The physics classroom is quiet, except for the steady scratch of my favourite pen on the lined paper, gliding smoothly across the page. The equations are hard, but that’s nothing new. I copy them down, work through them.

I dotn understand what I’m writing but,

**It’s fine.**

The email notification pops up in the corner of my screen. Email: Subject Change Request.

I click on it.

Denied.

I read it again.

Denied.

_It’s too late to change from physics to biology at this stage . Too late. We encourage you to persist with your current subjects._

**I ****_hate_**** physics, I ****_hate_**** this class, I don’t understand it. I ****_want_**** to do biology**

The email sits open in front of me, the words pressing against my skull. An allusion of a growing headache.

_But nothing happens._ No rush of anger, no crushing disappointment…

just a **quiet**, **dull** sensation, like dropping a speck of sand down into an **endless** void.

I close the email. My eyes flick back to my notebook. The pen in my hand hovers over the paper. The question I was working on stares back at me, waiting, impatiently. The symbols floating on the page, shifting imprecisely slightly as if mocking me.

My pen still hovers,

_waiting for something?_

The numbers don’t make sense anymore.

The bell rings. I pack up, push my chair in, walk out. Everything’s okay. I’m following the face of my usual routine. At recess, I sit down and eat, but the food feels dense, dry. I chew and swallow, but it’s slow. Everything feels slow. The noise around me fades in and out, like a conversation happening in another room, like the distinct chirps of birds that are only briefly acknowledged.

Then my friends says, "To be honest, Quill, I feel like you should just drop out of high school."

The words settle between us. I pick at my food.

Drop out.

It doesn’t make sense at first. The thought doesn’t belong to me, but now that it’s there, it lingers.

Is it that easy?

No. **Of course not.**

That’s stupid.

I keep chewing. **Swallow**. Look down at my food.

**_Drop out._**

No.

It’s not a new thought. It’s been there before…

quiet, buried, too dangerous to acknowledge. The kind of thought that sits in the back of your mind, waiting for the right moment to slip through the cracks.

If I say it out loud, if I let it become real, then what?

It’s too easy, isn’t it? Too easy to just become a failure. Too easy to give up.

“I have to graduate, I’m almost there, it’s the minimum my parents want me to achieve, to **graduate**.” I’m smart, I’m gifted. Am I? I jsut study a lot, I try a lot, but I really am not smart at all, it’s takes so much work to be where I am right now, yet. It’s not enough. My parents have a business, I want to take over it, I want to be a buisness owner, but they don’t trust me, they think I will mess up, I’m incompetent.

**That’s not true. **

**I try. Try. **But the **only reason **Im struggling right now is becaude I’m doing a subject I dont **want** to. I’m doing work I have no interested in.

I finish eating, throw away my rubbish, get up. My locker is on the other side of the building. I walk there, open it, start grabbing my books.

(Boy 1) and (boy 2) are shoving each other nearby. (Classmate) and (classmate) are watching. I barely register them, just focus on what I’m doing.

Then—someone moves too close. A body flies at me. They’re so close to me yet I don’t move, I still have **not yet **registered that I am real.

Too fast. Too sudden.

"**BRO, MOVE!**" I say.

It’s loud. The words echo back at me, **_unfamiliar_**. _Replaying_ in my mind. The boy stumbles away, apologizing. I recognise his voice but don’t look at him.

"_Sorry, Quill._"

Oh no. I was too brash. Too rude. Where’s my kind** **

mature

composed

**Perfect**.

Image gone? I **ruined** it, I’ve got to **fix** it!

“_Don’t worry, it’s alright_”. I say in a soft voice, sounding so **familiar**, yet the smile I show is so fake, and **unfamiliar**.

My hands feel light. I shut my locker. The door slams harder than I mean to. A sharp, metallic snap.

I look down. My bag keychain dangles in two pieces.

I hold the **broken** chain for a moment.

Then I put it in my pocket and **walk** to class.