Her expression didn’t crack. But her grip on the pen did. The plastic bent, a quick snap that only I caught. Panic flickered before she smothered it under the practiced tilt of her chin. Rage simmered in the twitch of her jaw.
Before she could open her mouth, one of the school board liaisons breezed in with a grin plastered across her face. “Oh, Mila! Yes, we’ve got you now—let me just fix this.” She handed me a packet as though it were nothing. “There we go. That was supposed to be corrected earlier.”
Corrected. Again. As if we were pawns being shifted, not people with choices.
I didn’t miss the vein throbbing in Elise’s temple. Neither did Quinn, who dropped her gaze fast, as if she stared at the table hard enough, she could vanish through it.
“That’s fine,” Elise said at last, her voice tight, smooth veneer stretched too thin. “We can still assign her something… light.”
The liaison clapped her hands together, beaming as though we’d solved world hunger. “Programs and welcome table. It’s not flashy, but it keeps her in the loop.”
Not flashy. Translation: harmless. Forgettable. Easy to erase.
Elise didn’t answer.
The meeting dragged anyway—an endless parade of posturing about tablecloth colors and sponsor shout-outs, voices pitched just loud enough to sound important. I stopped listening after five minutes.
Instead, I flipped my packet over and let my pencil wander. The eucalyptus trees outside the window caught my eye, branches bent under the ocean wind. Sharp lines for the leaves. A twist of trunk. Anything to drown out the drone of Elise’s perfect diction.
By the time someone motioned for adjournment, half the page was filled with rough outlines of the world beyond the glass—messy, alive, real.
I took my time packing up, not in a rush to trail after their weekend-party gossip. So I lingered, dragging my feet. The quiet stretched—and that was when I heard it. Elise’s voice just around the corner.
“No, you don’t understand. She shouldn’t even be here. I handled it. I—” A pause. “Yes, Mr. Langley, but—” Another beat. Then: “Fine. But if this backfires, don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
The name sliced through me.Langley. Darren Langley—my mom’s boyfriend, the VP at King Enterprises—lying in a pool of blood. The image tore through me.
I froze in the doorway, pulse skittering. The chill that went through me had nothing to do with the draft sneaking in from the cracked window at the end of the hall. My fingers went numb around the strap of my bag. It couldn’t be. I’d seen the body too. But my mother’s voice from that night whispered through my mind.Don’t look. Just go.
I slipped out the side exit before Elise could spot me.
My hands shook as I typed before I could overthink it:Need to talk. Tonight.
No reply. Which meant hockey. Which meant I had hours to kill and nowhere I wanted to be.
I didn’t go home. I drove straight to the beach instead. I parked by the boardwalk, bought a coffee, and walked until the sky bruised into vibrant reds, pinks, oranges, and gold. The crash of waves almost drowned out the echo in my head.Mr. Langley.Over and over.
I kicked off my shoes and sank into the chilly sand, sketchbook balanced on my knees. The pages curled in the damp air, pencil dragging too heavy across the paper. Even the gulls circling overhead came out wrong—jagged, broken, stripped of grace. I stared at the mess of lines until my coffee went cold beside me, forgotten.
When my phone finally buzzed, the boardwalk lights had flickered on, and my throat felt raw from the briny air.
Luke:I’m starving. Grabbing food for us. Meet me on the roof.
I stared at the screen, an eyebrow arching on instinct.
Me:You trying to impress me or bribe me?
His reply came fast.
Luke:Can’t it be both?
The rooftop didn’t feel like a battleground tonight. It felt… quieter. Safer. A place that remembered us but didn’t care what we’d done to ruin it.
We spread the boxes between us, cross-legged on the blanket he’d laid out, ocean wind pulling at loose strands of my hair. The smell of pizza and fries rose warm between us, cutting through the air.
“Still order the same thing?” I asked, peeking inside.
“Half pepperoni, half plain. And fries.”
