Chapter 167 The Public Choice

Chapter 167 The Public Choice
Farrah Valdez smiled like girls only smiled when they had already found the knife.

Not the silver kind arranged beside crystal plates. Not the decorative kind hidden in old family dining rooms and polished for people who knew which fork meant power.

Something sharper. Quieter. The kind that did not need blood to leave damage. The applause around us rose in polished waves.

It should have sounded beautiful. Fletcher’s ballroom was built for beautiful things—glass chandeliers, ivory roses, gowns brushing marble like secrets. But every clap felt measured. Careful. Performed by people who had just watched something they were not supposed to witness and were already deciding what version of it would hurt me most.

Isaac had let go of my waist.

Technically.

His hand was no longer there, but the warmth of it stayed. My body had no right to keep evidence after the crime scene had already been cleared.

Across the ballroom, Krizzy looked like she was one notification away from throwing herself into traffic. Jake’s phone lit up in his hand. Then Franco’s. Then two girls near the dessert table leaned over the same screen, their pearl earrings almost touching.

A second later, someone laughed. That was worse than if they had pointed. My throat tightened.

The dance was over, but the room had not released us. It held Isaac and me in the center like we were still moving, still turning, still making a mistake everyone could replay from better angles.

Near the balcony stairs, Ryker slipped his hands into his pockets and looked away. And Farrah— Farrah looked down at her phone again.

This time, her smile reached her eyes.

I wanted to step back. Not in a tragic heroine way. Just one small, reasonable step. The kind that could become a correction if anyone asked. Before I could move, Isaac’s voice lowered beside me.

“Don’t.”

I looked at him. “Don’t what?”

“Disappear.”

My chest did something embarrassing. It was not a flutter. I refused to call it that. It was more like my heart tripped over its own shoelaces and pretended it meant to.

“I’m standing right here,” I whispered.

“I know.” His eyes stayed on the room, not me. “That’s why everyone is nervous.”

That should not have made me feel steadier. It did anyway.

A server passed with a tray of untouched champagne, moving carefully between gowns and dark suits. Behind him, two upper-year girls glanced at Isaac, then me, then immediately at each other.

The story was assembling itself in real time. I could almost hear the captions forming.

Scholarship girl forgets gravity.
Heir forgets audience.
Entire academy forgets how to act normal.

Krizzy started toward me, but Jake caught her elbow gently. Franco said something low, and she stopped, furious and worried at the same time. Isaac finally turned his head.

“You don’t have to hold your ground alone,” he said.

The sentence hit harder than it should have, because I knew how easy it would have been for him to say nothing.

I swallowed. “That sounds dangerously close to being nice.”

His mouth barely moved.

“Don’t get used to it.”

“Clara,” Krizzy called softly.

She had found a way around Jake, because of course she had. Krizzy could probably escape a locked vault using only lip gloss and emotional urgency.

She reached me with her phone clutched against her chest, eyes wide.

“Do not check your messages.”

“That is a terrible thing to say to someone with anxiety.”

“I know.” Her voice dropped. “That’s why I’m saying it with love.”

Jake appeared behind her, expression unusually careful.

“It’s already on three stories.”

My stomach sank. “Three?”

“Five,” Franco corrected from Jake’s side.

Jake gave him a look. “I was softening it.”

“Badly,” Franco said.

Krizzy leaned closer. “It’s mostly clips of the dance. Some captions. Nothing you need to read while wearing that dress and standing under that many chandeliers.”

“That was oddly specific.”

“I’m trying not to scream.”

Isaac’s gaze sharpened. “Who posted first?”

Jake’s face changed. Not much, but enough.

“Anonymous account,” he said. “New one.”

Franco looked across the ballroom.

“Not new enough.”

I followed his gaze. Farrah was coming toward us.

The room noticed before I fully did. A few heads turned with that slow, hungry precision Fletcher students had when they sensed drama wearing expensive perfume.

Farrah moved like nothing in the world could rush her. Her pale gold dress caught the chandelier light with every step, soft and flawless, like she had been poured into the evening. Her smile was perfect.

She stopped in front of Isaac first, but her eyes slid to me with polished sweetness.

“Clara,” she said. “You looked lovely.”

There it was. The compliment shaped like a blade.

“Thank you,” I said, because apparently survival instincts came with manners.

Farrah’s smile warmed by half a degree.

“I was speaking to Isaac, actually.”

Krizzy made a tiny sound beside me. Jake went very still. The heat climbed my neck so fast I almost hated my own skin for cooperating.

Isaac did not look amused.

“Then say my name when you speak to me,” he said.

The air shifted. Farrah blinked once. Only once. Then she recovered so beautifully it almost deserved applause.

“Of course.” She turned fully to him and extended one elegant hand. “May I?”

Two words. That was all. But the ballroom understood them better than any speech. The girls by the dessert table stopped pretending to look at cake. Someone near the orchestra lifted a phone again.

This was not a dance request. This was Farrah asking whether I had borrowed something that still belonged to her.

Isaac looked at me first..

“Only if Clara is okay with it,” he said.

Farrah’s smile tightened. It was so brief most people would miss it. But I saw it. I saw the exact second her perfect expression had to work harder.

“Since when do you ask permission?” she asked lightly.

Isaac’s face did not change. “Since it matters who I came with.”

The room went quiet in a way applause never could.

Beside me, Krizzy inhaled like she had just witnessed a miracle and was trying not to ruin it by making noise. Jake looked down, but the corner of his mouth lifted. Franco only watched Farrah, like he was waiting for the next move.

Farrah had expected him to choose silence. For once, he didn’t. And somehow, that made her smile colder.

“How sweet,” she said, turning her eyes to me. “Careful, Clara. Public gestures are easy. Keeping them is harder.”

The words landed exactly where she wanted them to. I could step back. I could make myself smaller, easier, less offensive to everyone who thought I had borrowed a place beside him.

Instead, I stayed. Farrah’s gaze dipped to my stillness. Then she smiled again, softer this time, and stepped away as if she had only been polite.

But her phone lit up in her hand. Farrah did not win the dance.

So she chose a different battlefield.