Pyramid Games

My palms were sweating so much I could barely hold my phone. Again. The vitamin D supplements my mom insisted I take were supposed to help with stress, but they sure weren't helping with the whole "drowning in high school hierarchy" situation.

"You coming to Maya's party?" Leo asked, dropping into the seat beside me. My best friend since seventh grade, currently floating somewhere around the middle of the social pyramid, occasionally dipping into the lower tiers with me. Lucky him. I was permanently stationed in the basement.

"I wasn't invited," I muttered, scrolling through my completely empty notifications.

Leo shrugged. "She posted it on Snapchat. Everyone's invited."

Everyone wasn't the right word. Everyone at a certain elevation of the pyramid was invited. The rest of us were just background characters, zombies shuffling through the halls, existing without really mattering.

"You should come," Leo said. "It's gonna be fun."

The thing about Leo? He meant well. He really did. But he didn't understand what it was like to be invisible. To walk through hallways where people literally looked through you like you were made of glass.

"Maybe," I said, even though we both knew I wouldn't.

Friday night, I lay in bed staring at my ceiling while Maya's party raged on without me. Instagram stories showed faces I recognized from class, laughing and dancing and existing in that bright, colorful world where everything seemed possible. Where people like them belonged.

Around midnight, my phone buzzed. Leo: ":( are you okay"

Something in me cracked.

"I'm tired of being nobody," I typed back. "I'm tired of the pyramid. I'm tired of being a zombie in someone else's story."

"Then write your own," Leo replied. "Start your own thing. I'll help."

I stared at my palm, the lines crossing and intersecting like—what was it fortune tellers said? Like possibility. Like choices.

My phone buzzed again. "We could start that podcast you talked about freshman year. The one about weird local history."

I hadn't thought about that in years. The idea had seemed stupid then. But now?

"Tomorrow," I typed. "Let's talk tomorrow."

I set my phone down, and for the first time in months, I didn't feel like background noise in my own life. The pyramid was still there. The ladder was still impossible. But maybe—just maybe—I didn't have to climb it. Maybe I could build something new.

My palms weren't sweating anymore. Maybe those vitamins actually worked after all.