Clarissa Bell Used to Matter

Clarissa Bell wasn’t your average high school principal.

She wore glitter Vans with her pencil skirts and scrunchies without irony. Her office smelled like Bath & Body Works and whiteboard markers, and she blasted Lizzo over the PA system every Friday between third and fourth period. She invented spirit weeks with themes like “Meatball Monday” and “Song Lyric Wednesday.” During finals, she brought in bounce houses and handed out free Slurpees. Staff meetings happened over charcuterie boards. Hall passes were granted only after TikTok dance contests.

And for a time, it worked. Better than anyone expected.

Students showed up early. Seniors said it was the first time they’d liked a principal. Parents called her “a breath of fresh air.” Even the burned-out teachers admitted it felt like something different — maybe even better. The school buzzed with energy. Murals on every hallway wall. Neon signs, paper crowns, affirmations on every locker. Clarissa made school feel like a party no one wanted to leave.

“I dunno,” one sophomore said once, “it’s like she’s one of us…but also not. Like a grown-up trying really hard to matter.”

But it was never going to be enough.

Clarissa didn’t just want to be beloved. She wanted to be famous. Not district-famous. Not parent-famous. FAMOUS. She pictured People Magazine spreads and podcast interviews in soft-filtered living rooms. Duchess, her miniature poodle, curled on her lap as she explained how she "disrupted education" with glitter and grit.

Her husband, Ryan Bell, had made it. He’d been a shop teacher before trading in the bell schedule for YouTube. His channel, Bell to Brass, had over two million subscribers. He made lathes spin like ballet dancers and carved steel into heirloom bottle openers. Sponsors called. Fans mailed him birthday cards. Clarissa used to joke he could weld a bolt into a Bentley.

But secretly, she resented him.

Her own TikTok, @PrincipalGlowUp, barely cracked 400 followers. Clarissa went further. And, she filmed it all. Lip-syncs in the cafeteria. Motivational car-line rants. Hallway dances with the janitor. Duchess in school letterman jackets that read “Dogtorate.” But nothing stuck. The students weren’t charmed; they were mortified. Her “fit checks” got eye rolls. Her slang — “That’s sus, no cap” — got stitched into cringe compilations.

Still, she kept filming. Kept chasing.

And the district started watching.

Whispers turned into side-eyes. During a principals’ meeting, one colleague slid their phone across the table — no comment, just a video of Clarissa doing a “rizz check” duet with a student. The silence afterward felt surgical.

“Clarissa,” her superintendent said gently, “you’ve got so much passion. But maybe… let it shine offline?”

Clarissa smiled too hard. Her stomach sank like wet cement. Her nails dug into her palm beneath the table. She told herself it was jealousy. Fear of her creativity. Fear of change.

And still — the next day, she filmed again. Sad violin music. Duchess in sunglasses. Captioned: “When your coworkers can’t handle your glow.”

It got six likes. Four were bots.

Then came The One.

A sketch video. Clarissa playing five different students responding to roll call. Exaggerated slang. Loud outfits. One kid in a “Snack King” hoodie throwing Takis like confetti. It was her most ridiculous post yet.

She almost didn’t upload it.

But at 11:43 PM, she did.

By morning, it had over a million views. Then five. Then ten. Celebrities reposted it. Teachers made tribute videos. BuzzFeed ran a piece: This Principal’s Hilarious Take on Gen Z Is Everything.

She was trending. She finally mattered.

For 72 hours.

On the fourth day, a former student stitched the video. No jokes. Just tears. She said the school had failed her. That she’d been suspended four times for asking for help. “All she did,” the girl said softly, “was dance.”

Clarissa watched the clip five times in a row, jaw clenched, heart pounding. Her finger hovered over “comment,” but she had no words.

The parenting blogs picked it up. Twitter exploded. Reddit followed. The local paper ran a front-page story. The school board panicked. The district launched a “professional review.” Clarissa was placed on leave.

She sat on the couch in her “Snack King” hoodie, Duchess at her side, mascara smudged.

“I was trying to connect,” she whispered.

Ryan stood behind her, dusted in steel shavings. “You don’t need strangers to tell you you’re good. You were already someone.”

But she didn’t believe him. She looked at her phone.

And deleted the app.

That should have been the end. It wasn’t.

They called it a “mutual separation,” but she was fired. Too public. Too reckless. The board said parents didn’t want someone like her leading teenagers.

She went quiet.

Then louder than ever.

She started filming again — not as a principal, but as a “freedom mom.” Clarissa in a bathrobe. Clarissa with cucumber eye masks. Clarissa on her porch with Pinot and monologues about how public education was broken and bureaucratic. She claimed her creativity had been stifled. That testing culture was toxic. That she was “silenced for being visionary.”

She pulled her kids from school and launched Glow Up Academy, a homeschool curriculum focused on “intuition, imagination, and influence.” Her first video showed a whiteboard with, “Not all classrooms have walls,” in glitter marker. Morning affirmations. Zero math. Duchess wore a tiny sweater that read, “Teach Love.”

Ryan watched from the kitchen, arms folded.

“Please stop,” he said.

“You don’t believe in me.”

“I believed in the girl who drew rollercoaster blueprints in her diary. Who made her own posters for student council in ninth grade. Who told me I’d build something amazing. I don’t know who this is anymore.”

Clarissa turned back to her ring light. “You just don’t get the vision.”

He left that night. Just a duffel bag. One last look. “This isn’t evolution,” he said. “It’s regression. You’re clawing backward.”

She spiraled.

Glow Up Academy lasted two weeks — until a full meltdown over spelling. She pivoted to sales.

Essential oils. Then shakes. Then necklaces that promised to “align your vibe with your purpose.” She rebranded as @ClarissaCleansUp. Duchess starred in every video, always in costume — a feather boa, a top hat, a bumblebee suit.

She livestreamed daily. Her followers dwindled but stayed loyal — women who were lonely. Women who thought, If she can, I can.

“Lavender helps with grief,” she said once, too brightly. “We all lose things. But we glow anyway.”

The comments were full of hearts and discount code questions.

But sometimes, past students found her. Left messages like:

“You helped me through my parents’ divorce.”

“You made school feel safe.”

“You used to be amazing.”

She never replied.

Clarissa never understood what went wrong. She had been fun. She had tried to meet kids where they were. She danced, she listened, she smiled. Wasn’t that what they said they wanted?

But what Clarissa never understood — what slipped through her fingers no matter how brightly she shone — was that kids don’t crave reflections. They crave anchors. Not someone who mimics their slang or joins their dance, but someone who holds still when the world tilts.

They don’t need a friend in eyeliner and sequins.

They need a lighthouse.

A grown-up.

Clarissa thought if she were loud enough, visible enough, glittery enough, she’d be seen as worthy.

She mistook visibility for value.

Now, every night, she wraps herself in ring light glow and reads product descriptions off index cards.

“This candle reminds you you’re magic,” she says softly.

Duchess snores into the mic.

Sometimes she smiles — wide, unblinking.

“It’s never too late to glow up.”

But behind the smile, there’s a flicker.

Not quite sadness.

More like the echo of applause that stopped years ago.

She used to be Clarissa Bell, the principal who made high school feel like a celebration.

Now, she’s just Clarissa.

Hand glued to her phone.

Still searching for the light that is brighter than the halo light she looks in right now.