Natalie doesn't come back to school when our senior year begins. As the weather gets colder, her seat in class remains stubbornly empty. There are whispers from September to October about what happened to her, but by November everyone forgets that she exists.
I look up her socials, which haven't been updated since the Brooklyn Bridge incident. All negative comments from anonymous accounts have ceased, but they still remain under her posts like an ancient relic. It was a sign that she hadn't logged in for a while. That and the fact that she still followed me, but this also applied to Maia and Ainsley.
It feels weird to be mutuals with the three girls after everything that happened. I would have expected them to block me after my secret was revealed, for my deception and my lower socioeconomic class. I could understand why Maia and Ainsley did it since they had voyeuristic tendencies with all of the students in our class. So much of their gossip came from what they saw online, and they were judgmental about every little thing that our peers shared. But I don't think Natalie wants to see my face anywhere.
I click back to the post that the online bully made. If Natalie was the one behind the scholarship student profiles, then the one she made about herself was questionable. The details of her father's scandal were accurate, pulled directly from business news journals. But I don't think the apartment in the profile was the correct one, given how students at Two Bridges never caught a glimpse of her when they stalked the area.
Out of curiosity, one day I decided to pay a visit to her old address after school. The doorman recognizes me from when I used to walk her home three years ago. It was he who I asked about how Natalie was when she first disappeared from school.
He confirms my suspicions about her family remaining in the building despite the scandal. He refuses to tell me the psych ward that she's staying in, maintaining her family's privacy. He doesn't tell me that she's still in treatment, but his guarded nature about the matter is enough to communicate that the situation is bad.
At least she was still alive.
I don't talk about her with my friends, but she haunts my memories. She was my first friend and enemy at the school. There is no one else in my life with the same distinction. How could I not think about her?
Between not knowing where she was and what led her to the bridge, my brain busied itself with making up explanations to fill in the gaps. I imagine a devious boy setting her up and driving her crazy with unreasonable demands. I picture her doing everything she could in the name of love.
It was easier to believe the things that she told me. If I thought she was crazy and obsessed with Mikael, I wouldn't need to ruminate over the events. But there was more to the girl who abandoned me than senseless hatred.
By exposing me to the school, she revealed the true nature of my friends and the other students. She showed me that I was trying too hard to belong among people who didn't care about me.
It is not enough to be smart to succeed. Having the brainpower doesn't demand respect or kindness from others. I am lucky to have one friend and a boy who likes me.
But if I were Natalie, I would have been the penguin forced to walk into the mountains, miles away from the safety of the huddle. I would have no one but the snow in the Arctic. I would have embraced the cold and certain death.
That's not to say that I would have been fearless. I am scared of many things, especially the future. I'm terrified of leaving my friends, disappointing my family, and being alone.
Most of all, I am tired. No matter how hard I work, the life I want still seems out of my reach. I compete against other students and spend every free moment studying. If I don't do that, I'm doing chores at home or manual labor in the family bakery.
I try my best. I wake up and put on my uniform. Somehow, even though I always manage to catch the train to school, I am barely there.
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