The Boy Who Said I Was A Model

Between eighth and ninth grade, we moved again.

Alabama to Tennessee.

New school. New hallways. New version of me that will be made.

That summer, I met a boy named... well names aren't that important.

He was older — or at least he was by age. He had the kind of confidence that makes you believe he must know something you don’t. We talked a few times. Nothing dramatic. Just teenage conversation.

I didn’t know I was being written into someone else’s story.

When school started, I noticed people looking at me differently. Not friendly. Not curious. Evaluating.

Girls would pass me in the hallway and whisper just loud enough.

“She's not even that pretty.”

One day someone said it directly to my face, "You're not even pretty."

I didn’t understand at first.

Then someone explained.

No name boy had been telling people he was dating me.

He had also told them I was a model.

I was not a model.

I was a girl who had just unpacked boxes for the seventh time and was trying to remember locker combinations.

But now I was something else — something inflated and artificial. A rumor version of myself I had never agreed to.

The strange part wasn’t the lie.

It was how quickly people resented me for it.

No one asked if it was true.

No one asked if I’d said it.

They just adjusted their opinion accordingly.

That was the first time I understood how reputation works.

It doesn’t require your participation.

It doesn’t require evidence.

It just requires repetition.

The cafeteria felt colder that year. Conversations stopped when I approached. Girls who didn’t know me decided they did.

“I’m not even that pretty.”

It became a refrain.

I started studying mirrors differently. Tilting my head. Looking for the flaw they were referencing. Wondering if there was something obvious I’d missed.

There wasn’t.

There was just a boy who wanted attention and a hallway full of teenagers who needed someone to measure themselves against.

The rumor faded eventually.

Most things do.

But I learned something that year that stayed.

You can do nothing wrong and still become the villain in someone else’s version.

And once people decide who you are, it takes a long time to convince them otherwise.

After that, I became careful.

Careful with attention.
Careful with visibility.
Careful with boys who talk too loudly.

Not because I thought I was important.

But because I understood now that stories spread faster than truth.

And sometimes the loudest voice in the room isn’t the most honest one.