Chapter 6: Six

The guidance counselor's door is closed when Wren passes it between third and fourth period.

She wouldn't have noticed except that Madison Cross is sitting in the chair outside it legs crossed, phone in her lap, the particular stillness of someone who is exactly where they intended to be. She looks up as Wren passes.

She smiles.

Not the Jade smile not borrowed, not delivered on someone else's behalf. Madison's own smile. The one she reserves for moments she has been planning.

Wren keeps walking.

She gets to the water fountain at the end of the corridor, takes a drink, and stands there for three seconds with the cold water taste on her tongue.

Something is happening.

She doesn't know what it is yet. But Madison Cross sitting outside the guidance counselor's office with printed papers in her hand and that specific smile means something has already been set in motion that Wren is only now walking into the edge of.

She goes to fourth period.

She takes notes.

She does not let her thumbnail press into her index finger even once.

Priya finds her at lunch.

She sits down across from Wren without food, without her phone, without the usual momentum that Priya carries everywhere like weather. Just Priya, both hands flat on the table, looking at Wren with an expression she has never worn before.

"Tell me right now," Priya says. "And don't say nothing happened."

Wren puts her fork down. "What did you hear?"

"Madison told three people this morning that you've been spending time alone with Cole Ramsey. That it's been going on for a while. That she has proof." Priya's voice is low and completely controlled which means she is furious. "She used the word inappropriate. "

The cafeteria noise continues around them. Trays. Laughter. Someone's phone playing music too loud.

Wren looks at the table.

"It's a job," she says. "I'm babysitting his sister. That is the entire truth."

Priya stares at her. "Cole Ramsey's sister."

"She's six. Her name is Daisy. She has a stuffed giraffe named Gerald and strong opinions about subtraction." Wren picks her fork back up. "That's all it is."

"Wren." Priya leans forward. "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Because I knew you'd make this face."

"What face?"

"The face you're making right now."

Priya sits back. Crosses her arms. The furious-helpless thing is in her eyes again but there is something else underneath it now something that looks like fear. "She went to Mr. Douglas," she says quietly. "Madison. This morning. With screenshots of your location and I don't know what else. Someone saw her go in."

Wren sets her fork down again.

Mr. Douglas. The guidance counselor who sends letters home. The guidance counselor whose notes go in your file. The guidance counselor who calls parents.

Her mother cannot get a call from the school right now. Her mother is holding herself together with both hands and a phone call from a guidance counselor about her daughter and a boy and the word inappropriate will be the thing that makes her let go.

"Okay," Wren says.

"Okay?" Priya stares at her. "That's it? Okay?"

"I'll handle it."

"How "

"Priya." Wren looks at her. "I'll handle it. I need you to trust me."

Priya looks at her for a long time. Then she exhales slow, controlled, the surrender of someone who has made this choice before and will make it again. "You're going to tell me everything later."

"Yes."

"Everything."

"Yes."

Priya picks up her bag. Stands. "For what it's worth," she says quietly, "the three people Madison told? Two of them didn't believe her. Apparently even they think she's going too far."

She leaves.

Wren sits alone at the table and looks at her food and does not taste anything for the rest of lunch.

She goes to Mr. Douglas's office at the start of free period.

She does not wait to be called. She does not let Madison control the sequence of events. She knocks, opens the door, and finds Mr. Douglas at his desk looking mildly startled.

"Wren," he says. "I was actually going to "

"I know," she says. She sits down without being asked. "I know why I'm here. I wanted to talk to you first."

Mr. Douglas folds his hands. He is a careful man deliberate, unhurried, the kind of adult who actually listens rather than waiting to respond. Wren has always respected this about him.

"Tell me about your situation," he says.

So she does. All of it the babysitting job, the pay, why she needs it, Daisy, the schedule, the fact that Cole is almost never home when she is there and when he is they are in the same room as a six-year-old who provides continuous commentary on everything that happens. She says it plainly, without decoration, the way she says everything that matters.

Mr. Douglas listens.

When she finishes he is quiet for a moment.

