The DM That Broke the Pyramid

I'd been cyber-stalking Chloe's Instagram for three months straight — a total low-key spy mission through her aesthetic coffee shop pics and aesthetic study sessions. My phone had basically become a surveillance device at this point.

Then came Monday. The day my life turned into a glitched-out simulation.

I was chilling in my room, mindlessly scrolling through Chloe's profile again when Mittens — my chaotic orange demon of a cat — decided that particular moment was perfect for parkour across my keyboard. Before I could stop him, he'd stepped on the send button and accidentally posted a comment that read simply: "jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjfffffff"

I died inside. Actual death. My ghost left my body and hovered over my bed watching my 15 years of dignity evaporate.

But here's where it gets weird. Two minutes later, my phone buzzed.

"LMAO your cat's aesthetic tho"

It was Chloe. ACTUAL Chloe. Queen of the school pyramid, unreachable goddess of popularity, had NOTICED me. And she was responding to my keyboard-mashing cat disaster.

We ended up talking for hours. Turns out the girl at the top of the pyramid? She was dealing with her own stuff — pressure to be perfect, fake friends, the whole exhausting performance of high school royalty. She'd been following my art account for months, watching my sketches from the shadows like I was watching her life.

The pyramid wasn't a triangle — it was more like a circle where everyone felt like they were on the outside looking in.

Now Mittens has his own Instagram account (@mittens_chaos_official) with 12K followers. Chloe and I are working on a graphic novel together. And I still low-key feel like I'm spying when I look at her posts sometimes, but at least now I know she's probably doing the same thing with mine.

High school is weird, man. Sometimes it takes a chaotic cat to break down all the walls we build around ourselves.