Until The Bell Rings

Song: Control - Halsey

I used to believe that the worst kind of pain was the kind that left bruises. The kind you could point to and say, look, this is where it hurt. But I learned pretty early that the most agonizing pain is the kind that leaves no mark at all. The kind that slips beneath your skin and settles between your ribs. Quiet, persistent and corrosive. The kind that makes you question whether it’s really happening, because there’s no evidence except the ache you carry everywhere.

My name is Amelia. And for as long as I can remember, I’ve been invisible… until someone needed somewhere to aim their cruelty.

Not literally invisible, of course. I occupy space, I breathe air, I bleed if I’m cut. But somehow, people manage to look through me like I’m transparent, unless they’re looking for someone weak enough to hurt without consequences.

People assume invisibility protects you. That if you’re quiet and unnoticed, you’ll be left alone. But being invisible doesn’t protect you. It isolates you. It erases witnesses. And that makes you the perfect target.

It started in school, back in Year 8. Before that, I was just quiet. Shy, maybe. I wasn’t hated. I wasn’t mocked. I was nothing remarkable, nothing threatening.

Until the day I topped the year unexpectedly. One exam. One announcement. My name read out first instead of the usual rich, golden children. That was all it took.

You’d think success would bring pride, or at least encouragement. Instead, it brought attention. The wrong kind. Suddenly, people who had never spoken to me before were whispering behind my back. Suddenly, I wasn’t harmless anymore. I was competition. Someone to outscore. Someone to trip. Someone to break. And jealous kids are cruel.

At first, the bullying was almost childish. Snide comments, mocking nicknames, stupid little pranks meant to embarrass. It was petty, mean, but still small enough that I could pretend it was nothing.

Someone emptied my pencil case and filled it with dirt.

Someone stuck gum in my hair so deeply my mother had to cut a chunk of it out. I remember sitting on the bathroom floor while she snipped away, her hands shaking slightly, her mouth pressed into a thin line. She asked me who did it. I told her I didn’t know. The lie tasted like metal on my tongue.

Someone scribbled teacher’s pet across my notebook in red marker. The same notebook where I’d written careful notes about poetry and mathematics, where I’d doodled in the margins during lunch because I had no one to sit with.

Someone shoved me in the corridor, enough to make me drop my books, but not enough to leave evidence. My papers scattered like wounded birds across the floor. People stepped over them. Stepped on them. No one helped me gather them. I crouched there, cheeks burning, collecting crumpled essays while their laughter echoed off the walls.

Back then, it hurt, but it was… small. Small acts of cruelty from bored children. I didn’t cry. Not much. Just enough that my pillowcase stayed damp most nights.

I thought that it couldn’t get worse. But cruelty doesn’t fade. It festers. It grows claws.

By Year 10, the jealousy had hardened into something uglier. Something more organized. Something personal. People hated my grades, but they hated my quietness more. Quiet people make easy prey. They don’t talk back, don’t fight back, don’t tell.

The whispers worsened.

“She thinks she’s better than us.”

“She’s such a try-hard.”

“She probably sleeps with her textbooks.”

“She’s so weird. Why does she sit alone all the time?”

I never said anything. I never fought back. I thought if I kept my head down long enough, they’d get bored. But silence is gasoline to bullies.

I started noticing things. Small cruelties that added up like drops of poison in a glass.

My lunch would go missing from my locker. Not stolen for the food, but taken to watch me go hungry. I’d sit in the library during lunch period, stomach growling, pretending to read while my vision blurred from low blood sugar and humiliation.

Someone started leaving notes in my locker. Folded paper that seemed innocent until I opened it.

“Nobody wants you here.”

“Do us all a favor and disappear.”

“Even your parents must be disappointed.”

That last one made something crack inside my chest. Because part of me wondered if it was true. My parents loved me. I knew that, but I could see the worry in their eyes when I came home. The questions they were too afraid to ask. The way my mother’s face would fall when I said I had no plans on the weekend, no friends to see, nowhere to be.

I was failing them just by existing the way I did.

The breaking point came on a Wednesday. I remember it was Wednesday because we had PE that day, which meant entering the changing rooms. A place I’d learned to dread with every fiber of my being.

I was always first in, first changed, first out. Speed was survival. But that day, someone had hidden my clothes while I was in the shower. I came back to my locker to find it empty except for a note:

“Looking for these? Check the toilets.”

They’d shoved my uniform into the toilet bowl. Everything. My shirt, my skirt, my socks - soaked and reeking.

I stood there dripping, wrapped in a towel, staring at my ruined clothes floating in the water, and something inside me simply... stopped. Not broke. Stopped. Like a clock that had been wound too tight finally giving up its ticking.

I fished them out with shaking hands. Wrung them out as best I could. Put them on wet.

