The Girl Who Was Invisible: Chapter 1
Seventh grade felt like walking into a room where everyone else had already memorized the script. I was just the quiet bookworm, the girl who preferred the safety of a book to the chaotic volume of the classroom. My world was small, safe, and silent—until Mohan moved into my orbit.
It was almost funny, looking back. My best friend, Anushka, had called dibs on him first. She spent weeks sketching out daydreams about him, convinced he was “the one,” until the day he walked into class with a disastrously short haircut. It was the kind of transformation that didn’t just ruin his look; it ruined the entire image Anushka had built in her head. Her crush evaporated overnight.
But the seed was already planted.
“You know,” Anushka said to me, leaning over during lunch a few days later, her eyes tracking Mohan as he tossed a crumpled paper across the room. “You and he? You’d actually look good together.”
I didn’t brush it off like I usually did. I looked at him—really looked at him—and for the first time, the idea stuck. It settled in my chest, warm and terrifying.
That same afternoon, Anushka decided she wasn’t waiting for fate. She didn’t have a shy bone in her body, and she cornered him right in front of me. “So, Mohan,” she said, her voice far too loud, “what do you think of Sia?”
I suddenly found my textbook to be the most fascinating object on earth. I could feel his gaze on me, and I held my breath, terrified of the answer.
“She’s… nice,” he said, sounding genuinely surprised by the question. He leaned in a little, his tone dropping just enough to pull me into the conversation. “Honestly, when the teacher made her my desk partner, I was braced for it to be a disaster. I thought she was a snitch. But she’s actually pretty chill.”
I felt a flush creep up my neck.
“Do you even know her backstory?” Anushka pressed, grinning like she was letting him in on a secret. “She didn’t say a single word from Kindergarten all the way to 4th grade in her old school.”
Mohan’s eyes widened, genuine intrigue breaking through his cool exterior. “Really?”
My heart did a strange, stuttering flip. He was looking at me differently now—less like I was a background character and more like a puzzle he wanted to solve.
Anushka didn’t let the moment cool down. A few weeks later, she pulled off her master plan. She caught him on the school bus, the only place where he couldn’t just walk away. I wasn’t there, but later she told me everything: she had leaned in and dropped the bomb. Sia likes you.
Mohan had just laughed, shaking his head. He didn’t believe it for a second—why would a quiet, invisible girl like me ever notice a guy like him?
“If you don’t believe me,” Anushka had challenged, her smirk widening, “ask her yourself in school.”
He hadn’t said yes, but he hadn’t said no, either. And while he stood on the precipice of deciding whether or not to actually speak to me, I was sitting at home, staring at my laptop screen, realizing that if he wouldn’t make the first move, I was going to have to jump off the cliff myself.
