I'm a topic

They both talked this morning about how he didn't know that and Aaron didn't inform him.

"Hey look." She pushed her phone in his face. He couldn't believe he actually did it. He was happy for him. "So do you plan on coming out?"

"I… don't know." Zayn looked down at the ground perplexed by his situation. Lorel patted her friend on his back as she scrolled through her phone.

"Zayn, We have homeroom and I have band practice after and you have writers and poets club." Lorel grabbed his arm pulling him back to their classroom where more and more students were arriving to class to settle in before they got ready for their club hour.

Zayn rolled into his Writers and Poets club meeting with a serious expression spread across his face. His thoughts were still on Daniela who only offered him kind smiles since the last time he's seen her. He felt the need to apologize even if this might have been a long time ago.

"Students!" Mrs. Dubler called out to everyone sitting in the already sweaty room on a Monday morning. "The showcase is in a week and I chose my main piece. It goes well with the story told about the main painting from the artist." She snaps her fingers in Daniela's direction making her highly aware of the situation. "I chose Daniela's poems because I felt it deep down and I felt like I could relate, you know? Her series of poems she submitted seems to go pretty well with the main centerpiece painting so they will be displayed together." She started clapping to signal everyone else to clap but they didn't seem enthusiastic about it. They were all thinking she didn't get the spotlight because she is talented but because of nepotism but they were all on the same boat so they could all argue that. "C'mon, put some more emotion in it. Okay now let's talk about the use of sampling."

Everyone sent her glares as she sat back in her seat with her eyes focused on her journal. Zayn still felt the need to talk to her after his realization he had earlier. He sat next to her, surprising her.

"Hi?" She said with an unsure smile.

"Can we talk?" Zayn asked, scratching his eyebrow. "I'm really sorry…. I'm fucking sorry, like I don't know why I'm such a trash person. I don't know why I didn't listen to you and why I-" He shook away the impulse to cry about his feelings. "I understand what you meant back then and why you felt like that and I was insensitive to that and I'm sorry." She seemed confused at first at his apology but seemed to catch on after 2 minutes of silence and confused questioning.

"Oh… You mean when I decide we should just be normal friends? I couldn't take the hurt, I couldn't take the sidelining, I want to be someone's number one and not one of them. Zayn honestly when I think about it now we're just not for each other even if we do have feelings for each other we don't have the same desires. I want commitment, you want space and we can't compromise because I want you." Daniela hands wrapped themselves around him pulling him closely to her. "Zayn, maybe in the future we could be on the same page." Her voice cracked but still delivered what she had to say and it made him emotional. He still felt sick about their situation. He didn't feel better; he felt like he was still in the same spot. "So did you talk to Lorel, like did you come out to her?"

"Yes." He told her more than he let Daniela in on which might cause some tension.

"And she knows more than me, right." Even though she was smiling while asking him he knew it was her initial reaction. No matter what she put on a smile but he could see behind her eyes she was triggered.

"Hey, do you know why Chantelle came at me this morning? What did you do?" Daniela shrugged scrunching up her face.

"I told him we talked this weekend nothing else and he took on his own meaning because to him nothing is straightforward." Zayn rolled his eyes.

Zayn frowned. "He told me he doesn't mind sharing a hole. That was disgusting and weird and I didn't need to know that. Are you fine with that? Are you fine with him messing with other people? You know he has a thing with Siobhan."

"At this point I don't know. At least he's upfront with it." Daniela's eyes seemed so hurt on the inside and she no longer wanted to talk about this. "You saw this?" She pushed her phone on Zayn's side of the table. His eyes landed on a series of comments from the school forum joking about Aaron's coming out. Zayn didn't know that even existed. "At Least he isn't a topic, yet." She joked.

"A what?"

"A topic, I'm a topic, Chantelle's a topic, plenty of people are topics. When people don't like you and you're trending and they keep talking about you, you become a topic." She explained to the wide eyed Zayn who was processing this. "I sometimes scroll through comments from people talking about me and my relationships, joking about alcoholism, joking about my reactions, my smile, my parents, my situations. I am a joke at this point and I don't have the strength to care anymore, before I would cry about it when I get the chance but now I just smile about cause I don't give a fuck, let them talk." Zayn felt heavy again. This was something he didn't know about or was told about. He felt like he hardly had an idea of what was going on.

"I'm sorry…"

"Why are you? I get it you don't really care about my problems or look into it. To be honest you're not the best pr person. I think if my parents hired you to look after me you should put in the work and not be so lenient." His face dropped. He didn't know she was aware. Her parents always told him to keep it to himself and continue acting like a close friend. "Oh you thought I didn't know. I am not a dumb ass. I know what is going on around me. I hear people talk about it, y'know. It makes it seem like you're around me for money and makes me sick. Hell, do you even search up yourself online? If you hardly search me it means you don't know shit about yourself." What did he have to search for? He wasn't famous or rich, no one was talking about them. Daniela grabbed her phone from him and searched for something. "This you?" She showed him a twitter thread of people talking about him. "This is from Aaron's party. My cousin, Kandy Kole Taylor posted a picture with you in the background and people were asking about the cute guy in the back, You. You know she has 15 million followers and if that 15 million flocked to your instagram that I thought you used but apparently you don't since your last post was 5 months ago." He stopped using his main instagram a long time ago and only used his finsta. "Check your instagram." His phone has been giving him anxiety these days and hasn't been on it other than to watch youtube. He feared social media. He scoffed at the thought of opening Instagram on his main but he wanted to know if it was true.

"I'm… famous?" His eyes widened even more at the number that popped up on his phone and the number of notifications. 700k. His mouth fell open. This was unbelievable. Before he had 10k which consisted of kids from his area but now it was even bigger. "I-" He couldn't even form words.

"How didn't you know? Did no one tell you?" His head was buzzing with questions he felt like someone would mention it to him like a congrats, most importantly Lorel would have. This didn't make sense to him, not like he cared about follows but it was a big thing. Something he could use.

"I need to go." Zayn strolled through the hallways confused out of his mind scrolling through his insta account like it was so foreign. He had comments from people asking him to post again and asking for his number and dms from crazy people and unsolicited nudes. It felt so weird and wrong to him. It was all new. Is this what his friends go through? All of it was flattering but it was too much and he felt like it was better not knowing what was going on, on his other account.

"Did you know that I have 700k followers?" Zayn asked Lorel who was currently fixing her lip gloss in a handheld mirror.

"Yep." She answered, smacking her lips.

"And you didn't say anything?"

"What did you want me to say? Congratulations? I have 100k from my Dad's promotional stuff and being seen in Iman's photos and vlogs. Did you tell me congratulations?" She asked monotony, raising an eyebrow.

"No."

"Then what's with the expectation? What you didn't know. Oh… you didn't know. Congrats." Zayn annoyingly cracked his neck and looked the other way. His phone went off with a message asking to meet him in the 2 floor stairwell.