I wore soggy clothes for the rest of the day. They clung to my skin, cold and humiliating. People noticed. Of course they noticed. More whispers. More laughter.

One teacher asked if I was alright. I said I’d spilled water on myself. She didn’t push. Maybe she was relieved not to have to deal with it.

That night, I stood in the shower until the water ran cold, scrubbing my skin until it was raw, trying to wash away the feeling of being something disgusting. Something disposable.

It didn’t work. The years blurred together after that. More incidents. More silence. More nights wondering if I’d make it to graduation. But I did. I survived school, walked across that stage with my head down, and told myself that the next chapter would be different. That distance would heal what time couldn’t.

College was supposed to be different. Everyone told me that. “In college, people grow up,” they said. “It gets better.”

It didn’t. It got worse.

Because the thing no one tells you is that people don’t magically mature when they turn eighteen. If anything, they become smarter about hiding their cruelty. Pettiness becomes targeted. Teasing becomes harassment. Snickering becomes strategies.

A tiny insecurity becomes the handle they use to drag you down.

In college, I wasn’t just mocked. I wasn’t just disliked. I was despised.

My high scores didn’t make me impressive. They made me intolerable.

My quietness didn’t make me mysterious. It made me weak.

And the bullying… it wasn’t stupid anymore. It wasn’t clumsy or childish. It was deliberate. Calculated. Efficient.

I remember the first real bruise.

It was during my first year. I was walking through the side corridor near the lecture halls, hugging my books to my chest. It was a narrow area, quiet, with blind spots in all directions. The perfect place for someone who didn’t want to be seen.

A group of seniors were leaning against the wall, laughing too loudly.

I tried to walk past quickly.

One stepped into my path.

“Slow down, nerd.”

I mumbled something. An apology? I don’t even remember.

He didn’t wait for the words. He shoved me into the wall - hard.

My books scattered. My elbow cracked painfully against the concrete. The sound echoed embarrassingly loudly. Their laughter followed. One of them even clapped sarcastically.

I didn’t tell anyone. I told myself it was an accident.

But the purple bloom under my skin the next day told a different story. And it told me something worse: that my body was now fair game.

From there, everything accelerated like a boulder rolling downhill.

People hid my backpack multiple times. Once, I found it in the dumpster behind the cafeteria, covered in something sticky and foul-smelling. My laptop was inside. Ruined.

I couldn’t afford a new one. I spent the rest of the semester using library computers, fighting for time slots, losing hours of work when sessions timed out.

People stole my notes. Sometimes tore pages out and left them crumpled on the floor beside the bins. I’d spent hours on those notes. Color-coded, organized, everything I needed to understand the material because I learned differently than others. Gone. Destroyed for entertainment.

Someone spilled hot coffee “accidentally” near me… then once on me. It burned, stung, left an angry red mark across my forearm. They laughed. No one helped. A professor walking by frowned but said nothing. I went to the bathroom and ran cold water over the burn until my arm went numb.

Someone locked my dorm door from the outside so I couldn’t leave for class. I missed an important exam. The professor didn’t believe me when I explained. Said I should have found another way out. My grade suffered. My scholarship was at risk.

Someone slammed my locker shut on my hand so hard my fingers throbbed for a week. I couldn’t write properly. Couldn’t type. Every keystroke was agony. I fell behind in every class.

The messages started coming more frequently.

Anonymous texts. Anonymous emails. Anonymous comments on any social media post I was brave enough to make.

“No one likes you. Quit.”

“You’re wasting everyone’s time.”

“Bet your parents regret having you.”

“Why are you even still here?”

Someone started a rumor that I was sleeping with a professor to get my grades. It was so absurd it would’ve been funny if it didn’t spread like wildfire. People I’d never spoken to looked at me with disgust. One girl spat at my feet in the hallway. The professor in question wouldn’t meet my eyes anymore.

Someone took pictures of me eating alone. Head down, shoulders hunched, trying to make myself as small as possible and posted them online with captions like:

“Library goblin spotted in her natural habitat.”

“Try-hard freak studying again lol. Get a life.”

“Does she ever smile??? Actually creepy.”

Strangers laughed at photos of me that I didn’t even know existed. The comments multiplied. Hundreds of people who didn’t know me, would never meet me, decided I was worth mocking. Worth hating. Worth nothing.

It felt like thousands of eyes were on me every day, except none of them actually saw me.

And still...still, I said nothing.

Because who would believe me? Who would care?

I was the girl who sat alone. The girl who never spoke. The girl who existed on the margins. I was practice. Target practice for people’s cruelty.

The worst incident was in my second year.

It was late evening. I had stayed back to finish an assignment because the library was quieter at night, and I didn’t have to worry about whispers or stares.

The corridors were empty, lights dim, shadows long. Every sound echoed. My footsteps, my breathing, the soft shuffle of my notebooks.

I walked into the stairwell.

And they were there.

