Hushed rumours & Half-glances
When Caitlyn steps through the classroom door, her accent and poise instantly set her apart from her American classmates. Her clothes - perhaps a blazer too formal for the desert heat, polished brogues, and a gold crest of the Royal Kiramman Matriarchy of England hanging heavy around her neck - suggest a background steeped in old-world formality. Stepping forward to the centre of the classroom, she immediately identifies the people who know of her and the people who don’t. Getting ready to be bombarded with whispers and accusations following the latest British headlines circulating the internet, Caitlyn does what Mel has told her “Set the record straight, before the narrative can be twisted” Caitlyn cuts straight to what she fears they’re already whispering about, In her crips and polished British accent.
“Hello, my name is Caitlyn, Some may know me as Caitlyn Kiramman, please, I prefer just Caitlyn and also, before anyone asks, because I know you will feel the need to - no, I’m not a raging lesbian, the reports are false, I am here purely for educational purposes like my cousin before me,” she says. It’s a solid, well-thought-out statement that sucks the whispers out of the room like a vacuum in the corner of a wall, eliciting wide-eyed stares, awkward coughs, and a few muffled snickers. At that moment, Caitlyn attempts to control the narrative, to pre-empt the rumours and gossip that have chased her across the Atlantic. She wants to set the record straight - even if her false declaration lands with all the subtlety of a grenade.
At the far end of the room, near the window that looks out onto the dusty athletic field, Vi sits hunched over her desk, AirPods jammed into her ears. Her pink hair is shaved close on one side, leaving a rose-hued fuzz that’s grown slightly unruly. She has positioned herself strategically, pushed up in the far corner like she’s keen on blending into the chipped paint and cracked floor tiles. Vi didn’t even look up when Caitlyn entered; she’s lost in her own world, her music of choice keeping her far from whatever was happening in the real world.
She misses the murmurs among the class, the passing of notes, the new girl’s awkward introduction and the shifting currents of gossip now turned slightly towards her.
For Vi, this moment might as well be happening on another planet. She remains untouched by Caitlyn’s arrival, sheltered by the invisible shield of her playlist, her thoughts, and the swirling tension she carries with her day-to-day.
Beneath Caitlyn’s bravado lies a raw, open wound. Back home in London, she’s left behind a painful legacy: a piece of explicit information wielded against her like a weapon. A stupid, reckless decision left Caitlyn exposed to online social harassment and pending blackmail. She made this transatlantic voyage unwillingly, partly to escape the cruel whispers and that poisonous but true rumour. Still, the fear gnaws at her, a fear that it will follow her here, to this new school, to these unfamiliar halls that smell like disinfectant and sweat. She knows that nothing online in England will stay online in England, sure, if she was just some random girl at a house party who got too drunk and followed a girl upstairs, no one would care, it's a girl doing girl things. But for Caitlyn Kirramman, 6th in line to the throne of England (which may not seem like that big of a deal, but when you’re the only Grandchild to the monarch who could inherit the crown), it is, in fact, a very big deal. Hence why, she was shipped off to the same place her cousin was sent many years ago after his gambling scandal, Arizona, USA.
The blackmail hangs over her head like a storm cloud, and she feels its static electricity crackling through every interaction. With each curious glance and each rumoured half-truth, Caitlyn is braced for the dam to break, knowing that once again, everyone might see her not as a person, but as a scandal waiting to unfold.
Taking her out of her thoughts, as she once-overs the class (something she learned from Mel), her new teacher, Professor Heimerdinger, clears his throat.
“Miss Kiramma-“
“Please, It’s just Caitlyn”
The cut-off is immediate but polite. This is America, Not England, for once she’d like not to be known first by her surname.
“Oh, of course, sorry miss- Caitlyn, please find a desk so we may begin learning about our great history”, the professor quipped, sliding across the chalkboard on his sliding ladder invention, gesturing Caitlyn towards the sea of whispers and murmurs.
Scanning the room again for safety measures, she spots an empty seat next to vibrant pink hair, which she’d be lying if she said didn’t intrigue her.
Sitting down next to the pink-haired misfit, Caitlyn notices how the other girl remains in her own world, seemingly unfazed by the ripple of her recent arrival. The professor’s lesson drones in the background - something about the state’s geography or a historical figure that Caitlyn has never heard of (she was taught British history after all) - while she tries to settle into the hostile silence. The desk feels cramped; Caitlyn is keenly aware of the way her shoulders hunch inward as if to protect herself from the snide whispers that follow her name.
Across the aisle, a student leans over and mutters something cruel, a slur flung carelessly in her direction whilst also gesturing at the girl next to her.
