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“Wow,” Tessa says. She’s very still. “Was his roommate involved?”

“Rafe?” I shake my head. “No. Well, he was there. I think maybe he and Koda fought some of the guys to get Nash off of Declan. But I know he’s the one who got Nash out.”

She nods slowly. “Was anyone else from this building there?”

“I don’t know.” I shrug. “Nash and Rafe are the only hockey players I know of on our floor, and Koda’s up on five. Why?”

She swallows and shakes her head. “No,” she says quietly, which doesn’t answer anything.

“Sorry,” I say. “What?”

She hesitates, and then she says, “I don’t like violence.”

It’s such an obvious, reasonable thing to say that I almost laugh, and then I don’t, because of how she says it.

“Yeah,” I say. “Nobody likes it, but—”

I’m about to give a hockey excuse, but she looks at me.

“Sorry,” I say, shaking my head. “That was insensitive. You don’t like it, and I understand.”

“It’s okay,” she mutters quietly.

I swallow, watching her closely. I ask slowly, “Did something happen?”

She blinks like she hadn’t thought I’d ask. She nods, then she says, “I got bullied in high school. Pretty badly.”

I sit there like an idiot. “Oh. Shit. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“No.” She brushes it off.

“I shouldn’t have told you all that. I was just babbling.” I stop and start again. “Those guys aren’t that violent. I think it’s just hockey, right?”

She nods and opens her book.

“Don’t tell anybody,” I say quickly, realizing I’ve just handed her something heavy without asking. “About Nash, or any of it. He’d be so mad. Nobody’s supposed to know.”

Tessa looks up. “Who exactly am I going to tell? It’s not like I have any friends.”

It’s a real joke, from Tessa Canten, deadpan, at four in the afternoon on a Thursday, and I laugh. It lightens the mood, so I fall sideways onto my pillow. “Tess, that’s the saddest thing I’ve ever heard.”

She smiles. “Your secret’s safe with me.”

“Thank you.”

I’m still thinking about it ten minutes later while I pretend to do homework.

“Hey,” I say, when she reaches for another apple slice. “For what it’s worth, not everybody’s like that. Whoever it was, in high school, it’s in the past now. You’re good here.”

There’s a pause that goes on a second too long.

“Yeah,” she says. “It’s only like that for me.” Then she eats her apple and turns the page, and I go back to my reading and decide right then that I’m never bringing her another story about somebody being violent.

The girls come over at six and take over my entire half of the room. Kenzie brings her laptop and a blanket, Bianca brings snacks, and Paige brings a bag of gummy worms and her whole personality. We put on The Bachelor that none of us watch, because Kenzie starts a fight about one of the girls not being a girl’s girl, and she hates it. Bianca argues.

Tessa stays at her desk with her headphones on. I wish she would join us. She doesn’t leave when they come over; she just puts her headphones on and studies with four girls yelling about a movie eight feet away, and once, about forty minutes in, I see her mouth move at something Paige says, which is as close to participating as she gets.

At eight, Kenzie announces she’s starving, Bianca says the dining hall is closing, and Paige says there’s that place on Beall with the fries. Everybody is up and finding shoes in about ninety seconds.