Three of them. People from my course. People I recognized. People who had always looked at me like I was something stuck to their shoe.

They blocked the exit.

One smirked at me, head tilted. “Late night, Amelia?”

Another spun his keychain like he was bored. “You’re always here, aren’t you? Don’t you have anything else to do?”

I didn’t speak. Speaking only made things worse.

The third one stepped closer. “I asked you a question.”

My throat closed. My bag suddenly felt impossibly heavy on my shoulder.

“N-no,” I managed. “Just… finishing work.”

“Just finishing work,” he mimicked in a high-pitched, mocking tone. The others laughed. “You know what your problem is, Amelia?”

I shook my head. Barely. The movement was so small I wasn’t sure he saw it.

“You think you’re special. You think your perfect grades make you better than us.”

“I don’t-”

“Don’t interrupt me.” His voice went flat. Cold.

One of them stepped forward and grabbed my wrist. Hard.

His fingers dug into the thin skin over my bones. I gasped and tried to pull back, but another shoved me from behind. My bag hit the ground. My knees scraped along the concrete. The sting was instant, followed by warmth. Blood, probably.

My breath caught like a trapped bird.

“Please,” I whispered. The word came out broken. “Please, I didn’t-”

One leaned down, his shadow swallowing mine. His face was so close I could smell the energy drink on his breath.

“You’re so quiet,” he said. “Ever wonder why no one likes you?”

His voice was calm. Too calm. Like hurting me was routine. Like I was a minor inconvenience, something to toy with during a boring evening.

“Because you make it easy,” he finished.

Then he grabbed my bag, dumped its contents across the floor. Papers scattering, pens rolling away, my planner falling open to reveal page after page of empty social plans and lonely to-do lists.

They laughed at that. At the visible evidence of my isolation.

One of them kicked my planner down the stairs. It tumbled end over end, pages tearing.

Then he shoved me hard one final time. My spine hit the concrete wall, head snapping back, vision sparking white. The impact stole the air from my lungs.

And then they just... let go.

Stepped back.

Dusted off their hands like they’d touched something dirty. Like I was nothing.

They walked away laughing. Actually laughing. Their footsteps echoed down the corridor, fading, fading, gone.

I sat on the stairwell floor shaking so violently I couldn’t get up for a full ten minutes. My pulse thundered in my ears. My vision blurred. My throat closed around silent sobs that hurt more than screaming would have.

That night, I gathered my scattered things with trembling hands. Some pages were gone forever, disappeared into corners and cracks. My planner was wrecked. Its spine broken.

I avoided mirrors because I couldn’t bear to see the terror still swimming in my eyes. I couldn’t bear to see the damage.

But here’s the thing people don’t talk about:

The ones who hurt me weren’t the worst part.

The worst part was everyone else.

The people who saw. Who heard. Who knew.

And did nothing.

The classmate who watched someone shove me into a locker and then looked away quickly, pretending they hadn’t seen.

The professor who noticed I came to class with a swollen eye and a split lip (from “walking into a door”) and didn’t ask a single question.

The RA who heard the banging on my dorm room door at 2 AM, heard the shouted insults, and never filed a report.

The girl who sat next to me in the library and witnessed someone yank my laptop charger out mid-essay, causing me to lose everything, and said nothing. Did nothing.

The campus security guard who saw me sitting on a bench crying at midnight, walked past, and kept walking.

All those people who could have said something. Done something. Been a witness. Been an ally.

They chose silence instead.

And their silence taught me that I was alone. Truly, completely alone.

That I didn’t matter enough to defend.

That my suffering was forgettable. Ignorable. Acceptable.

There were days when the bruises on my skin hurt less than the ones inside. Days when my chest felt full of stones. Days when walking into campus felt like walking into a battlefield I never signed up for.

I cried in bathroom stalls, feet pulled up so no one would see me under the door.

I cried in empty classrooms, face pressed against my arms on cold desks.

I cried in my small, lonely dorm room with my pillow pressed against my face to muffle the sound, because even my grief felt like an imposition I had no right to burden others with.

Sometimes I felt guilty for crying, like I didn’t have the right. Like other people had it worse. Like my pain was an inconvenience even to myself.

I tried so hard to pretend everything was fine. To pretend I wasn’t breaking.

But I was.

Slowly and completely.

I stopped eating properly. Food lost its taste. My body felt like something separate from me, something that just needed fuel to keep moving.

I stopped sleeping. Three hours a night became normal. Then two. Then lying awake watching shadows move across the ceiling, mind replaying every humiliation on an endless loop.

I stopped looking in mirrors. The person staring back wasn’t someone I recognized. Hollow eyes. Sharp collarbones. A face that had forgotten how to arrange itself into anything resembling peace.

I stopped existing, really. I became a ghost. A function. A set of tasks to complete.

Wake up. Survive. Sleep. Repeat.