Chapter 29 FISHBOWL EFFECT
POV SYLVIE
Walking into the Law School atrium shouldn't have felt like walking onto a red carpet at the Oscars, but here we were.
My Converse sneakers felt too loud against the marble floor. My backpack, heavy with textbooks I hadn't actually read in three days, felt like it was filled with lead. But the heaviest thing was the weight of five hundred pairs of eyes.
"Don't look at them," Nathaniel whispered, his hand brushing against mine. "Just keep walking like you're thinking about the Rule Against Perpetuities."
"I'm thinking about the rule against people staring at my soul, Nathaniel. It’s a very common law in my head."
We reached the entrance to our Constitutional Law seminar. This was the arena. Behind those double doors were our peers—the people who had spent the last week calling me a kidnapper on TikTok and then a "feminist icon" on Twitter. The whiplash was enough to give me a permanent neck injury.
I took a deep breath, adjusted my glasses, and pushed the doors open.
The room went dead silent. It was that awkward, heavy silence where you can hear someone’s highlighter cap drop three rows back. Professor Sterling was already at the podium, but even he paused, his spectacles sliding down his nose as he watched us take our usual seats in the back.
"Nice of you to join us, Mr. Cavill, Miss Belrose," Sterling said, his voice dry. "I assume the... global media circus... has finished its morning performance?"
"For now, Professor," Nathaniel said, leaning back with that effortless cool that I was starting to realize was 50% genetics and 50% sheer stubbornness. "We’re ready for the lecture."
I could feel the heat on my neck. I could see Chloe two rows ahead, giving me a frantic "we need to talk" look while she typed at a hundred miles an hour on her phone. But it was the seat in the front row that made my stomach do a slow, sick flip.
Elena Vane was there.
She wasn't wearing her usual designer blazer. She was in an oversized Astoria sweatshirt, her hair in a messy ponytail, trying to look like a "victim" of the scandal. But when she turned around to look at us, the mask slipped. Her eyes were red, but they weren't sad. They were filled with a pure, concentrated venom.
"Is it true?" someone whispered from the row behind us. "Did your grandfather really try to lock you up, Nate?"
"Does the ring actually have a GPS tracker in it?" another girl asked, leaning over the desk.
"Eyes on the board, everyone," I snapped, my "Academic Weapon" voice coming out sharper than I intended. "We’re here to study the Fourteenth Amendment, not my jewelry collection."
Nathaniel let out a soft huff of laughter. He reached under the desk, findng my hand and squeezing it. It was a small, hidden gesture. A teenage gesture. And for a second, the "Global Scandal" felt miles away. It was just a boy and a girl in a boring lecture hall, holding hands because they were terrified and excited all at once.
The lecture was a blur of legal terms, but I couldn't focus. My phone was buzzing in my pocket.
Chloe: Omg Elena is telling everyone in the Alpha Beta group that the video was edited and that you threatened her with a knife at the frat house!
I rolled my eyes. A knife? Seriously? Elena really needed to watch better movies.
When the bell finally rang, the "fishbowl effect" became unbearable. A swarm of students surrounded us before we could even pack our bags.
"Sylvie, can I get a selfie for my blog? People are obsessed with the 'Scholarship Queen' vibe!" "Nathaniel, are you really cut off? Are you going to have to get a job at the campus bookstore?"
"Out of the way," Nathaniel said, his voice dropping into that protective, low tone. He stood up, towering over the crowd, and guided me toward the exit.
But we didn't make it to the door. Elena was standing there, blocking our path. Her friends were behind her, looking like a low-budget version of a villain’s posse.
"You think you're so clever, don't you, Sylvie?" Elena said, her voice trembling with rage. "You used him. You used his trauma and his grandfather to make yourself a star. But look at him. He’s a Cavill with no money. He’s nothing now. And you? You're still just a girl from a blue house who’s one lawsuit away from being homeless."
I felt the old familiar sting of shame, but then I looked at Nathaniel. He wasn't looking at Elena. He was looking at me, a tiny smile of encouragement on his face.
I stepped forward, closing the gap between me and the girl who had tried to ruin my life.
"You're right about one thing, Elena," I said, my voice calm. "I am a girl from a blue house. And that house taught me that when someone tries to burn you down, you don't run. You use the fire to cook dinner."
I leaned in closer, whispering so only she could hear. "And as for Nathaniel? He’s not 'nothing.' He’s the guy who chose me over a billion dollars. What guy has ever chosen you over anything, Elena? Not even your own father stayed to help you with the DA."
Elena’s face went white. She looked like she wanted to slap me, but she knew the cameras were everywhere. She turned on her heel and stormed out of the room, her "posse" scrambling after her.
"Damn, Belrose," Nathaniel murmured, leaning down. "Remind me never to get on your bad side."
"You're already on my bad side, Cavill. You're the reason I have three thousand new Instagram followers and a headache that won't go away."
"Let's get out of here," he said, pulling his hood up. "I know a place on the roof of the library where the Wi-Fi is terrible and no one goes. We can share a soggy sandwich and pretend the world doesn't exist for twenty minutes."
"A soggy sandwich?" I teased. "Is that all a former billionaire can offer me?"
"I also have a very high-quality chocolate bar I stole from Silas’s emergency stash," he winked.
We ran. We literally ran through the back hallways of the law building, laughing like two kids playing hooky. We reached the roof, the cold Astoria wind whipping my hair across my face. Below us, the campus was a chaotic mess of news vans and students, but up here, it was quiet.
We sat on the edge of the brick ledge, our legs dangling over the side. Nathaniel pulled out the chocolate bar and broke it in half, handing me a piece.
"To being 'nothing'," he said, clinking his chocolate against mine.
"To being 'nothing' together," I replied.
As we sat there, eating cheap chocolate and watching the sunset over the university that had tried to tear us apart, I realized that this was the part the "brand" could never capture. This was the Young Adult reality—the messy, scary, beautiful feeling of being young and in love and having absolutely no idea what happens next.
Arthur Cavill still had his millions. Elena still had her bitterness. But I had a 98% in Torts, a boy who thought I was a revolution, and a future that—for the first time in my life—wasn't a contract. It was a blank page.
"Sylvie?"
"Yeah?"
"I think I like being a 'nobody' with you."
"Me too, Nate. Me too."