Chapter 14 Kristen
The cafeteria was everything I feared and nothing I hoped for. The door slid open with a whisper under the sterile hum of the lights, and I stepped inside like I was walking onto a stage where no one cast me a line or even noticed I’d arrived. I scanned the room, eyes moving over tables and chairs in a slow rhythm, searching for an empty seat like it was some kind of lifeline. No one looked at me. Conversations dipped just a little as I passed, like sound itself knew better than to spill into my space. People didn’t ignore me. It was worse than ignoring. It was like I didn’t exist.
My footsteps felt loud in the quiet. My body felt loud in the quiet. I settled at a table on the edge of the room and tried to act casual, tugging my backpack onto my lap, breathing shallow as I watched a trio of students across the room make a spoon float in lazy circles above their half‑empty plates, like it was the most normal thing in the world. A girl with mist trailing behind her like perfume passed by, and every head turned as though the air itself had become a person worth noticing. Nobody noticed me.
Then someone did.
She had bright eyes and an easy smile, the kind that didn’t look like a performance but like it was a genuine asset she didn’t know she wielded. She waved me over, palm up, like it was a casual invitation that carried a surprising amount of power. I moved toward her table, and as I sat down she picked up a cup of tea, held it between her palms, and let the steam rise in spirals sharper than physics should allow.
“Everyone here’s got something,” she said with a shrug that made the steam curl faster. “Even if you don’t see it at first.”
Her words should’ve comforted me. Instead, I forced a smile and said, “Guess I’m still waiting.”
She didn’t laugh. She just met my eyes, steady and unafraid. That was the only warmth I felt in that room.
Part of me thought that was enough. Part of me was already burning with the realization that I’d stepped into a world where nothing about me seemed to register on the surface. Here, power wasn’t a whisper. Power was currency. It was lightweight and showy and loud, like the phone floating over tables, spinning lazily in the air like someone was daring it to stop. It was elegant and subtle like mist following behind a girl with perfect posture. It was cruel and playful like the kid whose finger silenced someone mid‑sentence, turning a shout into an awkward gargle until everyone laughed, including the kid who’d just been cut off.
My chair wobbled once under me. I reached for steadying support and found nothing. No one around me blinked. Anna just sipped her tea like nothing had happened. I felt it then—like a marking. Not just invisible but insignificant. Not just insubstantial but nothing.
That realization stung.
I tried not to let it show, tried to absorb it as some kind of ridiculous mistake, but the cafeteria was a gallery of talents and spectacles and quiet dominance, and I was this blank spot in the corner that didn’t belong on the chart. The burn in my chest wasn’t hunger. It was humiliating clarity.
Later, in the courtyard, the subtle exclusions got sharper. I joined a group of students who were talking in polite circles, and the moment someone recognized my badge, the ring shifted, chairs scooting quietly like they remembered an itch, and I was the only seat left at the edge, looking in. Nobody said anything harsh. Nobody had to. Their bodies spoke it for them.
One time, my ID badge didn’t open a lab door. I swiped it, and the light flashed red. I tried again. Red again. I stood there, shoving it into my pocket, and not one person stopped to help. Not a single cursor over their shoulder, not a footstep toward me. It was small. Calculated. Unseen to the untrained eye, but to me, it stung more than any insult could.
In class, things weren’t better. The syllabus was projected at the front, and names were listed beneath seat numbers. When mine wasn’t there, I raised my hand and corrected it. Not once. Not twice. But still, when I spoke, there was no laughter. No defense. Just the slight pause before the professor moved on like my voice was an interruption instead of a student’s name.
Anna saw it before I did. She didn’t say much. She just sat beside me after class, eyes soft but unreadable.
“You just need to prove you belong,” she said. No sugarcoating. No illusion. She didn’t smile. She just looked at me like she knew exactly what that felt like.
Belong how? I didn’t have abilities to show off. My family pedigree was a blank page here. My father was gone. My name didn’t open doors or bend metals or make cameras glitch. I was nothing. That alone was the kind of exposure that made people look at you without seeing you, like you were air with a pulse.
I walked out of class with the echo of chuckles and low whispers trailing behind me. Not loud enough to catch on their own. Not cruel enough on the surface. Just marginal. Just small. Just enough to draw a line between me and everyone else. Enough to make my cheeks burn and my teeth hurt from clenching.
I stormed out of the seminar room like I meant to break something. The hallway swallowed my footfalls, and the whispers caught up with me, brushing my back like wind over sand. I wanted to turn and snarl something clever, but the words that came out were just breath.
By the time I made it back to the dorm, my heart was an engine running too fast. I didn’t turn on the light. I didn’t want to see the room in full detail. The shadows were enough. My roommate hadn’t returned yet, and for the first time since I arrived, I felt grateful for somebody’s absence. I didn’t want company. I wanted space. Empty breathing room that didn’t demand I apologize for existing.
I lay on the bed in the dark, staring at the ceiling like it was a horizon I’d once recognized. I replayed the day. Every sideways glance. Every silence. Every tiny exclusion that, when combined, felt like a map pointing to the fact that I was nothing in this place. Not a threat. Not an asset. Not even a curiosity.
And then I remembered what Leo had told me when we were still on the road: “Don’t talk unless you need to. Don’t stop watching.”
At the time, I’d bristled at the implication that I needed to shrink. I’d laughed it off, resented the fear baked into the words, told myself his world and this world were miles apart. But lying there in the dark, feeling the bruises of invisibility settle into my ribs, I realized maybe he wasn’t telling me to hide. Maybe he was telling me how to survive.
Maybe visibility wasn’t a curse.
Maybe it was a battlefield.
Maybe he understood something here I didn’t yet.
And maybe that was the edge I needed.
Not just to stay safe.
But to make them finally fucking see me.