Short Stories Competition School Years 11 to 13 Winner: Siena May Lee with ‘Unnoticed’

From up here, everything is ‘on silent’.

It is this that she notices first about heaven, not the prodigious light or the absence of suffering, but the silence. No mirrors, no voices, but pure stillness.

She drifts downwards through years, not falling, as she locomotes through her memory.

A toddler with sticky fingers and grazed knees, eating because hunger arrives and leaving food because fullness does too. When she asks her mother for more, she says “you’ll spoil your dinner”, implying that appetite is a matter which must be managed early. At various family dinners, older women pinch her rosy cheeks and exclaim “she’ll be so pretty if she’s careful”. Unnoticed. Unnoticed how food becomes a performance; praised, monitored, and opined upon.

In bathrooms, she becomes acquainted with mirrors and observes her mother turning sideways, pinching at her skin, sighing at herself, and repeating. As she absorbs her mother's behaviour, she begins to discover that bodies are projects, incessantly unfinished.

In middle school she loves running, a race against her breath that hurts just enough to feel alive. Running hard and eating freely. Teachers praise her discipline and her grandmothers claim she’s ‘looking well’. As masses of compliments are given, conditions begin to attach; imperceptible strings begin to wrap and tighten around her ribs. Unnoticed.

Her parents argue quietly at night. Her mother cries into folded laundry. Divorce is mentioned once, then never again. Stability is chosen over safety. She understands this as a lesson: endurance is virtue.
As she reaches secondary school, the language of comparison feels native, unlearned and fluent. A new girl arrives in October, hollowed cheeks and collarbones almost needle-like. They sit together at lunch. The new girl does not seem to eat, and she imitates her, a strange admiration, a pull occurs. Skipping lunch feels rebellious, almost elegant. Hunger becomes a shared, almost ritual experience as teachers walk past. No one asks why the two sit with empty trays. Unnoticed.

She begins to feel electric on an empty stomach, colours seem brighter, thoughts rapid. After school she spends all of her pocket money at the corner shop, hands shaking with excitement and shame. Eating alone, quickly, stopwatch ready, then expunges it. She stands, knuckles stinging and raw; rinse, spit and repeat. Unnoticed.

From above, she wants to reach down and cup that girl’s face; to say it's not control it is simply erosion. But memory has no hands.

Meals begin to feel like interrogations, as her father comments on portions and jokes about ‘earning dessert’ her mother remains silent. Plates grow smaller and conversations thinner, she begins to hide her food in a bag under her bed. Unnoticed. Patterns begin to settle in the form that habits will always do; softly, then completely. Her reflection soon becomes an enemy that begins to shift when she isn’t looking. She begins to adopt phrases that society hangs upon the younger generation; cheat days, clean eating and portion control. Unnoticed.

From heaven, she asks herself why school assemblies focused on drugs, strangers and managing exam stress and not how powerful she became when she felt empty or the degree to which control can be disguised as care. As her friends comment on how amazing she looks and her teachers eulogize her focus, a liminality occurs as shrinking is blurred with thriving. Unnoticed.

On her sixteenth birthday, social media begins to function like gasoline, endless bodies edited to perfection, captions preaching balance whilst simultaneously praising emptiness. Scrolling, swiping, and liking until her eyes begin to ache, and comparison feels automated and involuntary.

Days begin to blur into months, she grows tired in the way sleep is irreparable. Unnoticed.

Her end does not arrive loudly.
From above she watches herself kneel down one last final time, body too tired to perform. No confession or intervention. She lies down, finally still.

From above, she mourns herself as a toddler, the girl with sticky fingers who ate when she was hungry. She envisions a softer world, detached from the constant comparison and commentary and screens encouraging self-hatred. A space where schools teach the truth without a fear of planting ideas.
She imagines being noticed, but imagination cannot bend time. She is light now, not fixed or broken, but free of mirrors and begins to drift upwards. Her story remains below, unspoken, but lived by many.

Below her somewhere, a girl skips lunch, feeling the same rebellious power for the first time, unnoticed.

From above, she hopes someone looks closer.

Judge’s Comments:

This is a beautifully crafted piece rich in vivid imagery and striking creativity. The writer’s descriptions are both delicate and powerful, from the “prodigious light” of heaven to the evocative moments of memory that unfold with fluid grace. The imagery surrounding the body, food, and control is particularly compelling, transforming abstract experiences into something tangible and deeply affecting. There is a lyrical quality to the language, with each scene blending seamlessly into the next, creating a haunting and immersive reading experience.