Chapter 1: The Life I Thought I Wanted

If you’d asked me then, I would’ve told you my life made sense. Not perfect, because nobody’s life at eighteen is perfect, no matter how polished it looks from the outside. But it made sense. I had grades good enough to keep my parents off my back most of the time, a clear plan for university, two friends who somehow balanced out the worst parts of me, and a girlfriend most guys at school would’ve sold a kidney to date. It was a good life. Or at least it looked like one.

I was standing in front of the bathroom mirror at seven in the morning, trying to do something about my hair and failing in the way I always failed. Messy brown had apparently become my permanent state. No matter what I did, it never sat right. Too long at the front, too stubborn at the sides. I shoved my fingers through it, gave up, and reached for my glasses on the shelf.

I only really needed them for reading, for screens, for long study sessions that made words start to blur together after an hour, but I liked having them on in the morning. They made me feel more put together than I actually was.

Which, honestly, was a pretty useful trick. I leaned closer to the mirror and rubbed sleep from my eyes. Light grey. My mum said they made me look serious. Tara said they made me look like I was always judging everyone, which wasn’t true. Mostly.

From downstairs, I heard cupboard doors banging and my dad’s voice carrying through the house. Not angry exactly, just loud. He was always loud in the mornings, like silence offended him on principle. My mum answered with the distracted kind of hum that meant she was already doing six things at once.

I checked the time and swore under my breath. If I missed Clair before first period, I’d hear about it.

I grabbed my bag, jogged downstairs two steps at a time, nearly got clipped by my dad reaching for the coffee, muttered a quick goodbye to both of them, and headed out before either of them could start one of their mini lectures about deadlines, responsibility, or “the importance of consistency” like I was running a company instead of going to school.

It was a cold morning, the kind where the air felt sharp enough to wake you up properly. The walk to school wasn’t long, just enough to make me regret not bringing gloves and then feel stupid because it was spring and I shouldn’t need gloves. By the time the gates came into view, the place was already alive with noise. Car doors slamming, people laughing too loudly, sneakers screeching across pavement and someone yelling across the parking lot.

Our school had its own ecosystem. The athletes occupied space like they owned it. The popular girls moved in glittering packs. The drama kids were dramatic even when they were ordering vending machine snacks. The rest of us just kind of learned how to orbit around all of them without getting burned.

I was good at that. Not invisible. Just... strategically present. I’d barely stepped through the front doors when a hand hooked around my arm.

“There you are,” Clair said. I smiled before I even turned toward her.

That was the thing about Clair. She had this way of making you feel chosen. Like out of all the people she could be looking at, all the people she could be touching, she’d decided it was you. And once she gave you that smile, warm and bright and just a little smug, you kind of forgot to question anything else.

She looked perfect, obviously. She always did. Dark blonde hair curled neatly over one shoulder, lip gloss catching the light, uniform adjusted just enough to look effortless without technically breaking any rules. She kissed my cheek like it was nothing, like she hadn’t just made three guys near the lockers stare daggers at me.

“Morning,” I said.

“You’re late.”

“I’m two minutes early.”

“For me, that’s late.”

I laughed softly and shifted my bag higher on my shoulder. “I’ll do better next time.”

“You will,” she said, satisfied, and smoothed a hand over my tie. “You look cute.”

Cute. Not handsome. Not hot. Cute. I didn’t mind. Not really. If anything, I liked the easy confidence she had with me, the way she acted like we’d already settled into something real. Something solid. We’d been together long enough that people stopped reacting when they saw us and started just accepting us as fact.

Clifford and Clair.

It sounded right together. At least I thought it did.

She looped her arm through mine as we walked down the corridor, and people greeted her from every direction. Most of them nodded at me too, because being with Clair gave me a kind of borrowed visibility. I wasn’t popular in the way she was popular, but I was adjacent to it. Close enough to be recognised. Far enough not to have to perform for it all the time.

At my locker, she leaned against the row of metal doors and watched me swap books.

“Lunch with me?” she asked.

“I always have lunch with you.”

“Good answer.”

I glanced over at her. “Was there a wrong one?”

“With me, there’s always a wrong one.”

“That sounds healthy.”

“It is healthy. It teaches you discipline.”

“Pretty sure that’s not what discipline means.”

She grinned and kissed me properly that time, fast and sweet, just enough to make my stomach tighten in a way I assumed was normal. The hallway around us kept moving, but for a second I only really registered her perfume and the touch of her fingers against my wrist.

