It was raining that Saturday. The kind of rain that made the sky look like it gave up trying. Zariah sat curled in the corner of her bed, her journal open but blank. She hadn't written in days. The last entry was smudged with something—maybe water, maybe tears. She couldn't remember.
The message from that anonymous account still haunted her.
"You thought you could forget?"
She never replied. She never blocked it again either. It just sat there. Waiting. Like the memories it unlocked.
Mr. Harmon's voice echoed in her ears sometimes when the world got quiet. The way he'd said her name. How his hand lingered too long on her shoulder. She remembered the locked storage room. The lights. The breath caught in her throat. The way he smiled when he told her to "keep this between us."
She wanted to scream. To tell someone. But her mouth never worked when it mattered.
That night, she went into the bathroom and stared at the bottle of Tylenol in the medicine cabinet. Her hands trembled as she held it. It wasn't a plan. Not really. But she thought about it. Hard.
If I just took them all… would it stop hurting? Would I finally feel… nothing?
Her breathing picked up. Her chest tightened. The walls felt like they were shrinking. It was like she was trapped in a glass jar, and someone was twisting the lid tighter and tighter.
She dropped the bottle. Pills scattered across the tile floor like little white confessions.
Zariah fell to her knees, clutching her stomach, choking on air. A panic attack. She knew it now. The fluttering heart, the numb hands, the way the world felt like it was tilting sideways. She gasped, clawing for something—anything—to hold on to.
And then she heard her phone vibrate.
One buzz.
Then two.
She didn't check it. She couldn't move. But in the silence after, she swore she heard her own heartbeat screaming inside her.