Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Jeffery had perfected the art of walking without being remembered. She moved through hallways like a ghost; head down, books pressed flat against her chest, footsteps measured just enough to avoid colliding with anyone else. It wasn’t shyness exactly- at least she didn’t think so. It was more like the dull habit of disappearing. It was just easier this way.

Most people seemed to agree with her choice. No one asked her to sit with them, or pulled her into their circles between classes. No one called her a girl, either, not really, but she’d grown so used to hearing “he” that it hit her ears like static instead of insult.

So, she hid. Or maybe not hid- simply didn’t shine bright enough to be noticed.

But then there was you.

At first you were just color at the corner of her vision; the streak of dyed hair, the clatter of bracelets on your wrist, the loudness of eyeliner that refused to smudge even by fourth period. Then you were shape; the way you leaned in your chair during lectures, daring people to look at you, and scowling when they did. Then you were sound; sharp little retorts in class, muttered sarcasm in the hallway, laughter that came out more like scoffing but still caught people’s attention.

Jeffery didn’t mean to notice you. It just happened.

She told herself it was the clothes. No one else dressed like you, not with skirts that skirted the dress-code line or blouses that hinted at skin. She told herself that was why her eyes kept following you down the hall, curiosity. A sort of anthropological observation.

But observation turned to habit.

She knew where you sat in the cafeteria- never at the edges, never in the noisy center, but just off to the side with a couple of half-friends who rotated in and out like background extras. She knew the way you tapped your nails against soda cans before opening them. She knew you walked faster between second and third period than any other time of day, and slower at the end of last period, as if dragging out the escape.

She knew more than she should. But she didn’t think of it that way. Not at first.

It wasn’t stalking, she thought. It wasn’t weird. She wasn’t doing anything. She was just…watching. Paying attention. Everyone paid attention to someone. Didn’t they?

She adjusted small things, slowed her steps when you slowed, lingered by her locker until you’d walked past, drifted into stairwells just after you. She didn’t think about how unnatural it was, how the pattern was forming.
If anything, she felt proud of herself. For noticing. For cataloging details no one else did.

You were the loud kind of lonely. Jeffery recognized it even if she couldn’t have put it into words. People called you names- slut, attention-seeker, easy, whore. She overheard it all the time. But she could tell they were wrong. You weren’t desperate for attention. You already had it. You just wanted control over how it landed.

And that fascinated her.

She didn’t realize she was spiraling closer until the day you finally noticed her.
It was between classes, second floor, rain hammering the windows with such force the whole school smelled damp. Jeffery was at her locker, the combination dial squealing under her hand, when a voice cut through.

“You’re blocking the row.”

Her heart stuttered.
She turned too fast, nearly knocking her books from her arms. And there you were, leaning against the locker beside hers, lips twisted in faint annoyance, gum snapping between your teeth.

“I- sorry,” Jeffery muttered. She tried to force herself smaller, pressing her spine to the metal, but her fingers fumbled, useless, against the dial.

You didn’t move. You looked at her the way one looks at an odd shadow in the corner of a room; curious, amused, a little wary.

“You’re in history, right?” you asked finally, brow lifting.

Jeffery’s stomach flipped. “…Yeah.”

You tilted your head, assessing. Then, with a crooked smirk: “Guess I’ll see you there.”

And then you were gone, backpack swinging, swallowed by the tide of students.

Jeffery stood frozen. The lock was half-turned, her books balanced precariously against her chest. The world seemed tilted, humming faintly around her.

You had spoken to her. You had seen her.
She didn’t care that you’d sounded impatient. She didn’t care that your smirk was edged, that most people would have walked away thinking they’d been brushed off. For her, it was something else entirely.

It was proof. Proof she wasn’t invisible.

That night, she lay awake, hands over her chest, replaying it. The shape of your voice. The tilt of your mouth when you smirked. The sharp little jab of words that most people would have filed under rude. To Jeffery, it was oxygen.

She didn’t notice, couldn’t notice, that what you’d seen in her wasn’t endearing. You’d noticed her hovering. You’d felt the way her presence lingered too long in the halls, the way her eyes trailed you. You’d found it strange, maybe even unsettling. But instead of recoiling, you had tucked it into yourself. A private boost. If someone wanted you badly enough to follow you like that, maybe it meant you really were worth all the eyes, all the whispers.

