BETRAYAL SERIES

I used to believe that teachers were safe people---not perfect, but honorable. They were people who held your small dreams with both hands and told you they mattered.

I believed that until him.

He was the kind of teacher who made the world feel a little wider. Who called you by your full name like it meant something? Who quoted poets in math class, who laughed with his whole body, and who told me once that I had “a voice that could move walls”?

I was sixteen, hungry for approval, and barely holding myself together. My parents were divorcing loudly, the house was a battlefield, and school was my only escape. So he noticed me; I clung to it.

He said I was gifted. Said I thought differently. He gave me books he said the other students wouldn’t understand. He let me sit behind after class, not because I needed help, but because I think we both knew I didn’t want to go home.

At first, it felt like being seen. Really seen. And for a girl used to being invisible in her own home, that felt like everything.

He praised my essays in front of the class. Encouraged me to submit to writing competitions. Wrote little notes in red pen like “stunning insight” or “you’ve got something special.” I memorized them. They were more comforting than anything I was hearing at home.

But then the lines began to blur.

He started texting me. Small things at first — reminders, links to poems. But then: “Missed seeing your smile today.” “Hope you’re not too stressed. Don’t let the world dim you.” I told myself it was harmless. That maybe he was just kind. That I was overthinking it.

Then one afternoon, he said I could come over — that he had books I should read. He lived just five streets away; I knew that. I hesitated, but I went. I told myself it was for school.

He made tea. Played music. Talked about literature like he always did. But something was different. His eyes lingered. His laugh felt tighter. And then, out of nowhere, he said, “You make it hard to remember you’re a student.”

Everything inside me froze. I smiled — not because I liked it, but because I didn’t know what else to do. I left early. Said I had somewhere to be.

He texted later, asking if he made me uncomfortable. I never replied. The next day in school, he was cold. Distant. Didn’t call on me once. Didn’t return my essay.

The silence stretched into weeks. When I finally worked up the nerve to ask about my grade, he said flatly, “Maybe you’re not as focused as I thought.”

Something cracked in me then.

It wasn’t just that he crossed a line. It was that when I didn’t play along, he withdrew the one thing I needed most: belief in me. He didn’t need to touch me to leave a bruise. He made me doubt the very thing he once nurtured. He made me feel like I’d done something wrong just by being young, smart, and there.

I never told anyone. Who would believe me? He was loved. He was charming. And I didn’t have proof, just gut feelings and subtle shifts.

But I stopped writing for months. Every time I picked up a pen, I heard his voice — that tone he used when he told me I was disappointing. Like I had ruined something.

I passed his class, barely. I graduated. Time moved on, but the betrayal lingered — not just what he said, but what he took from me.

It took years to unlearn the shame. To reclaim writing as something that belonged to me, not to him. To realize that mentorship is never supposed to be conditional. That real teachers don’t just inspire — they protect.

Now, I write again. Quietly, fiercely. For myself. For the girl I was at sixteen who just wanted someone to tell her she was enough without asking anything in return.

He never touched me.

But he reached inside and tried to rewrite the story of who I thought I was.

And that, too, is betrayal.