When she pulled back, she smirked like she knew exactly what she did to me. Then, because this was school and peace never lasted, someone shoulder checked into me from behind.

I turned instinctively, annoyed, only to find myself looking up. Way up. Tyler Cross barely broke stride. “Watch it, Hayes.”

His voice was low and rough around the edges, like he’d just woken up or had spent the morning laughing too much.

I frowned. “You walked into me.”

He looked down at me with those unreadable blue eyes and the ghost of a smile that was probably more insult than apology. “Then I guess we both survived.”

And just like that, he was gone, disappearing into the stream of bodies moving toward the gym wing.

Clair made a face. “God, he’s so full of himself.”

I shut my locker. “He’s a basketball player. I think that’s legally required.”

“Still. He acts like the whole school belongs to him.”

I glanced down the hall, but Tyler had already vanished into the crowd. “Pretty sure half the school would agree to that.”

She rolled her eyes, but she was smiling. “Well, not me.”

That felt like the right answer, so I smiled too. Tyler Cross was the kind of person everybody knew, even if they didn’t actually know him. Bad reputation. Good grades when he could be bothered. Constant rumours. Girls liked him because he looked dangerous in a way that felt cinematic from a distance. Guys liked him because he won games and hit hard and never seemed scared of anyone. There were stories about him getting into fights, stories about him leaving parties with different girls, stories about him doing whatever he wanted and somehow getting away with all of it.

He was the kind of person I noticed, mostly because he was hard not to notice. That was all.

By lunch, I was starving and halfway through mentally rewriting my economics notes because Mr. Dempsey had managed to explain cash flow in a way so clumsy it physically pained me.

Leonard was already at our usual table, hunched over his lunch tray with a book open beside it. Not a normal book, obviously. Something with a black cover and a photograph of a galaxy splashed across the front.

“Are you reading while eating again?” I asked, dropping into the seat opposite him.

Without looking up, he said, “Some of us value efficiency.”

“Some of us value not getting mayonnaise in the Andromeda galaxy.”

“That would be a tragedy,” he agreed gravely.

Leonard Vale looked exactly like the kind of person teachers trusted immediately. Neat dark hair, clear skin, calm face, posture like he’d been raised in a library. He was one of the smartest people I knew, and also one of the strangest, though he’d probably take that as a compliment. He loved astronomy in a way that bordered on devotion. If you gave him half a chance, he’d explain black holes to you over lunch and then seem genuinely surprised when everyone else had moved on emotionally before he had.

Tara dropped into the chair beside me hard enough to rattle the table.

“Good, you’re both here,” she announced.

“You say that like we were at risk of being kidnapped,” I said.

“You were at risk of being boring.”

“That’s less dramatic.”

“Is it?”

Tara Quinn had never once entered a room quietly in her life. She wore her dark hair tied back in a high ponytail, had a runner’s build that made even sitting still look temporary, and gave off the energy of somebody permanently halfway through a dare. She was clever enough to keep up with Leonard in class and reckless enough to make both of us regret being seen with her in public at least once a week.

She stole one of my chips before I could stop her.

“How was your morning with Princess Clair?” she asked.

I nudged her knee under the table. “You mean my girlfriend?”

“I do. Has she issued today’s royal decrees yet?”

Leonard finally looked up from his book. “Please tell me there’s an official scroll.”

“There should be,” Tara said. “With wax seals.”

I shook my head, trying not to smile. “You two are impossible.”

“And yet lovable,” Tara said.

“Debatable,” Leonard muttered.

I looked across the cafeteria automatically and found Clair near the windows with her friends, laughing at something one of them said. She hadn’t come over yet, but that wasn’t unusual. She liked circulating. She liked being seen. I’d learned early on that dating Clair meant sharing her with the atmosphere.

Still, when she caught my eye from across the room and smiled, warmth spread through my chest so easily it embarrassed me a little.

Tara followed my gaze and made a face so dramatic it should’ve won awards.

“You’re gone,” she said.

“What?”

“You have that look.”

"What look?”

“The one people get right before they start writing awful poetry.”

“I’m not writing poetry.”

“Good,” Leonard said. “The world has suffered enough.”

I laughed despite myself and reached for my drink.

That was when the cafeteria noise shifted slightly, not enough to silence anything, just enough that my attention snagged on it.

Tyler had walked in with two guys from the basketball team. Reece Nolan and Kyle Mercer, if I remembered right. Reece had that broad, unimpressed look of someone who expected disappointment and usually got it. Kyle looked easier, more amused by everything, like life was one long private joke. Tyler was in the middle, dark hair untidy, school tie hanging loose, carrying himself with the lazy confidence of somebody who knew exactly who was watching him and didn’t care.

