She just clearly did not think the answer would be this.
A deep breath leaves her all at once as she finally turns her head toward Cheyenne, who leans against the locker beside her with all the irritated patience of someone who hates being right in exactly this kind of situation.
“I told you,” Maria says.
The line carries equal parts triumph and accusation, as if being correct has not actually brought her any peace.
Cheyenne lets out a long, tired sigh. “I know,” she says. “Believe me, I know.”
Maria’s gaze flicks back to me, then to Silas, then back again, still visibly trying to reconcile the person she knows with the person standing in front of her. There are too many questions in her face already. Questions about when this started. About whether I’m okay. About whether I’ve completely lost my mind. About whether Silas is what he says he is, or whether I am about to get my heart handed back to me in pieces with no one left to blame but myself.
And because I know Maria, I know at least one of those questions is about Kadin.
But before she can choose which one to ask first, the hallway around us shifts. Some current of noise changes direction. A cluster of students parts farther down the hall.
The shift in Silas happens so fast I barely catch the beginning of it.
One second the four of us are still standing in that tense little pocket of hallway, Maria trying to reorder the whole shape of my life in her head while Cheyenne looks like she regrets being right and Silas stands beside me with all that dangerous stillness he wears when he’s already anticipating a problem. The next, someone brushes past us, saying it just loud enough to be heard.
“Sister fucker.”
The words hit the air like something spat.
For half a second, no one around us seems to understand what just happened. A few students keep walking. Someone laughs farther down the hall at a different conversation. Maria’s face goes blank in that stunned way people’s faces do when cruelty arrives so casually it takes the brain a beat to catch up.
Silas does not need the beat.
He moves.
There is no pause. No confused glance over his shoulder. No question of whether he heard correctly. He turns, catching the boy by the front of his shirt, driving him backward into the lockers hard enough that the metal doors shudder. The sound cracks down the hall, turning heads immediately. Gasps break out in little pieces around us. A coffee cup nearly drops somewhere to my left.
“What the fuck did you say to me?” Silas asks.
He doesn’t shout it.
That is what makes it worse.
His voice comes out vicious, each word bitten off with a control that feels one inch away from disappearing entirely. One forearm is braced hard across the boy’s chest, pinning him there. His fist knots in the fabric at the kid’s collar. The boy, whoever he is, goes white with shock so fast it almost looks theatrical. He clearly expected the insult to land and keep moving. He did not expect to find himself slammed into a wall by the person he thought he was humiliating.
The hallway begins to slow around us.
People are turning now. Looking. Not enough to help. Just enough to witness.
Silas leans in closer, his whole body hard with the kind of anger that never needed volume to become frightening. “Say it again,” he says, quieter still. “I want to hear you be that brave with your teeth still in your mouth.”
My stomach drops.
Maria makes a noise beside me, but doesn’t move. Cheyenne mutters something that sounds like “Jesus Christ,” under her breath. All I can think, standing there with my pulse suddenly hammering against my ribs, is that this is exactly what the world does to boys like Silas. It provokes, then acts surprised when all that violence finally turns outward.
The boy tries to laugh it off.
Or maybe cough. It comes out somewhere in between.
“I was just joking-”
Silas shoves him harder into the lockers, the whole row rattling with the impact.
“Does this feel funny?” he asks.