"Are you comfortable?" he asks. "In that house. Is anyone making you uncomfortable."

"No," Wren says. And it is true. Whatever else is happening whatever is building in the space between her and Cole that she refuses to name nobody in that house has made her uncomfortable. The opposite, if anything, which is its own problem.

"I appreciate you coming to me," Mr. Douglas says. "I want you to know that my role is to make sure you're safe. Not to make your life complicated."

"Thank you," Wren says.

She stands. Picks up her bag.

"Wren." Mr. Douglas's voice is careful. "Whatever is being said and I'm not telling you what was said or by whom I want you to know that one person's version of events is not a conclusion. Okay?"

She nods.

She walks out.

In the corridor she stands for a moment with her back against the wall and her eyes on the ceiling.

Madison has printed screenshots and a guidance counselor and the word inappropriate and is apparently willing to burn everything down to get Wren out of that house.

Wren has the truth. A patient guidance counselor. And something Madison doesn't know she has.

She pushes off the wall and goes to her next class.

The house is quiet when she arrives.

Daisy is at the kitchen table with a worksheet and a crayon she uses crayons for everything, including math, which Wren finds privately charming and she looks up when Wren comes in and says: "Cole texted. He said he's coming home early. He never comes home early."

"Did he say why?"

"No. He sent three texts and then a voice note that just said tell Wren I'm coming home early and Mama played it for me this morning." Daisy returns to her worksheet. "He sounded weird."

"Weird how?"

Daisy considers this with the seriousness she applies to all important questions. "Like when he's trying to sound normal but he isn't," she says. "He has a voice for that. It's slightly too flat."

Wren sets her bag down.

She puts the kettle on.

She is reaching for mugs when she hears the front door.

Cole walks into the kitchen and stops.

He looks at her. She looks at him. Daisy looks at both of them.

"I brought snacks," he says. He is carrying a grocery bag. He puts it on the counter. He is doing the voice Daisy described slightly too flat, the performance of ordinary. "The good crackers. And those small cheese things Daisy likes."

"The round ones?" Daisy is already off her chair.

"The round ones." He doesn't look away from Wren. "Can you " He tilts his head toward the hallway. Come talk to me.

Wren hands Daisy the cracker box. "Three," she says. "Then back to the worksheet."

"Five."

"Four."

"Deal." Daisy takes the box to the table with the satisfied air of someone who won a negotiation.

Wren follows Cole into the hallway.

He turns to face her. He has practiced something she can see the shape of it in the set of his jaw, the prepared quality of his expression. Then he looks at her face and the preparation seems to dissolve.

"She went to Douglas," he says.

"I know. I went first."

He blinks. "You went first."

"This morning. Free period."

Something moves through his expression that she can't quite follow surprise, something adjacent to relief, something else underneath both of those that disappears before she can identify it.

"What did you tell him?" Cole asks.

"The truth. That I babysit Daisy. That it's a job. That everything Madison is implying is wrong." She holds his gaze. "Is there anything else Douglas needs to know?"

Cole looks at her for a long moment.

"No," he says.

"Then we're fine."

She turns to go back to the kitchen.

"Wren."

She turns back.

He is standing in the hallway with his grocery bag still in his hand and his jaw working around something he hasn't said yet. He looks, for the first time since she met him, like someone who doesn't know what to do with his own hands.

"I didn't know she was going to do that," he says. "I told her to stop. This morning. I told her directly."

"I know," Wren says.

"How do you know?"

"Because you brought the round crackers," she says. "And you came home early. And you're standing in your own hallway looking like you want to apologize for something." She pauses. "Are you apologizing for something?"

He is quiet for three full seconds.

"Working on it," he says.

It is the most honest thing he has said to her since she knocked on his door.

She holds his gaze for one more moment. Then she goes back to the kitchen where Daisy is on cracker number five and has the worksheet completely finished and is now drawing a portrait of Gerald in the margin.

"That's five," Wren says.

"I was fast," Daisy says. "Speed should be rewarded."

Wren sits down across from her.

"Show me the worksheet," she says.

Daisy shows her.

Every answer is correct.