Within hours everything began to collapse around me, and my girlfriend Abigail Stone called me crying and accusing me of being someone she never wanted to see again.
Her parents banned me from their home, and by the end of the school week rumors spread so quickly that I became the villain in every whispered conversation.
Natalia barely looked at me during those days, and when she did there was fear in her eyes mixed with something colder that felt like determination. She repeated the lie every time someone asked her, and my parents believed her without hesitation as if her words were unquestionable truth.
Three days later I packed a single bag, walked out of the house, and refused to look back at anything I was leaving behind.
The last image burned into my memory was my mother crying against my father while he stared at me like I was something he wanted erased completely.
I moved to another state, changed schools, worked part time jobs, and built a life from nothing because I had been pushed out before I even understood what was happening.