And Jeffery?
Jeffery didn’t see the strangeness. Didn’t feel the wrongness. She only felt the warmth of being noticed at all, rather than the absence she had grown accustomed to.

She whispered the memory into her pillow until she fell asleep, words slurring together; she noticed me, she noticed me, she noticed me.

By the next morning, she wasn’t even questioning it. She was already looking for you again.

Already adjusting her steps to match yours.

Already sinking into orbit.

Jeffery told herself she would stop thinking about you so much. It wasn’t a promise she spoke aloud, just a quiet bargain she carried in the back of her head; tomorrow I’ll focus, tomorrow I’ll keep my eyes on my work, tomorrow I won’t follow.

Though the very next day, she broke it before first period was even over.

You entered history class late, hair damp from the rain, eyeliner smudged faintly at the corners, and Jeffery felt her whole body tighten as though she’d been yanked by a string. She couldn’t stop looking. Not at the way you adjusted your skirt as you slid into your seat, not at the flash of skin where your blouse gapped, not at the scrawl of doodles across your notebook.

It was magnetic. Physical.

Every time you tucked your hair behind your ear, she imagined what it might feel like to touch it herself- whether the dye left it dry, or whether it was still soft. Every time you shifted in your chair, she felt her stomach churn with something unnamed. It was more than admiration. It was hunger, restless and gnawing.

When you passed a worksheet back, your fingers brushed hers barely, fleetingly- but Jeffery held onto it like scripture. She touched her own hand under the desk, replaying the sensation, as if she could make it last.

At lunch, when you walked across the cafeteria, she didn’t even pretend to eat. Her eyes tracked every step, the sway of your body, the way people glanced and whispered and looked away.

And when you laughed, sharp and short, directed at someone beside you, Jeffery’s throat tightened. She wanted that sound for herself. She wanted to make you laugh. She wanted to make you look at her like that
She told herself it wasn’t obsession. Just noticing. Just appreciating. She didn’t realize how far gone she already was.

The others didn’t make it easier.
“Freak,” one boy muttered as she passed, not even bothering to lower his voice. His friends snickered, looking at the way her hoodie hung loose, at the way her shoes were too scuffed.

Jeffery dropped her eyes and kept walking. She knew the routine: keep silent, don’t engage.

Another time, in the stairwell, a girl whispered, “Why does he stare like that?” followed by muffled laughter. Jeffery flushed hot and cold all at once. They didn’t mean you. They meant her. They had noticed.
And yet, instead of shame driving her away, it only drove her deeper.

If they thought she was strange for looking, then maybe they just didn’t understand. They didn’t see what she saw. They didn’t realize how beautiful you were when you weren’t performing for anyone else- like when you sat with your cheek propped against your palm, eyes glazed, lost in your own thoughts.

Jeffery knew those moments. She collected them like marbles.

At night, lying in bed, she replayed them until her body ached. She pressed her hands against her stomach, her thighs, anywhere that throbbed with restless heat, and imagined it was your touch instead of her own. The guilt came after, but it never outweighed the need.
She longed to be held, or grazed at the very least.

She was careful, though. Careful not to let it slip. Careful not to stare too openly in the wrong moment. Careful not to speak unless spoken to.
But even when she thought she was being discreet, you noticed.

Noticed the way her eyes followed you across the room. Noticed how often she lingered by your locker when she had no reason to be there. Noticed how her steps lined up with yours in the hallway, trailing just a little too close, a little too often.

And instead of pushing her away, you scoffed. Instead of telling her to stop, you soaked in it.

Because for all your sharp edges and sour attitude, for all the names people muttered when you passed, you had cracks of your own. You carried diagnoses like hidden weights, and your self-esteem was a thin, brittle glass. Every sideways glance, every whispered insult chipped at it.

But Jeffery’s eyes, their constant, clinging attention made you feel full again. Creepy, yes. Weird, absolutely.
But flattering. Delicious, in its own warped way.

And Jeffery couldn’t tell the difference. She only knew that you had looked at her once, spoken to her once, and hadn’t turned her away.

