—"
Her parents put a hand to her shoulder. Her mother looked ashamed; her father grim and white-faced. Around the assembly, students murmured. Many of my classmates who had watched Katrina egg me on were silent; some averted their eyes. From a corner, Tomas shook his head as if the school had finally been a mirror too bright to ignore.
"This is not about punishment for its own sake," the principal said. "It is about making sure everyone sees the harm and chooses differently."
Katrina tried to bargain. "I'll apologize," she pleaded, "but please, not on stage."
The principal nodded. "It will be public. You need to understand the weight."
She smudged her lip and started her apology in the hall with hundreds of pairs of eyes and dozens of phones pointed. At first she stumbled. Her voice broke from irritation into real tears. The crowd reaction was a universe of small combustions—some silent faces, some hands covering mouths, and a few students who clapped—not out of indifference but as a sign that justice, however small, had been acknowledged.
Her parents sat in rows, red-eyed. Teachers watched, some with relief, some with sorrow. A few students recorded the apology and posted it. The school office made sure counseling and disciplinary steps were documented and followed. The cafeteria crowd, who had once thrown a bottle with amusement, now closed ranks with the person who had been humiliated.
After the event, walking back to class, a student tapped my shoulder.
"Elise," she said, "I didn't understand before. I'm sorry."
"It's okay," I said. "I don't want your apologies to be about me. I want them because you learned something."
Later, at the end of the week, I sat with a small thermos at my desk. Mr. Henry Ash gave me a look that said he was proud without saying it. Tomas dropped a comic on my desk with a post-it that said, "For my brave desk-mate."
Brock—with his careful grin—shoved a warm packet of test corrections across. "Hey," he said, "next time traffic tries to kill you, call me."
"Next time, traffic will have less coordination," I said. He laughed.
Isabella came by one afternoon. She stood at the doorway with a careful smile and two cups of fruit yogurt.
"Elise," she said, placing one of the cups on my desk, "I'm sorry if I ever made you feel small. I don't always see things."
"Thank you," I said. "I appreciate it."
"I mean it," she said, eyes honest in a way that felt like sunlight. "You didn't need favors. You needed fairness. I'm sorry."
That small apology shifted things in a way that did not erase everything but eased a weight I had carried for weeks. People had rallied around Isabella before; it mattered that she could now see past her own spotlight. A lot of my fights were not against her; they were against the pattern that hid behind everyone's smiles.
The months after were a calculus of small improvements. I kept tutoring. Jaylee Dawson—the hard-edged girl who once wore a band of rebellion—kept showing up to her lessons, and over time her defenses softened. Dalton Kraemer—the man who hired me to tutor his sister—became a presence in our small patch of grown-up kindness. He would drop an extra apple and say, "You saved me on the weekend," and I would roll my eyes.
A letter arrived one spring—no signature at first—then a name on a company letterhead: Gallagher Ziegler. The note said only, "For the future you are building, keep steady." Inside was a modest seed of security: funds earmarked for my moving expenses and a small legal suggestion about how to contact someone if I wished.
It was the miracle I'd been too stubborn to expect: not a rewritten life, just a hand to steady the ladder while I climbed it myself.
"Why help?" I asked the one day when the sponsor came to a small, reserved meeting through Mr. Ash. The man smiled like he had kept a secret for a long time.
"Because I saw you reach for the right thing without complaint," Gallagher said. "Because people like you make the world less annoying to be in."
He was not an author giving me lines. He was a person choosing to notice; that made the difference.
Graduation came and Mr. Ash stood at the podium with cheeks red from too-sincere pride. He had a thermos tucked beside him—mine—because he refused to travel without the cup I had given him at the end. He called us forward, and somebody—Tomas, probably—shoved a faded comic into my hands for the road.
"Elise, your future won't be easy," Brock said later, handing me a paper with his phone number on top. "It will be yours."
"That's the plan," I said.
Isabella stood to my right as we took pictures. She had her own laughs and her own usual string of admirers. She had earned things that fit her. I did not despise that. I had earned things that fit me. We were not opposites. We were both fragments and recasts of the same year.
When they asked me years later what I remembered most about high school, I would say the thermos and the single-card signed "G." I would say the evening I limped into a hall, the way my left hand learned to be the hand that answered the questions I could not bear to leave blank. I would say the assembly where someone who hurt me learned how much light the crowd could turn on a cruel thing.
"Do you ever get tired of being steady?" Brock asked once, when we were both younger and the day was still an open plane.
"Everyday," I said. "But steadiness wins the small things. And small things stack into a life."
"Keep that thermos," Brock said with a grin, "and keep being stubborn."
"Always," I said, but I did not close the door on luck. I only closed it on the idea that luck could be the whole story.
The last thing I wrote in my study the night before I left for university was a tiny note I slipped into the thermos box before sealing it back up. I wrote three short words:
"Worked. Found. G."
I put the card in and taped the lid. The thermos still had the little dent on the rim where Mr. Ash had dropped it once. The dent was mine now, a small proof that life did not always smooth the corners.
When the van went down the university road, I left the house a little straighter. The street lamps glinted, the little repairs like new lights on the path we take. A single letter—G—had been enough for a stranger to say: I saw you. That mattered. Someone else seeing you can change the choreography of things, but only if you stay in the circle of your own work.
And so I went: steady, stubborn, and with a thermos tucked under my arm. I kept writing the answers down with my left hand until the right one healed. I kept tutoring when I could. I kept being the person who does the small things with clear, strict hands.
If someone asks me now whether the heroine's light stole everything from me, I will smile and say, "No. It forced me to learn how to turn on my own."
The End
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