Strings of Fate: The First Loop

chapter 36 : the ghost in the byline

fifteen.

he dated stacey. popular, pretty, loud stacey. the kind of girl who made everyone look at her when she walked into a room.

i watched from the hallway as he laughed with her by his locker, their fingers grazing like it meant nothing.

i remember standing there, my stomach twisted in that now-familiar ache.
“tell him what you feel,” young drake said. he was a little shorter then, a little more hopeful. “maybe he doesn’t know.”

i shook my head. “it doesn’t work that way.”

because it didn’t.

---

and even now, it still doesn’t.

because through all of that, lorie, stacey, the girls that came and went... what could i have done?
what could i have said?

what trick, what confession, what desperate hail mary would have made him look at me and choose me?

nothing.

so i said nothing.

and i let the silence drown me, let it swallow my voice and stitch my heart into waiting.
waiting for the day he might look up, see me standing there, and decide... I'm the one.

but that day never came.
not yet.
maybe not ever.

and i don’t know how long a person can wait before the silence becomes who they are.

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days passed.
then weeks.
and all of it felt like static.

i sent a christmas greeting.
he didn’t reply.

i waited until midnight on new year’s wve to send another. his birthday came and went. i called, just to say the words ive never missed saying since we were kids. he didn’t pick up. straight to voicemail.

i stared at my phone long enough to see my reflection on the screen, eyes half-dead, lips trembling. i hated that i was still hoping.

i remembered what my mom said, "others fight for it. claw for their place. make noise. show up anyway and ask, why not me? and maybe sometimes they win. "

maybe, this is the kind of woman i am. the one who claws for my place out of hope or of desperation or both. i am just tired of being sidelined.

this time, i'll fight for what i believe belonged to me. That place beside him.

so i drove to his house.

i didn’t even plan what to tell him or how to say it. Mlmy hands just moved. keys in the ignition, my breath fogging up the windows in that cold january breeze. i told myself i just needed to see him. i have to tell him how i really feel. that would be enough. he didn't have to say anything. i just needed proof that he still existed in the same world as me.

but as the clock hit midnight, and the fireworks began to split the sky into colors and chaos, i saw her.

Betty.

she was on his front porch, under the glow of a thousand flickering lights. her hair was down, soft curls brushing her sweater. she was laughing, laughing like she belonged there. like she had always belonged there. like this wasn’t my place to begin with. like she is mocking my desperation.

JAMES stood beside her. dmiling. holding her waist like he’d finally found something he could hold onto.

and behind them, his mom and his dad. beaming like she was some long-awaited answer to a prayer. like she had saved their son.

i stayed in my car. parked across the street in the dark like a cliché from some pitiful coming-of-age movie scene. a side character too scared to walk into the party she was never invited to.

and in that moment, i thought:
is that it?
is this the version of his life where i never make it past the director's cut?

how do you reclaim a place in someone’s life once they’ve already handed your role to someone else?
once they’ve rewritten the entire script without you in it?

there’s only one way, my mind whispered.

if you want to change the story…
you have to become the plot twist.

and there’s only one person who can tear JAMES and Betty apart. the only person who can flip the iceberg and bring down the titanic so Betty and JAMES can stop playing jack and rose.

matthew santos

and i'll be the one to save JAMES, save jack from drowing. i will share that damn piece of door with him the way rose didn't, even if it means dragging Betty off of the raft