So she let herself fall further.

The spiral tightened.

And she didn’t even notice it was a spiral at all.

Chapter Text

Jeffery told herself she was careful.

Every glance she stole in the hallway, every tilt of her head to observe you, every fraction-of-a-second where her chest ached because of your proximity- it was all careful. Not dangerous. Not creepy. Not wrong.

Yet she was aware of the whispers.

The hallways were never kind. There were always some who laughed too loud at her uneven steps, who called her names under their breath, who lingered just long enough to let her feel their judgment. “Freak,” “weirdo,” “loser,” a chorus of voices she couldn’t block out. The occasional shove in passing, the brief snickers when she dropped a notebook or stammered in a word. She was invisible in a crowd, but everyone somehow noticed when she faltered.

You weren’t like them.

You were a storm. People were wary of you, kept distance, whispered rumors that colored you as dangerous, crazy, reckless- but you owned it. You carried the weight of people’s whispers like a cloak that only added to your allure.

Jeffery had heard the rumors too.

“Did you see what she’s wearing?” one girl whispered in the hall. “And the way she…you know…does things. Cuts herself, maybe.”

“Yeah,” another added, shaking her head. “She doesn’t even eat. Saw her yesterday throwing her food out.”

Jeffery’s chest constricted. Not because she believed the rumors, she didn’t, but because someone dared to talk about you, in that tone, as though your life were theirs to judge.
Her gaze fell to you, walking ahead, skimming lockers, laughing at someone’s joke, oblivious- or so she thought- to the small army of eyes cataloging every motion.

How dare they, she thought.
Almost without realizing, she began to study you more closely.

The rumors planted questions, and the questions demanded answers. She traced the lines of your arms under your sleeves, the faint shadows beneath your collarbones, the way your jeans clung just so around your hips. She watched the subtle hollows beneath your cheekbones, the faint tremor when you lifted a fork to your mouth. She memorized the angles of your wrists, the way your hands rested when you weren’t holding anything, the flex and release as if she could read some hidden signal in the tremor of your fingers.

Do you really do these things? She couldn't help but wonder. And then, more dangerously, What would it be like if you…if I…

Her thoughts tangled into darkness before she could stop them.

She imagined tracing a line along her own wrist, just once, to see if it would feel the way she imagined yours did. She imagined your hands on her body, guiding, punishing, coaxing her in ways she wasn’t sure were right or wrong. She imagined the sharp sting of pain as proof of feeling, proof that she existed in the same space as you, that your presence could reach her so intimately it was physical.

It was a strange, perverted comfort.

At night, when her room was dark and her bed felt too small for the heat pressing in her chest, she whispered your name over and over, envisioning every possible scenario in which your proximity could exist. You leaning against her shoulder. You brushing the hair from her face with fingers that were almost cruel in their attentiveness. You guiding her, telling her what to do, watching her with something like…approval.

Approval. That was the thread she clung to above everything else.

Her own reflection in the mirror didn’t help. The same awkward shoulders, jarring in comparison to the rest of her. The same flat chest she hated, the same awkward hips that didn’t match her mind’s image of herself. She compared herself relentlessly to you, to your presence, your confidence, the effortless way you commanded space without trying.

She hated her own body even more in those moments, but paradoxically, it made her fixation sharper. If she could just be close, if she could just earn the acknowledgment, maybe some of that power would rub off. Maybe some of that dangerous, self-contained allure would touch her skin.

The rumors of your self-destruction fascinated her.

Not in a morbid way, not like she wanted you to be hurt, but as an index. A map of what it meant to be untouchable, to be daring, to be the person everyone whispered about but didn’t dare confront. She memorized every gesture you made that might indicate pain, weakness, starvation, self-harm- small changes in posture, faint bruises she caught out of the corner of her eye, the way your wrists or thighs hid under layers or makeup. She cataloged it silently. She imagined scenarios in which she could share it, could participate, could feel that intimacy and danger like a tether between you and her.

Some nights, she imagined you guiding her through it. Showing her how to mark herself without anyone noticing. Showing her how to starve, how to punish herself, how to feel real. And the idea made her tremble, not from fear, but from longing.

