Chapter eleven
I don't think anyone really noticed me in school. Not in a cruel way—not at first. Just in that quiet, empty kind of way, like a smudge on the wall you learn to look past. I used to sit in the back of every classroom, always by the window if I could, always hoping the teacher wouldn't call on me. I wasn't shy, not exactly—I just never knew what to say that wouldn't sound wrong once it left my mouth.
For a while, I was invisible in the best kind of way. No one whispered about me. No one stared too long. I could slip in and out of the day like nothing had touched me.
But that changed.
It started slow, the way rust creeps in on metal. One girl found out what my father did—how he scrubbed other schools floors for hours each night. Then someone else learned about my mom, how she cleaned houses that looked nothing like ours. And suddenly, it was like the whole school saw me in a new light. A dimmer one. One they didn't want to stand in for too long.
Lois, my brother, had it worse from the start. He was older, quieter, and wiser in a way that made him hard to reach. He never complained, never told. If I hadn't seen the bruises myself—the split lip, the way he winced when he sat down—I might have believed the stories he fed our parents: tripped on the stairs, roughhousing with friends he didn't have.
He was born different. Blind in one eye. That eye had never grown the way it should have—it was small, slightly out of place, and always seemed to unsettle people. I think that's why they chose him. But it still feels ridiculous, that something like that could give people permission to be cruel.
The day I saw him on the ground, bleeding while the taunts kept coming, something inside me snapped. Every warning he'd ever whispered—"Stay out of it," "Don't get involved"—was gone. I didn't care. I grabbed the sharpest pencils I had in both fists and charged in. I don't even remember the pain until afterward. We both came home black and blue that day.
After that, the bullying against me worsened. The whispers turned to sneers, then to shoves. But I didn't regret it. If I could shift even a little of their attention off Lois, then the bruises were worth it.
I tried to find comfort in something—and the walks home, those quiet, stretched-out moments after school, became that something. That's when I felt most like myself, when the world almost felt okay.
Our school sat at the edge of town, and behind it, a narrow path wound between crumbling fences and wild hedges. I always took that way home with Lois, even though it was longer. Especially because it was longer. It was the only place where no one could follow us. No one to laugh, or point, or shove. Just sky and silence, and the steady rhythm of our footsteps in the tall grass.
I loved that path. It was like the world forgot us on purpose for a while.
In spring, the air smelled like sun-warmed dirt and crushed petals. The trees weren't tall, but they bent toward each other like they were sharing secrets. Sometimes I'd brush my fingers against the bark, just to remind myself I was still real. That I hadn't vanished.
And the light—oh, the light. It wrapped around us differently every day. Sometimes golden, like it forgave us. Other times silver and soft, like it mourned something too quiet to name. But always, it made me feel seen in a way no hallway ever had.
Lois never talked much on those walks. But his silence was safe. It made room for mine. And sometimes, when the wind rustled the branches just right, I imagined there was someone else walking with us too—not saying anything, just there. I'd smile at that presence, like a secret. And in my mind, they always smiled back.
In school, I was the quiet girl with dark eyes and too-long sleeves. The one who always returned books early and never raised her hand. But out there, with Lois beside me and the wind in my sleeves, I was something softer. Not happy, not quite—but free. Like a shadow in the sun. Like a whisper no one heard but the wind.
Sometimes, I miss that version of us most of all