No one noticed.

I went to school the next day, carrying my mask and fumbling around in the dark, searching for any nook or cranny I could get a steady footing on. Instead I just continued to slip and stumble further and further. I didn’t notice.

I held my breath.

Everyone noticed.

I sat in class with a smile on my face and silence in my throat, choking me slowly. My teacher asked if everything was ok, that she had heard what had happened, I said I was fine. Why would she think anything different? I was always fine from then on. With a wall permanently around me, with my mask sewn onto my face and tightened behind the ears where no one could see. I was fine, see, I was smiling.

I held my breath, not wanting to fog my new mask thinking that would expose me.

Everyone noticed that I was silent except for my faltered breathing.

I came home and crawled into my fort that my sister and I had created. While my mom packed her bags, filling them with what little things that she could call hers, my sister and I peeled apart our room, covering ourselves in what little things we could call ours. We made our own sanctuary in the things that no one could take away from us. Our fort wasn’t the same without the stools, but the wood grain that had dug itself into our skin burned too much to bring the stools into this safe place. Our parents came in and asked how our day was. Fine I said.