Like a knife.
I keep walking, muscles tight, eyes forward. The smell of her shampoo — something warm and clean and sharp — hits me as I pass. Shani stops talking mid-sentence. Tristan goes quiet. Everyone feels the tension.
We don’t say a word.
But everything in the air screams.
Classes are just noise after that.
Teachers talk. I write nothing.
We open textbooks. I see none of the words.
In AP History, Jade sits two rows in front of me, a little to the right. Her profile is all I can see for fifty minutes.
She never turns around.
At one point, someone’s phone lights up with a news segment autoplaying on mute. I catch the image of Jade outside the lawyer’s office, talking into the camera.
The teacher glares and tells them to put it away.
They don’t, not really. They just tilt it so it’s hidden behind a textbook.
I already know every frame.
When the bell rings, we stand at the same time. For one second, we’re side by side in the aisle.
Her arm brushes mine.
Just that.
Static.
She moves away like nothing happened.
At lunch, things are worse.
She walks into the cafeteria like a bomb in slow motion.
Once upon a time, she sat with me.
My table. My orbit.
The king and his queen cliché everyone expected.
Now?
She walks straight past the table where I sit with X, Tristan, and a few of the guys. Doesn’t glance over. Doesn’t hesitate.
She sits at a table closer to the center, right under the skylight. Shani next to her, Mindy across from her, a couple of other girls who used to pretend they didn’t know her name now leaning in like she’s the sun.
Her phone’s on the table. It doesn’t stop lighting up.
Tristan watches all this, pops a fry in his mouth, and says, “Damn. Look at your girl.”
“She’s not my girl,” I mutter.
“Yeah,” he says. “That’s the fucking problem.”
