Chapter 20 Chapter 20

Chapter 20 Chapter 20


I posted the photo at two in the morning.

Not from my phone, not from my account. I had spent Friday evening setting up a completely clean profile, new email, different device, nothing that could be traced back to a girl in a red dress who had been easy to manage all through her time in her supposed beautiful relationship.

The photo was simple.

Liam's car. Parked outside Mia Thornton's house. The timestamp in the corner read 11:47 PM twenty minutes after the Valentine's dance had ended and forty minutes before he had dropped me home with a kiss on the forehead and "sleep well, babe."

I had taken it the previous week on a Thursday night when something had told me to drive past her street. Call it instinct. Call it eleven months of small things adding up to one large truth I had been refusing to name.

I had taken it and saved it and waited.

Now I posted it to the Silver Ridge Student Forum, the unofficial one that the school pretended didn't exist and every student checked before breakfast with one caption

Whose car is this? Asking for a friend.

Then I put my phone down and went to sleep.

By seven forty-five the next morning, the forum had forty-three comments.

I read them over breakfast with my school bag on my shoulder and my face completely straight.

That's Liam Carter's car lmaooo

Why is it parked outside Mia Thornton's house at midnight though??

Wait. He's dating Sienna Cole???

Bro is cooked.

I put my phone in my bag.

I ate my toast and I went to school.

The energy in the hallway hit me the moment I came through the front doors.

Silver Ridge had a specific frequency when something had broken overnight, a low, buzzing current that ran through every group and conversation, the particular alertness of five hundred students who had all read the same thing before first period and were waiting to see what would happen when the people involved showed up.

I felt it the second I walked in.

Heads turning. Small. Subtle. The kind of looking that tried to look like not-looking.

I walked to my locker.

Put my books away.

Adjusted my bag strap.

Chloe appeared at my side in sixty seconds flat. Her face was doing multiple things at once, concern and confusion and something else that she was keeping behind her eyes.

"Did you see the forum?" she said.

"Mm?" I opened my locker.

"The photo of Liam's car."

"Oh." I took out my Calculus book. "Yeah, I saw it."

She watched my face. "Are you okay?"

"Why wouldn't I be?"

"Sienna. It's parked outside Mia's house."

"Maybe he was dropping something off." I closed the locker. Turned to face her with my best easy expression. "Liam knows a lot of people. It could be anything."

Chloe's eyes moved across mine slowly.

"It's midnight," she said.

"People keep strange hours." I smiled at her. "I'm fine, Chloe. It's probably nothing."

She opened her mouth.

Then closed it.

Then, in a very quiet voice: "Okay."

I found Liam between second and third period.

He was at his locker when I came around the corner , his phone in his hand, his shoulders slightly forward, his posture was managing itself. He heard me coming and looked up fast. Too fast. The easy golden face had a tightness to it that he had not bothered to fully hide.

"Hey." His voice was light. Working hard to be light.

"Hey." I stopped beside him, leaned against the neighbouring locker, and looked up at him with the most open, trusting expression I owned. "Weird morning, right?"

"Yeah." He put his phone in his pocket. "That photo is stupid. Someone's clearly trying to start something."

"Right," I said. "That's what I thought."

Something in his shoulders released. Barely. Just enough.

"It's my car," he said, because he knew I wasn't completely naive and pretending otherwise would have been its own red flag. "I drove past Mia's after dropping you home because she texted saying she felt sick after the dance and needed a ride home. I just sat outside to make sure she got in safe."

He looked at me directly when he said it.

The whole thing was clean and smooth and delivered with just enough casual detail to sound like the truth rather than a prepared answer.

I looked at him.

Dating a photo, I thought. Easy to manage.

"That was kind of you," I said.

His face settled into the warm smile.

"She's in our friend group," he said. "Kind of."

"Of course," I said.

He kissed my cheek.

The bell rang.

He headed to his class and I headed to mine and I walked the entire length of the B-wing corridor with my face neutral and my hands perfectly still and the folder on my phone sitting quiet and patient, exactly where I had left it.

First move, I thought.

He had no idea.

By lunch, Mia had posted a comment on the forum.

Some people have nothing better to do than make something from nothing. Embarrassing honestly.

Twenty-two likes.

Mostly from her friends.

I liked the comment from my anonymous account.

Then I put my phone away and went to get my lunch.

Mika was already at the table. She looked up when I sat down and said nothing for a moment.

"He panicked."

"I know," I said.

"And now he thinks he handled it."

"I know."

She picked up her fork. "The problem with Liam," she said, very calmly, like we were discussing homework, "is that he relax too fast. He think one smooth answer puts the fire out." She speared a piece of chicken. "He doesn't check if the match is still lit."

I looked at her.

She looked back at me with those steady eyes.

"The match," I said, "is still very much lit."

Mika nodded slowly.

"Good," she said.

Leo dropped his tray across from us and fell into his seat. "Why does it feel tense? Are we being tense? Because I need at least twenty minutes after getting here before I can handle tense."

"We're fine," Mika and I said at the same time.

He looked between us.

"That was perfectly ryhme," he said. "That's concerning."

"Eat your food, Leo," I said.