Other nights, she imagined it the other way around. That she would do it to herself first, painfully, carefully, just to prove that she could reach your level of commitment, your courage, your obsession-proof defiance. That you might notice. That you might approve. That you might- God, she whispered in the dark- touch her because of it.

It was wrong. She knew that. She knew some part of her thoughts were twisted, flawed, perverse. But she couldn’t stop. The more she scrutinized, the more she observed, the more she cataloged, the more alive she felt.

The walls of her room seemed to shrink when you were in her mind, the air thickening with the weight of your imagined presence. Every rumor, every whisper, every fleeting glance of yours outside the classroom was magnified, amplified, turned into a proof of connection.

And you were never fully aware.

Most days, you passed her in the hall and glanced sideways, noting the intensity of her stare for a brief moment. Sometimes you smirked, sometimes you arched an eyebrow. But you didn’t stop. You didn’t push. You didn’t correct. And in that silence, in that permission, Jeffery’s obsession blossomed unchecked, fertilized by her own inadequacies and the rumors of your life she could only guess at.

By the end of the week, she wasn’t just noticing anymore. She was living inside every detail of you. Every whispered conversation about your supposed anorexia, every story about scars you hid under sleeves, every subtle movement that suggested pain or daring or both- these were her textbooks, her commandments, her proof that she mattered in your orbit.

She didn’t yet realize just how far gone she had become. She only knew that if she could see you, if she could watch, if she could imagine herself inside your world- even in the tiniest, most perverse ways- then she could endure the rest of the emptiness.

Jeffery told herself she was being reasonable.

Every time you passed her desk in history class, leaning slightly as you slid your chair back, brushing past her arm just slightly, she imagined it as a deliberate contact. A signal. A tether. She replayed it endlessly in her mind: the brush of your fingers, the heat from your body just a fraction of a second longer than it should have been. She imagined the whisper of your voice carrying over, even when you didn’t speak. She imagined it bending toward her, soft, intimate, meant only for her.

And yet…you didn’t know.

Most days, you barely glanced her way. A nod in the hall, a casual tilt of the head, the faintest acknowledgment of her existence. And Jeffery, socially inept and desperate for connection, interpreted it as the beginning of a bond. Something intimate. Something that made all the whispers, all the mockery, all the self-loathing fade for a moment.

The hallway became a stage.

She began to track your movements more obsessively. She memorized when you exited each classroom, the order of your steps, the way your coat swung, the way your backpack shifted as you moved. She noted the way you kept your lunch tray balanced at a certain angle, how you tapped your pen when you were bored, how your lip trembled ever so slightly when you thought no one was looking.

Every gesture became a clue. Every glance, a confirmation.

Sometimes, she caught your eyes in the hall. A casual glance over your shoulder as though you’d noticed something but didn’t care to confront it. It became proof that she mattered, that her obsessive study of your gestures, your body, your rumored behaviors, was not wasted.

She began to test boundaries in ways she didn’t fully understand. Not by touching you, but by being present. By timing her own movements to intersect with yours. By walking just a half-step behind, lingering by lockers until you passed. By “accidentally” brushing against your shoulder when the crowd pressed close. Each small contact, each small coincidence, she interpreted as intimacy, as connection, as approval.

And when you smirked at her- the kind of smirk that she interpreted as saying 'I see you, and I know what you’re thinking'- her chest swelled. Her body thrummed with heat she couldn’t name. She could feel her hands shaking slightly, heat crawling along her arms, the tiniest ache between her thighs that she didn’t understand and couldn’t control.

She fantasized.

In the safety of her bedroom, away from prying eyes and whispers, she replayed every interaction. She imagined your hands on her shoulders, your fingers brushing her hair, your lips grazing the hollow of her neck as you whispered some word of approval, a warning, a secret meant only for her. She imagined tracing lines along your skin, tasting, marking, touching in ways that were forbidden and perfect. She imagined you showing her, guiding her, teaching her how to do these things herself. How to hurt, how to starve, how to claim control over her own fragile body.

The fantasies were messy, flawed, raw. She hated herself for them. She knew they weren’t real. She knew that imagining these things made her weak, pathetic. But she couldn’t stop.

Slowly, insidiously, she began to lose the ability to distinguish reality from fantasy.