“You’re really not helping your case by sitting next to that tragic faggot”
It’s a cheap shot, mumbled just loud enough for Caitlyn to hear but low enough that the professor wouldn’t catch it. The words flare hot in Caitlyn’s chest, igniting a surge of protective anger. She barely knows this girl - but Caitlyn knows injustice when she hears it. Without missing a beat, she fixes the offender with a cold stare and sharply rebukes him. Her voice doesn’t rise to a shout; instead, it’s low and steady, steeped in the authoritative confidence she brought from London. She uses a measured tone, the kind that cuts without needing to yell,
“Don’t talk about her like that. Ever.”
The tension in the air thickens for a moment. The student scoffs, pretending like it doesn’t matter, but Caitlyn can see the flicker of surprise and shame cross his eyes. Satisfied that she’s made her point, Caitlyn turns her gaze downward and quickly scribbles a note on the corner of her notebook paper. She writes simply: Sorry about that comment. You didn’t deserve it. Sliding the folded scrap across the shared desk, Caitlyn hopes that her apology can act as a small olive branch.
At first, the girl doesn’t notice. Then something in Caitlyn’s stance or the slight rustle of paper on the desk catches her attention, and she removes one AirPod and then the other. She blinks, head tilted slightly as if emerging from underwater. “What?” she asks, her voice low and a bit rough around the edges. The girl barely looks up, Caitlyn doesn’t get a good look at her face except for the nose piercing and the roughly shaven pink mess of hair, longer bits curly around her ear.
Caitlyn jerks her chin toward the student who made the comment before writing the comment that was made towards the two of them. When the girl learns what was said - what insult was flung at her while she was lost in her music - her lips twist into a half-smile that doesn’t reach her eyes. “Whatever,” she says with a dismissive shrug, pushing the note aside. “I’ve had worse.” She tries to sound cavalier, and maybe she even believes it for a moment. The words come out flat and practised, like someone who has grown accustomed to cruelty and can’t be bothered to pretend otherwise.
In that brief exchange, Caitlyn glimpses something deeper in the girl’s hardened expression. Behind the bravado, there’s hurt and weariness, an emotional callus formed by too many similar encounters. But Caitlyn also senses that now is not the time to dig deeper or ask gentle questions. She’s still the new kid, an outsider who’s barely said two words to this girl. Instead of prying, turns her attention to the teacher’s lecture, hoping that this interaction won’t be everyone’s reaction to her. Could she even socialise here? Would media outlets track the pattern and follow her here? Was her mother seriously just shipping her off to not deal with it properly? Could she be free here, or was she still restricted by her mother’s political standing?
The rest of the class passes in a relatively busy, quiet. Occasionally, Caitlyn glances at her desk buddy out of the corner of her eye, noticing the tension in the girl’s shoulders and the way her foot bounces under the desk as if releasing pent-up energy or frustration. Caitlyn wants to say something more, do something more, but she respects the boundaries that the girl’s posture and tone set. For now, Caitlyn decides, it’s enough that she spoke up when no one else would, and she hopes that maybe, in time, this small gesture might chip away at the silence and distrust that seems to reign in these halls.
It doesn’t take long. In an age of smartphones and social media, a private moment can become public property within seconds. A photo circulates the hallways - Caitlyn leaning in close to another girl, their heads bowed conspicuously. The context doesn’t matter whether they were sharing a secret, comforting one another, or simply trying to hear over the noise of a crowded corridor. The image is posted online, slapped with a mocking caption - “Gaytlyn Kiramman.” The mean-spirited nickname is a dagger dipped in homophobia, and it cuts straight to Caitlyn’s heart. As classmates forward the meme, laugh at it in group chats, and feign shock as though discovering something scandalous, the rumour snowballs into something monstrous. Caitlyn can feel the laughter in the hallways, sense the snide grins and knowing looks. She came here hoping for a clean slate, but now she can almost taste the bitterness of old secrets poisoning this new start.
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While the school’s social circles spark and crackle with the energy of Caitlyn’s presence and rumoured scandal, Vi remains at the fringes, wrestling with her own unseen battles. A heaviness settles in her chest like a weight too heavy to dislodge. Even the music humming through her AirPods fails to drown out the noises of her own mind. Her relationship with Powder is burdened with regret and longing, marked by missed connections and mutual misunderstandings. Vi thinks of Powder as both her sister and a painful reminder of a broken bond that once was strong and simple. While Caitlyn tries to outrun her past, Vi is anchored to hers, feeling a pull down that tightens like a rope around her neck. She doesn’t know Caitlyn even exists yet, doesn’t know the new girl’s troubles or secrets, and frankly, in this moment, she’s too absorbed in her own darkness to look up and see the storm raging just a few desks away.
