Replay

I was still standing in front of my closet, the battleground of my old self, clothes scattered in heaps across the bed behind me. The scent of forgotten laundry mingled with the lingering, sweet memory of snickerdoodles. It was in this quiet, almost reflective moment that I remembered the video.

The fierce heat from earlier—the triumphant kind, the wild, exhilarating surge of power—had slowly settled. It had morphed into something quieter now, a low, persistent hum beneath my skin. Still there, yes, but smaller. Like a tiny ember glowing softly under the surface, waiting to be stoked.

I walked slowly to the edge of the bed and sat down, the mattress sighing softly beneath my weight. My hand reached for my phone, which I'd carelessly tossed onto the floor with my coat.

The screen lit up, a rectangular beacon in the dimming room, and there it was. The last video I'd taken. No fancy title. No filter, no artistic overlay. Just a raw, unedited thirty-two-second clip of betrayal in a beat-up Subaru.

My thumb hovered over the playback icon for a second, a silent pause. I wasn't going to send it to Maddie, not yet. That part of the plan, the immediate, explosive revenge, could wait. I wasn't even entirely sure I wanted to set it into motion. The thought of it, once so satisfying, now felt… distant.

I just wanted to watch it.

Again.

The video opened, shaky at first, then steadying. There was Stella's leg, pressed against the car window, her skin pale and strangely blurred in the condensation. The sound came in softly, then swelled, loud and sudden all at once—the unmistakable moans, the fast, ragged breaths, the rhythmic creak of a seat beneath movement.

I pressed play again.

And again.

I leaned forward slightly, my elbows resting on my knees, my gaze fixed on the small screen, a silent observer in my own room.

Something in me tightened as I watched, a strange, unfamiliar sensation. It wasn't anger, that hot, familiar burn. It wasn't even the triumphant satisfaction I'd felt in the cold parking lot.

It was something else. Something quiet and unsettling.

Stella's head tilted back, her neck a pale curve. Devon's mouth was pressed against her shoulder, a dark silhouette against her skin. Her hands were gripping his arms, her knuckles white, like she needed something solid to hold on to or she'd simply float away, dissolve into the steam and the sounds.

It didn't look romantic, not in the way movies or stories portrayed it.

It looked… real. Messy. Primal. Unfiltered.

I wasn't supposed to feel anything like this. This video, this moment, was supposed to be a weapon. Evidence. A tool for revenge.

But sitting here, alone in my room, with cookie crumbs on my desk and old, comfortable sweaters piled on the bed around me, I felt something else entirely.

A slow, quiet tingle beneath my skin. Starting low in my stomach, spreading outward.

I pressed play one more time.

They were so close, their bodies tangled, unaware of any eyes upon them. So utterly careless in their actions, so completely absorbed. And so incredibly alive.

I imagined—just for a fleeting second—that it was me.

Not as Maddie, the popular girl everyone envied, not as stella.

Not even as some perfect, polished new version of me, transformed and unblemished.

Just me.

The real me. Ellie.

In someone's car. In someone's lap. Pressed against a fogged window with my name on their lips and their hands tangled in my hair.

I swallowed hard, a dry, tight knot in my throat.

My face felt warm, a flush spreading across my cheeks, completely unrelated to the cold air outside.

I'd heard people talk about sex, about whispered hookups in darkened corners, about hurried makeouts behind the gym bleachers. I'd seen the whispery TikToks, the blurred, suggestive images. I'd read the anonymous confession posts in the school forums, tales of stolen moments and raw desires.

But I'd never felt it. Not really. Not like this.

I'd never even kissed anyone, not really. Not a real, meaningful kiss.

I was almost sixteen. So close to a new age, a new chapter.

A boy once held my hand in sixth grade at the skating rink. That was it. He didn't even look at me when he did it. His palm was sweaty, and it lasted twelve seconds.

I used to tell myself it didn't matter. That I'd have time. That love was for later, for when I wasn't invisible, for when I was fixed.

And suddenly, in the quiet of my room, surrounded by my invisible life, that felt like a curse. A heavy, unbearable weight.

I shut the video, the screen going black, severing the connection to their raw, careless energy.

The room was still. Too still. The silence, which had been a comfort earlier, now felt vast and empty, stretching out around me.

I dropped the phone onto the bed beside me, letting it land with a soft thump. I leaned back against the headboard, until I was staring up at the ceiling, my gaze lost in the faint patterns of the plaster.

The tingles hadn't gone away. They lingered, a low, persistent hum in my stomach, in my legs, in my fingertips. Like tiny, bewildered sparks that didn't know what to do next, where to go, what to ignite.

I'd started the day as Ellie Young.

Elizabeth Young. The invisible girl. The one no one saw.

Now, as the day faded into night, I didn't know what I was. I was a jumbled mess of new sensations, of unexpected desires, of a nascent power I barely understood.

But I knew with a searing clarity who I didn't want to be anymore.