Chapter 1 Two choices
Lily's POV
I had two choices every morning: fall apart, or show up.
I always chose to show up, even on days like this one, when every step toward that classroom felt like walking into something I wouldn't walk out of the same way.
I pushed the door open and the whispers started before it even swung shut behind me.
My drawer was stuffed with folded papers. I already knew what they were before I opened a single one, I could tell by the way a few people were watching me, waiting for a reaction.
I opened them anyway.
Fat, dirty slut!
Teacher's pet!
Desperate, shameless bitch.
Caricatures of me, drawn with more effort than most of these people put into their actual schoolwork. My face stretched and mocking, my body grotesque in cheap ink.
I folded them back up and dropped every single one in the bin without looking up.
It had started three days ago with a photo of me walking out of Mr. Ken's office, smiling, completely unaware I was being recorded. By evening it was everywhere, buried under an ocean of captions and assumptions and messages so hateful I had to sit on the edge of my bed until I could breathe normally again.
But the truth was simple.
He had called me in to congratulate me. My name had landed second on the Golden List, second only to Wade Harrington, whose family name was practically carved into this school's foundation. I had worked for that position through every late night and early morning I had to offer.
But simple truths don't travel as fast as interesting lies.
So now I was a slut, a desperate, scheming girl from the wrong side of the city who had batted her eyes at a teacher. Because surely a scholarship student, fat, poor, ordinary, could not have simply outworked everyone in her first year.
I almost made it back to my seat when I sensed them, that particular shift in the room's energy, the way everyone straightened slightly, tuning in.
Wade and Clara moved through spaces like weather. You always knew when they had arrived.
Clara stepped in front of me first, dressed the way she always was, expensively,and she wore her cruelty the same way, like it cost her nothing.
"You slept with the teacher," she said, her voice light and conversational, perfectly pitched to carry. "And now you're one step above me." She tilted her head. "Enjoy it while it lasts, because schemes like yours never do. Know why? Because you are nothing. No name, no money, no connections. Just a desperate, fat, ugly girl with a sick old mother."
"I wonder how he managed it," she added with a cruel smile. "Did he cover your face with a pillow?"
Laughter rolled through the room like she had pressed a button.
I felt it move through me,hot, then cold, then something that settled in my chest like concrete.
And then something in me that had been bending for weeks simply refused to bend any further.
Instead of dropping my gaze, I straightened my spine. Instead of shrinking, I rolled my shoulders back. I lifted my chin and looked at Clara with the clearest, most unbothered expression I could manage.
Her smile faltered. Just enough.
Then Wade stepped forward.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, effortlessly composed, the kind of person who had never once needed to practice being comfortable in a room. His dark eyes moved over me with slow, open amusement.
"Sleeping with a teacher," he said quietly, almost thoughtfully. "That's quite an extent to go for someone's attention."
Something sharp twisted in my stomach.
I looked at him, held his gaze, and took one step forward, closing the distance until I saw the faintest flicker of surprise behind those careful eyes.
"You walked up to me," I said. "I was heading to my seat, minding my business, until you came over." I tilted my head. "So who's really desperate here?"
The room went silent.
Not the loud, cruel silence that preceded laughter, a different kind.
Wade stared at me and something moved across his face that I couldn't quite name, but just then our English teacher's voice cut through the doorway and the room burst back to life, chairs scraping, people scattering, the moment dissolving.
I turned and walked to my seat.
My hands were trembling beneath the desk. I pressed them flat against my thighs and stared at the board and told myself it was adrenaline.
I sat through the lecture with my eyes forward and my mind somewhere else entirely.
Three weeks ago, the family I worked for had relocated without notice, and suddenly the careful structure I had built around my life, school in the morning, work in the afternoon, hospital visits squeezed in between, had a hole in the middle I didn't know how to fill.
My mother's medication didn't pause for my inconvenience.
I had sent out applications quietly and desperately, smiled through two interviews that led nowhere. Then yesterday, sitting in a plastic waiting room that smelled like carpet cleaner, I finally got a yes.
A live-in nanny position which was starting today.
After I survived the rest of this school day, I would go directly to a new household, a new routine. I didn't know what it would look like yet. I only knew I needed it.
I let myself think about it for a moment,something small and hopeful sitting in the middle of everything heavy. A room of my own, maybe. Children who didn't yet know how to be deliberately cruel. A door I could close at the end of the day.
My old school drifted into my mind too, the way it sometimes did when this place became too much. The community college with its scuffed floors and secondhand furniture and the particular warmth of people who understood exactly what it meant to want more than what you were given.
When my scholarship letter arrived, they had celebrated with me loudly,and then quietly, seriously, asked me to stay.
Those schools are different, my closest friend Mara had said, gripping both my hands. The people are different. Just... be careful, Lily.
I had told her I would be fine.
The lecture ended and I was moving before the last word fully landed, bag over my shoulder, eyes forward, threading between chairs. I had learned the art of the fast exit.
I was three steps from the door when Clara's leg slid out.
It happened so smoothly, so casually, that someone watching might have thought it was an accident. My foot caught and the world tilted,.bag flying, papers scattering, my body dropping toward the floor. I hit the ground hard, palms flat, and my skirt fanned out around me.
"Dirty pants!" Wade's mocking voice rang out.
The class erupted.
I stayed on the floor for exactly one breath.
Then I pressed my palms flat and pushed myself up. I smoothed my skirt down with both hands, methodical and slow, refusing to rush. I picked up my bag. I gathered the scattered papers. I did not look at a single face.
And I walked out.