Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 11

I nodded along, barely keeping up with the string of thoughts pouring out of her, but I didn’t mind. There’s a strange kind of grace in having a friend like Inez, someone who speaks so much it leaves you no room to spiral inward. Her voice fills up the quiet corners in my mind, the ones I usually reserve for overanalyzing and picking scabs that were just beginning to heal. Some people pull you into their silence and make you sit there with your thoughts. Inez? She drags you into noise, into stories about dogs named Dog and confusing boys and dreams that don’t belong to you. And somehow, it’s a form of mercy. Like a dam against the flood of my own thoughts. Like a second skin I can slip into and forget where mine begins. She’s sunshine, loud and bright and burning away the fog, even if just for a moment. And I love her for that.

Before I could say anything, the door creaked open and the voice of Mr. Oxford swept in like the sound of a book slamming shut.

“Phones away. Journals out. Let’s do something brave and boring today.”

Groans rippled through the room like a wave, and Inez rolled her eyes so hard I thought she might fall out of her chair. But I sat up straighter, blinked the blur from my eyes, and picked up my pen, grateful, even in the smallest way, for the noise, for the light, for the pretending. And for Inez, my personal escape route in human form.

By lunch, the noise of the day had started to settle into something softer. Less sharp around the edges.

I was about to head to my usual quiet corner in the back garden when Inez linked her arm through mine like she always does when she’s made a decision on my behalf.

“You’re not escaping today,” she declared, chin high. “Come on.”

“Inez---”

“Nope.” She pulled me across the school yard, her hair bouncing with each determined step. “We’re socializing. You need people. Vitamin D. Laughter. Love.”

That last word she sang.

I wanted to resist. I really did.

But I let her drag me anyway.

The table she led me to wasn’t one I expected. It was surrounded by noise and movement, by boys in slightly wrinkled uniforms and mismatched energy.

Tim was waving his arms animatedly, Drake was laughing over something on his phone, and James… James was already looking at me.

Inez slid into the bench next to Tim and pushed me toward the empty space beside him.

But before I could sit, James reached up and tugged at my wrist gently.

“Sit here.”

It wasn’t a question.

His voice was soft, but it carried weight, like a current underneath still waters.

So I did.

I sat next to him.

And just like that, I belonged.

Drake was grinning at his phone again. “Look at my boyfriend. Look. He sent me a selfie while trying on these ridiculous pink sunglasses. Tell me he doesn’t look like a heartthrob.” He passed it around like it was treasure. James and Tim both nodded in agreement, offering a chorus of “dude’s slaying” and “iconic.”

I watched them all, these boys who used to feel like the unreachable pantheon of the school hierarchy.

But now?

Now I saw them differently.

They weren’t just jerseys and arrogance. Not just sweaty lockers and loud jokes. There was something else beneath the surface. I saw it in Drake’s soft smile when he spoke about Corey. In the way Tim leaned closer to Inez when she laughed. In James, especially James, who looked at me like the world quieted when I spoke.bMaybe they weren’t that different from me. Maybe they were just trying to hold their own broken pieces together the best they could.