A brush of your hand in passing? Proof of intimacy.
A casual glance from across the cafeteria? Evidence of desire.
A smirk when she dropped a notebook? Permission.

Her world narrowed to these moments, to these imagined signals, to the unspoken bond she convinced herself existed.

She began to dream during class, her notebook open but her mind consumed with you. She replayed every movement, every gesture, every rumored secret of yours. She imagined the feel of your scars under her fingers, the taste of your skin, the heat of your breath close to hers, the pulse of your body next to hers in the quietest, darkest places.

The more she thought, the less she cared about the consequences.

Because the thought of never having you notice her at all was unbearable.

And you…you still didn’t seem to notice how fully she existed in your orbit. You only allowed the smallest gestures, the faintest acknowledgments. Despite this, she thrived on them.

Jeffery spent the rest of the day replaying every glance, every brush of your sleeve, every whispered rumor about you that floated through the hallways. Her mind clung to you like a vine, winding tighter and tighter with each small interaction. But the world was not just you.

She noticed, with a pang of both dread and curiosity, how sharply you frowned during history class. Not at her, not directly- but at the assignment the teacher had just handed down. The research paper, the one involving hours of tedious citation and analysis on something distinctly “nerdy”- ancient economic systems, statistical models, some obscure literature review. The kind of work Jeffery could do without even thinking, the kind she excelled at in isolation.

You were tapping your pen against the edge of your desk, jaw tight, eyebrows knit together. The faint curl of your lip suggested irritation, annoyance, likely boredom. Jeffery’s stomach flipped.

You hate this, she thought. You’re…frustrated. I can fix this for you. I can help you. I can make it better.

Her heart thrummed. She had a chance, and this was it.

The thought of stepping closer to you in even the smallest, functional way- helping you, doing something for you, being useful to you- made her chest ache with an impossible longing. She told herself it wasn’t obsession. It was…connection. She had a role to play. She could do something you would notice, and maybe, just maybe, you’d look at her differently.

At lunch, she lingered nearby as you scowled over your notebook, muttering under your breath about formatting errors and missing footnotes. She debated whether to speak. Her palms were clammy. Her chest was tight. Socially, she knew she had no natural way to bridge the gap without looking strange, intrusive, desperate. But…desperate was irrelevant when the stakes were you.

“Hey,” she said finally, voice quiet, careful, almost swallowed by the hum of the cafeteria. “Um…if you want, I…could, uh, help?”

You glanced up at her, half amused, half incredulous. The smirk flickered briefly across your face. “You? Really?”

Jeffery felt the heat rise immediately. Didn’t you hear me? Didn’t you see how focused she was? Didn’t you notice that she know this stuff? She struggled for words, faltering as your gaze held hers.

“I…yeah. I mean, I’m, uh…good at this. I can do, um…citations, research…whatever,” she said, voice quivering with a mix of anxiety and exhilaration.

You raised an eyebrow, tapping your pen against your notebook. “Hm…fine. Do it then. Make it look good. I don’t care how, just…do it.”

Jeffery’s chest swelled with a mix of terror and rapture. Your casual demand, your smirk, your brief acknowledgment that you needed her. It was intimacy. She told herself so. In her mind, it meant you trusted her, relied on her, wanted her. You weren’t just a storm; you were a tether pulling her toward a world she had no right to enter, a world where her existence mattered.

She nodded eagerly, nearly stumbling over the words. “I’ll…do it. I’ll…make it perfect. You’ll…you’ll see.” That hadn't come out as carefree as she had intended, she actually sounded rather desperate. So much so that Jeffery flinched at her own words.

And you didn’t stop her. You didn’t laugh, didn’t roll your eyes. You let it slide. You left the assignment in her hands, practically gifting her the chance to serve, to please, to be noticed in the way she had been starving for.

She went home and immediately set to work. Every sentence she typed, every citation she verified, every paragraph she restructured was infused with thought of you. She imagined the moment you’d pick up the finished work, the way you’d look at it, the slight tilt of your head, the approving smirk. The thought of you being impressed, even for a fleeting second, made her pulse quicken, made her fingers tremble over the keys.

