Breathless

The bass from Marcus's speakers shook the windows, but I couldn't feel it. Not really. Three weeks after the incident that everyone whispered about but no one mentioned, I was still floating somewhere above my body, watching myself pretend to be normal.

"You good?" Maya asked from the pool table, where she was absolutely destroying some sophomore whose name I kept forgetting. "You look like you're gonna barf."

"I'm chill," I lied, pulling my snapback lower. "Just needed air."

I slipped through the sliding door to the backyard, where the humidity hit me like a physical weight. That's when I saw it—the **dog**, a golden retriever with the kind of soft eyes that made something in my chest crack. It was sitting by the edge of Marcus's above-ground **pool**, just staring at the water like it held the meaning of life.

The thing was, I wasn't supposed to be here. Not after what happened with Jordan. Not after the whole school decided my entire existence was a drama they couldn't stop watching. But Maya wouldn't let me rot in my room forever.

"You miss them too, huh?" I whispered, sinking beside the **dog**. It rested its head on my knee, and suddenly I was **running** through every memory I'd been trying to outrun—Jordan's laugh in the cafeteria, the way they'd defended me when Jason made that joke, the text that changed everything.

I thought I'd been doing fine. But staring at that **pool**—water rippling in the moonlight, reflecting a version of myself I barely recognized—I realized the truth. I wasn't **running** from the rumors or the sideways glances. I was **running** from the fact that losing my best **friend** didn't just leave a hole where they used to be. It made me question everything I thought I knew about myself.

The **dog** whined softly, nudging my hand with its wet nose. And for the first time in three weeks, I didn't feel like I was suffocating.

"Yeah," I said aloud. "Me too."