Strings of Fate: The First Loop

CHAPTER 32

It had been weeks since I last saw James in person. Tim said he’d been drinking again, alone and more than usual, slipping back into the dark places he swore he was done with. Matt had become a ghost too, distant and cold, like a shadow moving around me without ever really touching. The silence between us was louder than any fight.

Inez was the only one who noticed how I was barely holding it inside. She didn’t say much, never gave advice to fix me, but she held my hand when my body trembled, like I was about to break apart in the middle of class or in the quiet hallways. Her presence was steady, quietly anchoring me in ways I didn’t know I needed until she was there.

“Betts, you have to promise me...” she squeezed my fingers, “...that you won’t let this, this whole mess, swallow you.”

“I don’t know how not to,” I whispered, staring at the cracked skin on my palms. “Everything feels like it's falling apart around me.”

She smiled, tired but fierce. “I know. But, think about it this way, the pieces always fall somewhere. We just have to wait and trust that they’ll make sense again.”

I nodded, even though I wasn’t sure if I believed her.

Then there was Mrs. Pamela’s office, a place I wished I could avoid forever. She called me in one afternoon, and her apology was soft, like a quiet admission of failure.

“I shouldn’t have dragged you into James’s problems,” she said, eyes heavy with regret. “Looking back, I should have seen that he’s… bad for you.”

Her words stung, but I said nothing. How could I argue with the world that had already branded him? The whispers that followed us in the halls, the sideways looks, the judgment that settled over my shoulders like a heavy cloak. They saw him as the problem, the bad influence, the risk, and me, the girl who should just let him go.

But how do you tear down a brand so deeply stamped on someone’s skin?

Maybe this silence was my fight. My own small rebellion. Because sometimes, love doesn’t roar. Sometimes, it’s the quiet refusal to give up, the secret holding on when everything else tells you to let go. I didn't understand it then, but I'm beginning to grasp what it meant.

Outside the office, the hallway buzzed, not loud, but textured. Footsteps, distant laughter, the slap of lockers opening and closing. Life moved around me like a tide I still couldn’t quite swim in. A flash of color caught my eye, orange, bright as a firecracker. A student near the stairwell was handing out flyers, waving one in my direction with the urgency of someone who believed joy was something you could hand to a stranger. I took it.

“Halloween Singing Contest,” it said, the letters curved and playful, as if the page itself was smiling.

I stared at it for a second longer than I needed to. Halloween. I don’t know why that surprised me. Maybe I still thought of this place as temporary, like one long layover I hadn’t unpacked for. Still a guest, still new. Still not invited into the secret pulse of it all. I folded the paper slowly, the corners soft beneath my fingertips, and slid it into my pocket like it mattered.

That’s when I saw her, Sophia. From homeroom. The girl who always asked questions she already knew the answer to. She sat on the front row, just one seat away from the door.

“Hey, Betty,” she said, her voice too sugar-coated to swallow. “It’s good that you and… that James aren’t hanging around anymore.”

I didn’t answer. I just met her eyes. Something flickered there, satisfaction, maybe. Or pity disguised as concern. She leaned in slightly, lowering her voice like she was confiding something sacred.