### **Chapter 1: The Fall**
I never thought my life could change so suddenly. One moment, I was just another student, studying hard, laughing with my best friend, dreaming about the future. The next, I was the girl everyone hated. The one who walked into a room and felt the weight of a hundred silent stares. The one who didn’t understand what she did wrong.
It all started with the student council elections. I had never been the type to crave power, but I wanted to prove myself—to show that I could lead, that I had ideas worth listening to. My best friend, though, had wanted it for years. I knew she did. But I thought she would be happy for me, or at least supportive. After all, wasn’t that what friends did?
I was wrong.
At first, she only seemed a little distant. She didn’t congratulate me when I applied, but I brushed it off. Then she started avoiding me. Her texts became shorter, her laughter reserved for other people. I still remember the first time I saw her talking to my rival—the very person she used to complain about, the one she once swore she’d never be friends with. But there they were, sitting together, whispering, giggling, as if I had never even existed.
I tried to act like it didn’t bother me. I tried to make new friends, to mingle, to pretend nothing had changed. But the truth was, everything had.
Then came the teachers.
My class teacher never liked me. That much, I had known for a while. But now, she didn’t even try to hide it. She favored my rival at every opportunity, making sure I knew it. She scolded me in front of the entire class for the smallest mistakes, ignored my contributions, and let everyone see just how little she thought of me. Other teachers followed her lead—some of them at least. Maybe they had never liked me to begin with, or maybe they just found it easier to side with the majority. Either way, I was alone.
Even my favorite teacher—my computer teacher, the one I had admired so much—turned away from me. One day, I built up the courage to tell her everything. I told her how my best friend had abandoned me, how the class was isolating me, how I didn’t understand why everyone had turned against me. I thought she would listen. I thought she would help.
Instead, she never spoke to me the same way again. The warmth in her eyes disappeared, replaced by something colder, more distant. And just like that, she started supporting my rival too.
I did nothing wrong. *Nothing.*
And yet, I was the one left standing alone, watching as everyone else moved on without me.
I kept telling myself it would pass, that things would get better in the next term. That somehow, all of this was temporary.
But was it?
