(ON HOLD) jade decides to die → victorious

13

Jade sat hunched over on the closed lid of the toilet seat in the handicapped stall, her sanctuary amidst the hustle and bustle of the school lunch hour. She nibbled quietly on her sandwich, her eyes glazed with a distant look, lost in the labyrinth of her own thoughts.

The din of the school echoed faintly through the bathroom walls, a constant reminder of the world she sought refuge from. Her solitude, a deliberate choice, was a cocoon she wrapped around herself to escape the taxing demands of social interactions.

As she chewed mechanically, her mind wandered back to the latest event she'd been coerced into attending—an event that served as a stark reminder of the disparity between her and her family's expectations. Her parents, steeped in old money traditions and their unyielding perceptions of success, always measured her worth against their elitist standards.

The memory of her mother's harsh words clawed their way back into Jade's consciousness, vivid and unrelenting. "You have nothing to prove, Jade! Nothing!" her mother's voice rang in her ears, laced with venomous disdain.

"You disgust me," her mother had hissed, eyes brimming with contempt, a torrent of disappointment spilling over. Those words, like acid, etched themselves into Jade's being, a wound that festered beneath her stoic facade.

In her family's eyes, Jade was the anomaly—the renegade who abandoned the path of prestigious Ivy League schools and the polished echelons of society. She chose the unconventional route of Hollywood Arts, an act of rebellion against their predetermined destiny for her.

Jade's heart clenched with the weight of her mother's scathing words. The pressure to conform to their standards, to walk the path of privilege laid out for her, was an ever-present weight on her shoulders. Yet, she couldn't deny the discord between her dreams and their expectations.

Tears welled up in Jade's eyes, a poignant testament to the emotional turmoil bubbling beneath her guarded exterior. The sheer exhaustion of bearing the weight of familial expectations, the loneliness in the face of their unattainable standards, crept upon her like an engulfing shadow.

"I never made her proud," Jade whispered to herself, the words quivering with emotion, as if attempting to mend the irreparable chasm between her and her mother's aspirations. The crushing sense of disappointment that she was never enough, no matter how hard she tried, gripped her heart with a vice-like grip.

The bathroom door creaked open, jolting Jade out of her reverie. The sudden intrusion startled her, and she hastily wiped away the telltale traces of her vulnerability. She held her breath, praying she hadn't been discovered in her haven of solitude.

Tori and Cat wandered into the bathroom, their chatter gradually fading as they realized Jade wasn't among the bustling crowd in the cafeteria. They exchanged quizzical glances before Tori's eyes fell on the locked handicapped stall. It wasn't unusual for Jade to find solace there during lunch, yet Tori couldn't shake the feeling that something seemed off.

"Jade's not here, either?" Tori muttered, a hint of concern tinging her voice.

Cat, her usual sunny disposition dimming slightly, leaned closer to the stall door. "Jade's never around during lunch. She kinda disappears."

As they continued their conversation, Jade sat within the confines of the stall, silent and concealed, overhearing fragments of their discussion. The realization that they were searching for her sent an unexpected ripple through her guarded facade. A pang of discomfort clawed at her insides. She had grown accustomed to being a phantom among her peers, an entity detached from the ebbs and flows of social circles.

Jade's heart tugged in an unfamiliar manner. She wasn't used to people paying attention to her absence, let alone seeking her out. It was unsettling, disrupting the meticulously crafted isolation she had built around herself. A sense of vulnerability seeped into her being, a feeling she was unequipped to handle.

Cat's voice floated through the stall door, her words laced with a genuine curiosity about Jade. "I feel like she's not as mean as people think she is. Just...different."

The flicker of empathy in Cat's words struck a chord within Jade. She felt a fleeting warmth—unexpected, foreign—tugging at the walls she had erected around her heart. It was a perilous intrusion into her carefully cultivated loneliness.

But alongside that warmth, there thrived an undertow of resistance—a silent plea for isolation, a yearning for the respite of solitude. Jade's internal conflict raged on, torn between the desire for her plan's fulfillment and the unexpected threads of connection threatening to tether her to others.

The profound irony of the situation wasn't lost on her. She craved acceleration, yet these nascent threads—Tori's concern, Cat's kindness—were tangling her plan into an intricate web, making her task more complex and her goal seemingly unattainable.