chapter 3

Ariana walked slowly through the school corridors, her backpack feeling heavier than usual. Every laugh she passed felt like it was directed at her, every glance seemed to carry judgment. She had barely survived yesterday, Daniel’s dismissive words still ringing in her ears, and Lena’s absence from her side now felt heavier than a stone.

By lunchtime, she spotted Lena sitting under their usual tree, her notebook open and pencil in hand. Ariana approached cautiously.

“Hey,” Ariana whispered.

Lena looked up, smiling, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “Hey… you okay?”

Ariana hesitated, then sank down beside her. “I… I don’t know. My dad, my mom… it’s getting worse. Evelyn keeps trying to make me feel small. And Daniel… he doesn’t even care.”

Lena nodded slowly, her expression unreadable.

“I understand. You don’t deserve any of that.”

Ariana let herself breathe a little. Finally, someone understood—or at least, she thought they did.

“Thanks,” she said. “I just… needed to tell someone. I feel like I’m drowning sometimes.”

Lena reached over and gave her hand a brief squeeze. “I get it. I really do.”

Ariana felt a flicker of hope—maybe, just maybe, she wasn’t entirely alone.

But hope can be fragile.

Two days later, Ariana returned home after school to find Evelyn sitting on the couch, arms crossed, smirking.

“Mom,” Evelyn said casually, “Ariana told Lena everything that’s going on at home. Isn’t that… dangerous?”

Her mother’s eyes narrowed, scanning Ariana with a sharpness that made her chest tighten.

“Everything she told who?” her mother demanded.

“Lena,” Evelyn said, shrugging. “She said she can’t handle the way you treat her. That she feels like she doesn’t exist.”

Ariana froze. Her stomach sank, and the walls of the living room seemed to close in. Lena—her best friend, her safe person—had shared her secret with her sister.

“Ariana…” her mother said slowly, her voice low but cutting, “we’ve tried to raise you properly. And yet, here you are, gossiping to friends instead of behaving.”

Ariana opened her mouth, but no words came. She could feel the panic rising in her chest. The familiar ache of being misunderstood, of being punished for existing, settled over her.

“You will learn,” her mother continued, “that there are consequences for speaking out of turn.”

Evelyn’s smirk widened.

“Maybe some discipline will help her… understand her place.”

Ariana’s hands trembled. Her heart thudded painfully as she realized the betrayal. She had trusted Lena, shared the deepest parts of her fear and pain… and now she was going to be punished for it.

Later, in her room, Ariana sat on the floor, clutching her knees. Her chest burned, and her eyes were wet with tears she refused to shed in front of her family. She thought of Lena—why had she done this? Was it jealousy? Fear? Or just… cruelty?

The room felt suffocating, the shadows stretching over her like hands trying to hold her down. But somewhere deep inside, Ariana whispered to herself:

“I can survive this. I have to survive this.”

Even as the first blows of punishment landed and the hunger gnawed at her, Ariana began to realize something important: she could not rely on anyone but herself.

And that thought, painful as it was, planted the first tiny seed of the light she would one day find.

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