When I returned to school, everyone knew about the fire.
At first, people were kind.
Teachers hugged me.
Classmates asked how I was.
Girls brought me little notes.
But eventually, life returned to normal.
For everyone except me.
People stopped asking if I was okay.
They started asking questions about my face.
“What happened?”
“Does it hurt?”
“Can you feel this part?”
“Were you burned badly?”
Some children were cruel.
Most weren’t.
That almost made it harder.
Because nobody was openly bullying me.
Nobody gave me a clear enemy.
Instead, there were small things.
A boy looking at me, then quickly looking away.
A girl whispering something to her friend.
Someone taking a selfie and moving the camera so I wasn’t in it.
A group of girls talking about who they thought was cute.
Then one of them would glance at me.
Silence.
I learned to notice everything.
I learned to pretend I noticed nothing.
By high school, I had perfected the art.
I knew how to sit at the edge of a room.
How to smile when someone stared.
How to answer questions without getting emotional.
How to pretend I didn’t care when people didn’t invite me.
My mother hated that.
