The next morning, I went to the campus doctor for the blood work and whatever else they needed.
I was freaking out.
I barely slept. When I did, it was in scattered chunks — twenty minutes here, a half hour there. Every time I woke up, I half expected things to be normal again. That maybe the voice, the height, everything… would snap back like a rubber band.

It didn’t.

I still sounded like a stranger.
And when I caught my reflection in the bathroom mirror — just for a second — I swear my jaw looked softer. My eyes wider. Like someone had taken sandpaper to the edges of my face and smoothed everything down.

I blinked, shook my head, looked again.
It was subtle.
Maybe I was imagining it.

But the panic didn’t care if it was subtle.

Maya met me outside the health center just before nine.
She held a takeout cup from the cafeteria — steam curling from the lid. She didn’t say much — just gave me a look like she could feel how close I was to unraveling. Her shoulders were squared like she was ready to step in if I so much as swayed.

“I’ll wait outside,” she said once we reached the front desk. “Unless you want me with you.”

“I’m okay,” I lied.

The receptionist handed me another clipboard.
The paper trembled as I filled out the form. The pen felt too thin in my fingers. I misspelled my own last name on the first try and had to scribble it out.

Dr. Holtz called me in a few minutes later — mid-forties, sweater vest, thin wire glasses. He had the kind of haircut that said he didn’t have time to care about haircuts. He didn’t smile much, but he wasn’t cold either. Just efficient.

He asked me a lot of questions.
Basic stuff at first. Diet, sleep, family history. Then more pointed ones.

“When did you first notice the weight and height change?”

“Yesterday,” I said, my voice catching slightly.

He paused. Looked up. Wrote something down.

“And the voice changes?”

“Also yesterday. They started off and on. By the evening, it just… stayed.”

More notes. His pen scratched quickly but quietly. No expression, just a slight tightening at the corner of his mouth.

He listened to my heart.
Shined a light in my eyes.
Asked if I’d ever had any hormone issues, past surgeries, allergic reactions, head trauma. I said no to everything.

Finally, he tapped the folder in front of him. “We’ll start with a full blood panel. Hormone levels, thyroid, autoimmune markers. You’ll get a call when results come in — likely within a few days.”

“Okay,” I said, trying not to sound like I was about to come apart. “Do you think it’s… serious?”

Dr. Holtz folded his hands. “I think your body is going through something unusual. But until we get the labs back, I can’t speculate.”

It wasn’t comforting. But it wasn’t terrifying either.

Still, it left a cold pit in my stomach.

“I think your body is going through something unusual. But until we get the labs back, I can’t say more than that.”
Not comforting.
Not exactly terrifying either.
But it left a cold pit in my stomach anyway.

****

After the appointment, I didn’t go back to the dorm.
I could’ve. I probably should’ve. But part of me thought if I kept acting normal, everything else might follow.

So I went to class.

It was Intro to Fiction — one of the electives I’d actually looked forward to when signing up. Usually, I liked it. The professor was laid-back, the discussions were good, and it wasn’t the kind of room where you had to fight to be heard. Just enough people to fill the middle rows, with space in the back for those of us who liked to keep to ourselves.

Today, though, I couldn’t focus.

I sat near the back, notebook open, pen tapping restlessly against the margin. The sun cut across the tile floor in long stripes, and someone in the front row had a thermos that smelled like cheap hazelnut coffee.

The instructor — a tall guy with wireframe glasses and elbow patches that had to be ironic — was talking about unreliable narrators. Something about how the most interesting stories are the ones where you’re not sure if the main character is telling you the whole truth.

“We all like to think our stories are honest,” he was saying, pacing slowly in front of the chalkboard, “but sometimes, the narrator thinks they’re being honest. They’re just wrong. Or scared. Or trying to convince themselves as much as the reader.”

He wrote perception vs. reality in big block letters.

“Take The Yellow Wallpaper,” he continued, gesturing toward the short list of assigned readings on the board. “Our narrator isn’t lying, exactly — but her version of reality is slipping, page by page. And as it slips, the story reveals something bigger than just her. That’s the power of voice.”

I stared at the board. The words swam a little.

He kept going — mentioning Holden Caulfield, Fight Club, even The Tell-Tale Heart. Everyone else kept nodding, chiming in with thoughts about character motivation, skewed memory, delusion. One guy compared it to watching a movie through a fogged-up window. Another said it reminded him of when his kid brother used to lie so much he forgot which version was true.

They laughed.

I sat there, trying not to unravel.

Halfway through, I felt something — a faint itch on my chest, just under the collarbone.
I didn’t scratch it. I didn’t look down. I didn’t move.

The sensation came and went. Not sharp. Just there.

I kept my pen in my hand, eyes on the professor, face neutral.
He was talking about how sometimes, the narrator doesn’t realize they’ve become unreliable until it’s too late. How that shift — the moment of self-awareness — can change the entire meaning of a story.

I could feel the itch pressing lightly against the edge of my focus, demanding attention.
But I stayed still.

Just another student in a too-warm classroom, listening to a lecture about characters who don’t recognize themselves anymore.

I sat there, listening, writing when I had to.

And the itch slowly faded into the background.

****

The class started getting really boring.
Not just regular boring — ‘Ferris Bueller's Day Off’ boring.
The kind where the professor’s voice flattened into one long, droning hum, like he was slowly trying to lull us all into a coma.

