The glow up game

Chapter 1: Forgotten Again

Lila Monroe shifted restlessly in her seat as the lecture room filled with post-class chatter. Her professor's words were forgotten to her years ago, overridden by the ring of laughter and banter to which she was not privy. Westbridge University had never quite felt large enough for her far too populous with people who swept on by without so much as a glance in her direction.

She simply blended. She blended into a throng of styled students with designer handbags and an air of complacency as effortless to them as gangliness was to her. The problem was that Lila hated how invisible she was.

Not only in school, but anywhere. She tugged on the hem of her oversized hoodie, trying to shrink within it.

Her curls were yanked back into a sloppy bun, and the white smudge of dark circles under her eyes was a testament to yet another night spent awake on the ceiling fan of her mind insisting that someone tell her what precisely was so fundamentally wrong with her.

She thought about enough times. The obvious one. The blinding one. But under that, something worse: a whispered ache that caused her to question maybe she just wasn't enough.

The worst part? She was seeing someone.

Dylan Chase.

Tall, blond, with a megawatt grin and the sort of laid-back style that made girls swoon and professors breathe a collective sigh of relief. Dylan was her complete opposite. Shy. Uncool. Nerdy.

She didn't hang with Dylan's clique. People noticed Dylan. People were attracted to him. And for some strange, twisted reason, he had chosen her. Aside from lately, Lila never felt chosen.

"Lila, you coming?" Kiera Song shook through her whirling thoughts. Her friend was a few paces behind, half-seated on one foot as she laced her boot. Lila shook her head quickly and took her tote bag. "Sure, sorry. Spaced out." Kiera smiled sympathetically.

"Don't worry. You've had that look all day." They left the lecture hall and stepped out into the courtyard, where students were lying on the grass and couples hugged in the shade. Westbridge was beautiful in autumn leaves changing, wind biting but Lila barely registered. Her mind was caught in a loop.

"Is Dylan still being you know?" Kiera whispered, smoothing dark hair behind her ear. Lila faced her.

"He's just been busy."

Kiera was not having it.

"He's always busy. When did the two of you go out? Like, actually hang out?"

"We were at his apartment over the weekend," Lila said, remembering how he'd spent half the time on the phone and the other half talking about his friend Marcus's party.

"That is not a date," "That's hanging around while he watches some basketball highlights." Lila raised an eyebrow and fussed with the strap of her shoulder.

She was not going to talk about it. Not because Kiera had been wrong, but because she was right and that stung worse than anything.

"He said we could go to the end-of-semester party at Marcus's house this weekend," she provided. Kiera raised a brow.

"Actually said that, or did you tell him and he just grumbled and looked at Snapchat?"

Lila remained silent. Kiera rested her arm across her shoulders. "I mean, don't let him in your head and have you think that you're lucky to be with him. He's the one who's lucky to be with you."

"I'm not like a prize," Lila complained. Kiera said nothing.

"No, okay. Not there. You're smart, funny, lovely, and you have the most beautiful sense of books and tea. You're lovely in ways that half of them would kill for, and if Dylan can't recognise that, then he's the broken one not you."

Lila wrenched with all her heart to believe her. She did, truly. Believing, however, took a strength she had not yet developed.

That evening, Lila sat on her bed scrolling through Dylan's Instagram.

He had put up a picture of himself and some teammates playfully trash-talking one another in the gym. Nothing from her. Not even a reply to the text she'd sent hours before to grab dinner together.

She glanced at the clock. 9:13 p.m. She'd eaten leftover takeout for dinner alone in her dorm room yet again.

The ache in her chest intensified. Her phone beeped. A text from Dylan. DYLAN: Hey, sorry. Busy day. Might stop by after this thing at Marcus's.

No emoji. No "miss you." No warmth.

Lila typed out a response, deleted it, and typed again.

Finally, she just sent a thumbs-up emoji. She curled up in her blankets, her lamp the only light in the darkness.

Her thoughts wandered again to the way Dylan had always had this knack for making her laugh, to the late-night conversations about dreams before even inquiring about hers, to the first time he'd said she was beautiful when she had yet to think so herself.

She did not weep. Not yet. Worse than tears were the numbing sensations creeping into her bones.

Somewhere else on the campus, a different individual was worried about her.

Noah Carter sat in the quiet back corner of the library, reading a text but looking out into the darkening sky through the tall windows. He'd first noticed Lila weeks earlier in their shared Intro to Literary Studies class.

She always came a few minutes early, sat in the middle row, and took careful notes on a spiral-bound notebook. He liked the tilt of her head when she was considering something. The softening of her voice when she answered questions, as if she wasn't sure that she had the right to an opinion. She did. And he wished she could know it. But he hadn't. Not yet. She was with another guy.

Dylan Chase.

The guy who never, ever carried a pen to school and somehow managed to win people over. Noah angrily resented the way Dylan treated her like a prize. He exhaled a frustrated breath and shut his book. Perhaps one day he'd say something.

Perhaps one day he'd matter. But for the time being, he could do nothing but watch. And wait. In her dormitory room, Lila finally lay down to sleep, the glow of her phone screen fading.

Her very last conscious thought before falling asleep wasn't of Dylan, school, or the dance he would take her to. It was a gentle question at the back of her mind: What if this is all there is? And what if it never gets any better?

Chapter 2: The Last Straw

The finish line started with a lack of swoon, rather than a pause, though. It started with date night. The frat house lights glimmered off in the distance like a warning sign Lila would have been able to spot. A thorny beat seeped out of it, a steady drumming thud that vibrated through the windows and stung against her skin.

She encircled the bottom of the stairs, holding herself in a tight squeeze on this spring evening, wondering if everything. She'd spent close to an hour getting ready for this party. Dylan had assured her it was important.

"All the right people will be there," he'd said. "It'll be a good way to cap the semester."

He'd given no indication that it would be a procession of all the women who could've been magazine cover models.

Lila smoothed the front of her green sundress again a sundress she'd chosen because it flattered her curves just the way she liked and brought sparkle to her eyes.

She'd added the