Chapter Twenty-Five – Outcast The Monday after she walked out, Yn returned to school — but not as the same girl everyone remembered. She didn’t fix her hair. She didn’t wear makeup. She didn’t bother with the cheer uniform or even the clothes she used to carefully choose. She wore a plain hoodie, ripped jeans, and sneakers, and she moved through the halls like she was invisible. And for the first time, she wanted to be invisible. The whispers were still there, but they slid right past her. The stares didn’t sting anymore. The laughter felt distant, like it belonged to another world she’d stopped living in. At lunch, she sat alone in the far corner of the cafeteria, earbuds in, music drowning out the noise. No one approached her — not Freya, not Malachi, not even the people who used to taunt her. She’d made herself untouchable, not by fighting back, but by refusing to play their game. By the end of the week, she’d stopped caring entirely. She didn’t join conversations. She didn’t react when someone made a joke at her expense. She didn’t even glance at Lila when they passed in the hallway. It was like she’d built a wall so high no one could climb it — and she was fine with that. But there was a strange kind of freedom in it. Without the pressure to impress, without the weight of other people’s opinions, she could breathe again. She could exist without pretending. She was an outcast now — not because they pushed her out, but because she’d chosen to step away. And as she walked home that Friday, the sun setting behind her, Yn realized something she never thought she’d feel: Being alone wasn’t the worst thing. Being fake had been.
