“Confirmed,” Niko says, handing me my beer.
“That scholarship shit.” Seb takes a long pull from his cup.
“He’s going to open his mouth to the wrong person one day,” I say.
“Yeah,” he says. “You good?”
“No.”
He nods like that’s the answer he expected.
“I’m out,” I say.
Nobody stops me, but even as I leave the party behind — the togas, the music, the chaos — her voice follows me into the cold. Not the words, but the crack in it, right at the end: the sound of someone barely holding something together.
It’s like she wanted me to understand what she was saying but doubted I would.
She told me I didn’t get to decide for her, but for a moment it felt like her body had made the decision for her. My hand can still feel her pulse and the way it sped up when I touched her, and now I can’t square the fact that those two things are both true.
Because before tonight, I told myself this wasn’t happening. I’ve got enough on my plate without it — the team, my sister, and a father who runs my life like a checklist — and no room for a girl I’ve met a handful of times.
Staying away was the easy call, but not after what I felt at the Lantern and tonight.
But I made my move — the only one I know, crossing a room to fix a problem — and she threw it right back in my face. Just as she said I don’t get to decide for her, it turns out I don’t get to decide this, either.
Nina’s line surfaces on the walk:everybody’s safe place and nobody’s actual partner.
I can be Sloane’s safe place, at least until the mask slips back on.
But I can’t be her partner.
Or so it seems.
eight
SLOANE
The pool ismine between six and seven in the morning.
That’s the deal I made with myself during the first week at Halden, when I couldn’t sleep one morning and the aquatic center sat empty. I ended up doing fifty laps, signing up for the swim squad, and afterward I sat on the cold tile and felt like myself again.
Not the Halden Girl.
Not here.
The deal has held, although my broader aquatic commitment hasn’t. I never attended a single squad practice, but nobody’s revoked my access. I consider this a personal triumph of bureaucratic negligence and I am committed to enjoying the benefits for as long as I can.
Because six to seven every day is something I can manage. There’s no mask or acting required — just the water and the wall, the water and the wall, until my arms burn and whatever I walked in carrying dissolves into the chlorine.
I have been dissolving a lot into the chlorine this week.
The toga party was three days ago, and I’ve spent every morning since trying to leave it on the bottom of the pool. Ithasn’t worked. But at least the pool doesn’t judge, or look at me the way Ivy has since Saturday night, or ask if I’m okay.
Because I’m not.
That night scrambled something inside me. It showed me I’d chosen wrong with Mason, and that, even if he’s the type of guy a good Halden Girl should want, he’s intolerable to me. And that would be fine, in isolation.
I could avoid boys. Enjoy the year. Keep the mask up.