Or pretended not to. I looked away before it could become staring.

Tara noticed because Tara noticed everything. “There’s our resident disaster.”

“Who?”

“Tyler Cross.”

Leonard closed his book. “Statistically, he is one of the highest sources of hallway incidents.”

“See?” Tara pointed at him. “Even Leonard has data.”

“That is not data,” Leonard said.

“It’s spiritual data.”

I snorted. “That means nothing.”

“Neither does half of what comes out of your economics textbook, but you still respect it.”

Before I could answer, Clair arrived and slid neatly into the empty space beside me, fitting herself into my side like it was instinct. She kissed my jaw, then stole half my drink without asking.

“Hi, baby.”

The word settled over me warm and familiar.

“Hi.”

Her friends hovered nearby for a moment before peeling off toward another table. Clair never looked uncertain in social situations. She looked born for them. Like every room had been waiting for her to arrive and start making it interesting.

She rested a hand on my arm while Leonard and Tara bickered over whether Pluto deserved emotional compensation for being demoted. I liked that she touched me casually in public. I liked that people saw it. There was reassurance in being chosen over and over, even in small ways.

At one point she leaned closer and murmured, “You’re staying after school with me, right?”

I blinked. “I thought you had cheer planning.”

“I do, but not for long.”

“Then yeah. Of course.”

“Good.” She smiled against my shoulder. “I miss you when I don’t see you enough.”

I turned my head and kissed her temple without thinking. “You saw me first thing this morning.”

“That’s not enough.”

Something in me softened instantly. “Okay.”

Across the cafeteria, I caught movement and looked up on reflex. Tyler was glancing our way. Not at Clair. At me.

It only lasted a second. Maybe less. Just long enough for our eyes to meet before Kyle said something to him and he looked away again.

I frowned slightly.

“Earth to Clifford,” Tara said, waving a hand in front of my face.

I looked back at the table. “What?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Nothing. Just checking if your soul was still attached.”

“It is.”

“Questionable,” Leonard said.

The rest of lunch passed in the usual blur of jokes, complaints about assignments, and Tara trying to convince us both to go to a party that weekend.

“It’ll be fun,” she said for the fifth time as we walked toward class. “You two are allergic to fun.”

“I’m not allergic,” Leonard said. “I’m selectively immune.”

“You’re both coming,” she insisted. “Clifford, bring Clair. I need at least one socially acceptable person there so nobody asks why I know you.”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’ve got a lot to do.”

“You always have a lot to do.”

“That’s because I’m going somewhere with my life.”

She gasped theatrically. “Rude.”

Clair squeezed my hand before splitting off toward her class. “Text me later.”

“I will.”

She gave me one last perfect smile, then disappeared into the hallway crowd. For a second I stood there watching her go, feeling that quiet pull of affection I’d started to rely on. She was beautiful, she was mine, and somehow I still got a stupid flash of gratitude every time she chose me in public.

Tara groaned. “That look again.”

“What look?”

“The poetry one.”

I shoved her lightly toward class.

By the end of the day, I had two pages of notes, a reminder from my father about university applications, three messages from Clair, and a headache building behind my eyes. I put my glasses back on while I waited outside the school gates, scanning one of my finance prep sheets while students streamed around me in loud clusters.

A shadow fell across the page.

“You actually study for fun?”

I looked up. Tyler Cross stood there with a basketball tucked under one arm.

Up close, he looked different than he did from across a cafeteria or halfway down a hallway. Bigger, obviously. Sharper somehow. There was a faint cut near his eyebrow like it had only just healed, and his expression had that same amused edge from earlier, like the world was always one bad joke away from entertaining him.

“It’s not for fun,” I said.

“Could’ve fooled me.”

I lowered the paper slightly. “Do you always sneak up on people just to insult them?”

He shrugged. “Only the interesting ones.”

Before I could figure out what the hell that meant, Reece called his name from the parking lot. Tyler took a step backward, spinning the basketball once on his fingertips.

“See you around, Hayes.”

Then he was gone, jogging off without waiting for a response. I stared after him for a second too long.

“Clifford!”

I turned and saw Clair crossing the path toward me, and just like that, whatever strange pause had settled over the moment vanished. I smiled, folded up my papers, and reached for her hand when she got close.

The day went on. The week waited. And I had absolutely no idea that my life had already started shifting under my feet.