The classroom buzzed with conversation. Laughter echoed between rows of desks. Chairs scraped across the floor. Groups formed and dissolved with effortless ease as students talked about weekend plans, homework, and people who mattered to them. I watched all of it from the back of the room. No one noticed me. No one ever did. My gaze drifted to the window where Jayden sat pretending to pay attention. He wasn’t fooling anyone. Well—he wasn’t fooling me. The dark circles beneath his eyes were worse today. His phone rested face-down on the desk. Earlier, I’d seen the screen light up several times. Messages. Notifications. Attempts at conversation. He hadn’t checked any of them. Lately, he rarely did. I knew why. People always left eventually. Friends stopped calling. Promises were forgotten. Conversations faded into silence. I’d watched it happen over and over again. And every time, Jayden acted like it didn’t hurt. Every time, he lied. To everyone else, at least. Not to me. I saw the way his shoulders slumped when nobody was looking. I heard the thoughts he never spoke aloud. The exhaustion. The loneliness. The constant feeling that he was somehow standing outside the world while everyone else lived inside it. I knew all of it. Because I was always there. At first, he hated me. I remember sitting beside him on the bus months ago, watching the confusion spread across his face when he realized I wasn’t leaving. I followed him home. Appeared in the corner of his room. Waited beside lockers. Walked beside him in empty hallways. Sometimes I pointed out things he didn’t want to hear. Sometimes I reminded him of fears he tried desperately to bury. Sometimes I made everything worse. I wasn’t proud of that. But honesty and cruelty often looked alike from the outside. Especially when someone was already hurting.