I Stopped Chasing the People Who Never Saw Me

Synopsis

I went hiking that weekend, and an hour in, I got tired and stopped to catch my breath. When I looked up again, Michael, Ethan, and Brooklyn were gone. I stood there with my mind gone blank. The year I took the SATs, I pushed myself to the edge and barely scraped into the same school as the three of them. For four years, they were the three everyone on campus talked about, and I was the tagalong nobody noticed. After graduation, I applied twice before I got into the same agency where they worked. Over the next few years, the three of them became the youngest top performers in the department. The whole way up, they talked policy documents and promotions while I stayed the quiet one who never got a word in. As long as Brooklyn was around, I was the accessory nobody thought about. Whenever I tried to speak, Michael would frown, put out about it. Ethan would give my head a lazy pat. "What is it this time, silly? If you can't keep up, slow down. No rush. We'll wait for you up ahead." Then the three of them would walk side by side, as though there had never been a fourth person there. I watched their backs disappear into the mist. And something came clear to me. The road where I kept driving myself to catch up with them was exhausting and hard. If that was how it worked, I would take a different road.