Vi’s spiral into misery hadn’t descended all at once. Instead, it crept in slowly, curling around her life and sealing off the warmth and light that once defined her. It began during those turbulent months when she clung to a relationship that, in hindsight, was as fragile as glass. She’d loved her girlfriend fiercely - loved her enough to ignore all the jagged edges of their bond: the desperate phone calls, the hushed arguments behind locked doors, the secretiveness of the bond, the lingering sense that something was always on the verge of breaking. But at the time, Vi thought love was enough. She believed that if she just tried harder and held on tighter, she could somehow patch the cracks before they became chasms.
Back then, she still had Powder - her sister who used to be a lifeline. Powder’s laughter had once been a soothing balm, her curiosity and affection endless. But as Vi became more entangled in her lover’s turbulent life, she drifted from Powder. She began missing family dinners, cutting off conversations with a shrug or a nod instead of the warm smiles and teasing banter that used to pass between them. Powder didn’t understand why Vi’s eyes grew distant, why she came home late and silent, or why their once-unbreakable sisterhood now felt like an afterthought. The truth was that Vi was too consumed by her lover’s pain to see how Powder’s heart was quietly breaking, too.
And then everything collapsed in the cruellest way possible. Vi and her girlfriend were forcibly outed by her lover’s own older brother - an act of betrayal that struck like a whip. There was a before and an after.
Before: cautious touches under streetlights, whispered confessions, plans for an uncertain but hopeful future.
After: shame and shock and terror as their intimate life was splashed into the open as if it were a secret too disgusting to remain hidden. Vi tried desperately to hold her lover together in the fallout, but the girl’s despair was too vast and deep, too filled with sharp stones of self-criticism and dread. There were arguments about trust, about betrayal, about how to go on living when the truth had been weaponised by someone who should have protected them both.
In the end, her lover took her life.
Just like that, the future they had dared to imagine - fleeing town, starting somewhere new, building fragile happiness together - dissolved into nothing. Vi blamed herself for not seeing the final signs, not saying the right words, and not stopping what felt inevitable only in retrospect. The shockwave of her lover’s suicide shook Vi to her core and flattened whatever fragments of self she had left. She felt the guilt gnaw at her: if she hadn’t gotten so wrapped up in this love, if she hadn’t pulled away from Powder and the family if she had just done something more… but she always chose wrong.
In the aftermath, Vi retreated into herself. She holed up in her room with music blasting through her headphones, trying in vain to drown out the echo of absence. She met Powder’s eyes only in passing; the younger girl’s gaze was filled with hurt, confusion, and longing for a sister who was now just a shadow. Vi knew what her sister wanted: explanation, comfort, or maybe just a return to something simpler. But Vi had none of those things to give. She was hollow inside, weighed down by grief and shame so heavy it seemed to anchor her to the bottom of a black ocean. She imagined that her family’s voices, their attempts at comfort, were like muffled shouts from far above the waves, distorted and unreachable.
Now, a year later, Vi is still hollow - a shell of a person going through the motions. At school, she slips into class and out again, barely seen. At home, she glides through rooms with a ghostly presence that doesn’t invite conversation. The Vi who existed before - who teased Powder into giggles, who believed love could be a shield against the world’s cruelty - is swallowed down deep in the trenches of the ocean, locked away in an airtight chest. In her place is someone who can’t muster the energy to push back against her own despair. She’s certain she deserves this loneliness, this numb estrangement, for failing to save the one she loved and for turning her back on the sister who once anchored her. Vi’s pain festers quietly, out of sight, and she carries it alone, unsure if she even wants to let it go.
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The smell of disinfectant and stale air greeted Caitlyn every time she slipped into the girls’ bathroom at lunch. She hated it, of course - this cramped space with its echoing tiles and flickering fluorescent lights - but it was the only place she could guarantee some privacy and a guarantee not to get herself more into the public’s eye here. The cafeteria was a battlefield: groups clustered together at tables, laughter and whispers carving out the social hierarchy. As the new girl and the subject of whispered rumours, Caitlyn found no spot to settle. So, she decided that it was best for everyone to lunch alone in a bathroom stall, perching on the closed toilet seat, biting into a half-stale sandwich as quietly as she could.
