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The labelers.

High school was all about labels, and kids like this were the enforcers of said labels.

Jocks, nerd, goth, whore — everyone needed to be something here. Otherwise, you didn’t exist. Otherwise, you were invisible.

I preferred to be invisible.

Head down.

Don’t look up.

And so, I did what I had been trained to do. I turned and walked away, letting their labels and their questions trail behind me like dust.

One class down. Six more to go.