Her obsession deepened further when she considered what this act meant. In her mind, helping you was more than help. It was connection. Proof that you cared enough to let her in. Proof that you noticed her in a way no one else ever would. Proof that you needed her, even a little, even in this small, practical way.

She fantasized at night, lying in bed, tracing the outline of the laptop she had used to perfect the assignment. She imagined you leaning across the desk, watching her work, guiding her hand as she adjusted a paragraph, as if this small shared activity was a moment of intimacy. She imagined the heat of your gaze pressing against her skin, imagined your hands on her shoulders, imagined a quiet acknowledgment that you approved, that you wanted her close.

She didn’t notice yet that you had begun to recognize just how far your presence had taken her. You didn’t see the trembling excitement in her eyes, the way her words stumbled when you spoke, the way she lingered just slightly too long near your desk. But you did notice that she was malleable, eager to please, and perhaps…vulnerable. And that realization sparked a faint amusement, a faint hunger for the power inherent in someone who idolized her so completely.

For Jeffery, it was love. For you, it was becoming leverage.

And the assignment- the research paper, the tedious citations, the hours of work- was only the beginning.

Because once you knew she would do anything to be seen, the spiral could deepen further.

Chapter Text

To say Jeffery had barely slept would be an understatement, eyes red and held open by copious amounts of energy drinks.

The cursor on her screen blinked long after the essay was finished- the perfectly formatted, meticulously researched, beautifully phrased paper that wasn’t even hers. To her, this might as well be a confession in itself. When she finally sent it to you, her body didn’t know what to do with itself. Her chest was tight, her hands trembled, her throat cracked and dry despite her attempts to swallow.

You hadn’t replied. Not for hours.

Her mind began to race.

She told herself it didn’t matter- that it was enough that you’d see it, read it, that you’d know how much effort she’d poured into something for you. But she couldn’t stop picturing the message sitting unopened. The thought of you not noticing, not caring, was unbearable. There was no guarantee that you'd bother reading it at all before submitting it to the teacher, was there?

Her room felt smaller by the minute. The air was thick, the hum of the computer fan too loud. She stood up, paced, sat back down, opened the file again, scrolled through the text like a priest reviewing sacred scripture. Despite her overall lack of style, Jeffery had tried her hardest to make it visually appealing to someone as flashy as you, when she usually wouldn't bother with presentation.

You’ll like it. You’ll understand.

She whispered it aloud, as if saying it would make it real.

When the notification finally came hours later in the form of a short message, barely a sentence, she nearly dropped her phone.

“got it. looks good. jeffery u saved me lmao”

Her heart hit the back of her ribs. Saved me.

She stared at the words until they blurred, and she had to force herself to blink to refocus her eyes. You hadn’t even used punctuation properly, but it didn’t matter. You had thanked her. You had said her name in the chat. And “saved”- God, that word was heavy, even if she knew you meant it as mere figure of speech.

She replayed it over and over in her mind, rereading the text as if she needed proof it wasn't a fabrication made up by her affection-starved psyche.

"Saved me."

You’d said it carelessly, but to Jeffery it was the most intimate thing she'd been told in...well, ever. It was proof that you needed her, that you’d seen her. She thought about you saying it in person, breath close, voice low. She imagined the expression on your face when you’d seen her message, how you might’ve smiled, how maybe your stomach fluttered the same way hers did just now, was doing still.

By the time morning came, she had convinced herself that this was a new stage in your relationship, if what you had could even be labeled as such.

She arrived at school early, far too early for any sane teenager. The sky was still grey and the halls nearly empty, but she lingered near your locker, holding her books in front of her chest, pretending to reread something.

When you showed up, eyes heavy with tiredness and boredom, your gaze flicked to her briefly. You flashed her an automatic smile, polite and hollow.

“Hey,” you said.

And that was it. A single word, drawn out in the lazy, casual tone you used for everyone else. But Jeffery felt it as though you’d pressed your palm against her cheek, tender and touching.

“Hey,” she said back, too quickly. Her voice cracked despite her desperate attempt to seem casual. You didn’t notice, already moving on, rummaging through your bag, sighing at some paper you’d forgotten to print.

Jeffery lingered anyway, hovering just a bit too close. “Did you, uh… like it? The paper?”