“An unreliable narrator…” he began, pacing slowly across the front of the room like a wind-up toy losing battery, “can… be seen as… a literary device… that functions to… call attention… to the gap… between truth… and perception…”

He paused mid-sentence like the weight of the words was too much for even him to bear.

No one moved.

“Examples include…” he continued, one hand rising theatrically, “…the protagonist in Catcher in the Rye… or the narrator of The Tell-Tale Heart… both of whom… may be experiencing… mental distress…”

The silence afterward wasn’t reflective. It was dead.

Someone in the third row yawned — loudly — the kind of exaggerated yawn that said please let this end.
The kid next to me, some guy I hadn’t really talked to, was drawing little T-Rexes in the margin of his notebook, each one chasing after tiny stick-figure humans labeled “narrator.”
A girl near the window had her chin in her hand, elbow anchored, spinning her mechanical pencil like it was the most thrilling amusement ride she'd ever been on.

The air in the classroom felt too warm, like the windows hadn’t been opened all semester. Someone’s cologne — or maybe body spray — lingered faintly in the background, mixing with chalk dust and the distinct aroma of floor polish from the hallway.

I tried to stay engaged. I really did.
But the words dragged on, sticky and slow, like the whole room was trapped in literary quicksand.

I looked down at my own notebook.

Four lines.

Maybe.

And one of them was just:

why am I even here
Underneath that, I’d started sketching the edge of the desk.
Then abandoned it halfway through.

****

I was mid-doodle — nothing fancy, just sketching Tyler Cross’s silhouette in the corner of the page — when I heard it.

“Mr. Whitlock?”

My stomach dropped.

I froze, pen still in hand, the half-finished sketch suddenly feeling miles away.
I looked up. The professor was staring at me, pushing his glasses up the bridge of his nose with one finger, his expression unreadable.

“Care to share your thoughts on the passage?”

The air felt like it thinned out instantly.
A few heads turned in my direction. I could feel the weight of their attention — not cruel, just there. A spotlight I hadn’t asked for.

“Which… part?” I asked, voice tight in my throat.

“The excerpt we just discussed. From The Tell-Tale Heart. The narrator’s reliability. Do you think he believes what he’s saying?”

My mind scrambled, flipping pages that weren’t even there. I knew this story. I liked it. I’d written a whole essay on it back in high school. But every molecule in my body was locking up — heat and cold mixing in my chest, my hands prickling where they gripped the notebook.

Still, I made myself speak.

“I think…” I began.

My voice — her voice — didn’t break. It didn’t waver. It was already changed.

Light. Clear. Feminine.

There was no going back now.

A guy in the front row tilted his head slightly. Someone else blinked like they hadn’t quite caught what they thought they’d heard.

I swallowed. My mouth was dry.

“I think the narrator does believe it,” I said again, forcing myself to keep going. “Like… in his own head it’s all justified. That’s what makes it scarier — the fact that he doesn’t realize he’s unreliable.”

Every syllable felt like a spotlight.
Like I was speaking through someone else’s mouth and hoping no one noticed — but knowing they would.

The professor nodded. “Very good. That idea of internal logic within madness. Thank you.”

I gave the smallest possible nod, barely breathing.
Then looked down so fast my neck tensed.

Nobody laughed. Nobody whispered. No one pointed or smirked or made a scene.

But I still felt like I was made of glass. Like if someone looked too closely, I’d shatter right there in the middle of class.

And even though I’d gotten the answer right…
I didn’t feel smart.

I felt exposed.

****

After class, I didn’t wait for anyone.

I didn’t say goodbye, didn’t glance around, didn’t pretend everything was okay.

I just ran.

Down the hall, past faded posters for campus events and corkboards layered with yellowing flyers. Down the stairwell that smelled faintly of mop water and dry-erase markers. Out the building, where the afternoon air hit me like a slap—warm, sticky, unforgiving. Across the quad, past a kid tossing a frisbee and another flipping through a Walkman’s cassette case.

My legs moved like they had their own emergency, pounding the pavement so fast I didn’t even feel my feet hit the ground. The world blurred—trees, brick walls, clusters of students sitting on benches like they had nowhere better to be.

I don’t remember how I got back to the dorm.

I just remember the door slamming behind me with a hollow, echoing thud, and my hands shaking as I stumbled toward the desk. My chest felt like it was folding in on itself, tight and crushing, like the air had gone thin. My breathing came in shallow, frantic gasps—no rhythm, no control, just panic.

I couldn’t stop it.

That voice — my voice — echoing in my head. Not the one I knew, not the one that told stories or answered roll call or laughed with Maya at the dining hall. Every vowel now sounded wrong. Alien. Like someone else had borrowed my mouth and left a stranger behind.

I couldn’t stop hearing it.
I couldn’t stop being it.

I grabbed the orange pill bottle. It rattled in my grip, loud and desperate.

My fingers fumbled with the cap—childproof, supposedly. But fear made me strong and clumsy.

It popped open, and I didn’t think. I just dumped two — then three — chalky white pills into my palm.

The label said:
Take one daily.
In bold black type, like it mattered.

But I didn’t care.

I swallowed them all in one go, dry, with nothing but a gulp of air and the bitter taste of fear rising in my throat like static.

Then I slid down the wall, hitting the floor hard beside the bed. The sheets were still a mess from that morning, a sock half-tucked underneath. My knees pulled to my chest. My arms wrapped around them. My whole body shook.

My heart was racing like a skipping CD, all jumpy and out of sync.

I didn’t know if it would help.

I just needed something to stop.