A few days into this pitiful routine, Caitlyn’s isolation was suddenly broken by muffled voices. She froze, mid-bite, when the door creaked open, light footsteps entering, then heavier ones in pursuit. She recognised the flash of pink hair through the crack of the bathroom stall. The other person there, with a soft, hushed voice, belonged to a younger girl with, from what Caitlyn could see, short but vibrant blue hair. Caitlyn held her breath and stared at the graffiti on the stall door, trying to will herself invisible. She couldn’t leave now without drawing attention.
“Vi,” The younger’s voice was quiet, tight with worry. “We need to talk about this. About… y’know, maybe therapy again. You promised you’d consider it. Vander found some new people a few cities over… thinks they might be really good for you”
There was a long pause. Caitlyn heard a shuffling sound, possibly Vi crossing her arms over her chest. The silence crackled with tension. “I know what I said, pow-pow”, Vi answered eventually, her tone thick with discomfort. “But… not right now, not here, okay?”
“This is the only place I’ve seen you outside your room all week,” Powder insisted, voice breaking slightly. “Just… just think about it. Please. We all believe in you sis, we want you to do great things… you can’t keep living like this… I-I’m really worried, Vi”
Caitlyn’s throat tightened around the lump of bread. She wasn’t sure what hurt more: the raw desperation in Powder’s voice, or the stark sadness in Vi’s response. Therapy. Something was clearly off between the sisters. She had caught glimpses of them in the hall before - Powder lingering near corners, Vi hiding behind AirPods - but never something like this. She felt intrusive, as though she were prying into a secret. Yet there was no easy exit; any movement might give her away.
Eventually, Powder’s footsteps retreated, and the door squeaked open, leaving Vi there for another heavy second or two, Caitlyn heard a long exhale escape Vi’s lips, feeling it project from her whole body, Caitlyn knew that feeling all too well. before hearing the footsteps fade, closing the bathroom door behind them. Only then did Caitlyn exhale. She thought about Vi’s loneliness - she’d noticed that the girl never sat with anyone either, always at the edges of the classroom. Now she had context: something had shattered between these siblings, leaving Vi adrift. Caitlyn was no stranger to the feeling. Her own isolation gnawed at her daily, turning her into a shadow on these campus walls.
The next day, Caitlyn resolved to do something about it. She remembered Vi’s steely gaze, that pink hair, the quiet force of her presence. Vi didn’t talk much, but Caitlyn had caught her looking over once or twice as if curious despite herself. Caitlyn decided she’d try to reach out. There was no grand plan - just a desire to connect, even if it was only to say hello, to acknowledge they both stood on the outside of the fortress of school cliques. Maybe they could stand together, however cringy that felt to admit.
At first, Vi seemed utterly closed off. Attempts to get near her ended with Vi slipping on her headphones and staring out the window. But soon, slowly and tentatively, Vi began to notice Caitlyn’s isolation, too. One afternoon, weeks later, as class ended, Vi approached Caitlyn at her desk, the room emptying around them like water draining from a basin. Vi leaned against a chair, eyes flicking over Caitlyn’s plain notebook, her neatly stacked textbooks, and her guarded posture.
“So you’re new, huh?” Vi said, her voice low and a bit hoarse. She didn’t ask about the rumours or the accent right away(frankly, cause she didn’t know about either); it seemed more like a casual observation than a true question. Caitlyn looked up, tucking a strand of dark hair behind her ear, quietly thankful that she wasn’t the one who had to reach out first.
“Yeah,” Caitlyn answered. Her British lilt was unmistakable, and she caught Vi’s eyebrow lifting slightly in acknowledgment. “Came over from London. Bit of an… adjustment,” she finished lamely. She wondered if Vi had heard the vile nickname floating around or seen the picture posted online. Probably. Everyone seemed to know.
Vi nodded, her expression still guarded, but a subtle softness flickered there. “I didn’t really notice before,” she admitted. “The accent, I mean.” She shrugged, maybe a tiny hint of apology in the gesture. “Guess I’ve been… busy with… stuff. Not really looking around.” It wasn’t much, but the words were a crack in the wall.
Caitlyn took a breath, mustering a shy, hopeful smile. “It’s okay,” she said gently, determined not to push. “I haven’t really been looking around either.”
They stood there, two drifters on the outer edges of the social sea, exchanging a few quiet words. It wasn’t friendship yet, not even close, but it was a start. Caitlyn remembered what she had overheard in the bathroom: the desperate tone of Powder’s voice, the pained silence from Vi. There was a world of hurt behind those silver eyes, Caitlyn could sense it. Just as she carried her own weight of secrets and shame, maybe Vi did too.
For once, Caitlyn felt less alone. And maybe, she dared to hope, Vi would feel that way too.