SOPHIE
I make it home before the tears start.
Not the angry kind. Not even the sad kind, really. Just... exhausted tears. The kind that come when you've been holding yourself together for hours and your body finally realizes it's safe to fall apart.
I drop my bag by the door and head straight upstairs, past my mom who's doing laundry in the hallway, past Chloe's closed bedroom door where I can hear her laughing on the phone with one of her friends.
Nobody asks how my morning went. Nobody ever does.
I close my bedroom door, lock it, and sit on the edge of my bed, staring at nothing.
My safe space. That's what the community center was supposed to be. The one place where I wasn't invisible, where I wasn't Sophie-the-target or Sophie-the-disappointment or Sophie-who-doesn't-matter. I was