You looked up, surprised, then smiled in that slightly amused, sharp way that never quite reached your eyes. “Yeah, it was perfect. Seriously. Don’t know how you made that crap sound interesting.”

She felt dizzy. “It wasn’t that hard,” she managed, fidgeting restlessly with her hands.

You laughed once, a short, low sound that made her chest seize. “Well, you’re a lifesaver. We should, I dunno, hang out sometime or something... I owe you.”

You meant nothing by it. It was a throwaway line, the kind people use when they feel slightly guilty about taking advantage of someone’s kindness. But to Jeffery, it was her upside down world righting itself again. She nods, far too eager, far too quickly- although she couldn't find it in her to worry about that at the moment.

You. Owed. Her.

That single phrase looped in her mind all day, taking on new shapes, new meanings. You’d said it while brushing your hair behind your ear, eyes briefly meeting hers. That meant something, it had to! You’d leaned slightly closer, your perfume faint but warm, another sign she dare not miss. You hadn’t pushed her away when she hovered, that was practically an invitation. An invitation to what exactly? She hadn't quite yet decided.

By lunch, she’d rewritten the memory so many times she could no longer separate what you’d actually said from what she wanted you to mean. Maybe you’d smiled longer, touched her sleeve, looked back when you walked away- she could hardly recall.

Proof. Confirmation. Love. It must be at least one of those, must be.

When she caught sight of you later that day talking to someone else, a boy she didn’t know well, just another name in her peripheral vision- something twisted in her gut. The sound of your laugh hit her like a slap. You didn’t laugh like that with her, not that the two of you spoke much at all. She watched you from across the hallway, watched the boy say something and make you smile again, and something inside her cracked at the repulsive domesticity of it all.

Her notebook slipped from her hand and hit the floor with a thud, startling even her, though she didn’t move to pick it up just yet, gaze lingering like a common stalker. The noise in her head was too loud, every pulse of blood in her neck felt like a drumbeat. The light above her buzzed harshly, too white, too sharp.

Why him? Why not me? Who even was that?

She pressed her hands against her temples, trying to steady her breathing. People were staring. She ignored them as her pulse rumbled in her ears, throbbing behind her eyes.

When she finally looked back, you were gone. The boy too.

The rest of the day passed in fragments, half finished sentences, pages of notes she didn’t remember writing, the afterimage of your face burned into her vision. All she could think about was you, you holding her hand, you smiling at her, you whoring out to some other boy- No. That wasn't true, she knew it wasn't, couldn't be. You weren't like that. As soon as the thought hit her all she could feel was disgust at the notion, at herself for thinking something like that about you, at that guy who undoubtedly wanted what she wanted from you. Because who wouldn't?

When she got home, the quiet was unbearable. Her room was too still, cluttered with clothes and old food containers, it filled her with unbridled anger that only festered the longer she stood still in the doorway. She needed to move, to do something, hit something. For a moment, she just stands there, seething in silent rage as her mind races and sickness rushes to her gut.

She slams the door shut behind her, and as soon as it's shut she's storming over to her desk through piles of trash and manga strewn about her room. She yanks open drawers, knocking everything on her desk to the floor save for her computer- which was luckily far too hefty. Her jaw is set tight and her head is warm, then hot, then searing as she shoves and kicks and throws things until her breath is coming out in short gasping breaths.
Jeffery honestly isn't sure how long she spends throwing whatever meets her hands first at the peeling walls, shattering glasses and scattering journals filled with details that seemed entirely insignificant now.

She wanted to die, she wanted to kill something, she wanted you to pet her hair and smile with anything but indifference. Jeffery didn't fucking know what she wanted, anything but this miserable hole in her chest.

She stands heaving and dizzy amongst the disarray, her room barely distinguishable from a mound of trash, picking restlessly at the skin around her half bitten nails. Just to add insult to injury, she was already out of breath, and now her hands hurt from her pathetic attempts at punching the wall.

The silence afterward pressed down on her like weight. She thought of your message again. "Saved me". Her breath hitched, and all she could do was cling to the hope that those words might have meant something more.

You had needed her once, and you would again. You would, she told herself as she lied down pressed up against the pillows she'd lined up to simulate another person.