LOGINFranklin’s POVThe word that came out of my mouth was her name. Just that, flat and stripped of everything else.Vivian stood in the academy hallway with her scarf in her hand and her face fully visible and the expression on it was not guilt exactly… it was something more complicated than that. Something that had been prepared in advance and was now being deployed, the look of a person who had rehearsed what to say when this moment arrived.“Franklin…”“What were you doing in his office?” I said.She straightened. “Someone needed to tell the truth about what’s happening to you.”“What truth.”“That he’s bad for you.” She said it with the particular conviction of someone who has repeated something to themselves so many times that it has become indistinguishable from fact. “He controls you. He isolates you. You’ve changed since you got close to him and not in a good way, Franklin. You’re anxious all the time, you’re secretive, you pull away from everyone who knew you before he came into
Franklin’s POVWe didn’t sleep.Not properly. We sat with the photographs spread on the table between us and worked through every name, every face, every interaction from the past weeks that might attach to something like this. I went through it methodically, the way I approached most problems… start with what you know, eliminate what doesn’t fit, follow what remains. Rydan was quieter than usual, which meant he was thinking harder than usual. The cigarette he lit around two in the morning burned down mostly untouched.By the time the sky outside shifted from black to the grey that preceded dawn, we had nothing solid. Possibilities, maybe. The unknown number. The message on his phone. Whoever had planted the ring, whoever had been outside this building with a camera at an angle that required planning. The threads existed but they didn’t connect into anything we could hold.I pushed the photographs into a pile face down. I didn’t want to look at them anymore.“Stay home tomorrow,” I sa
Franklin’s POVWe arrived at the academy together, which we had stopped pretending was unusual.The morning was the standard grey of this part of the country, cold enough that our breath showed. I was still carrying last night’s quiet satisfaction… the kind that settles in after something difficult resolves itself, after two people find their way back to each other through the mess of it. I wasn’t thinking about the message on his phone. I had decided, somewhere between falling asleep and waking up, to give it space before making it a crisis.That decision lasted until we walked through the gate.The field was populated but wrong. The usual morning noise… equipment dragging, conversations crossing each other, the easy disorder of people warming up… was absent. People were standing in clusters, speaking in lowered voices, with the specific body language of a group that has gathered around something unpleasant.Rydan and I exchanged a look.Joel was nearest to us and he turned when he h
Rydan’s POVI went to the door first.The hallway was empty, the lift at the far end just closing, the stairwell door still slightly trembling on its hinges. I stood there for a moment with the unknown number’s message still open on my phone and made myself breathe through the thing that wanted to move fast and break something.Then I went back inside, got my jacket, and left.I called the only person I trusted with anything logistical… a contact I had maintained for decades, someone who knew how to find people without asking why. I gave him Vivian’s name and the approximate area and told him I needed an address in under ten minutes. He had it to me in seven.The building was a twenty-minute walk across the quieter part of the city, a mid-rise with a broken intercom that let me in without announcement. I took the stairs to the third floor and knocked.She opened the door in a robe, hair down, expression shifting through surprise and then something more composed when she saw it was me.
Frankin’s POVI don’t know what I expected when I opened the door, but it wasn’t that.Vivian stood in the hallway looking like she had put thought into appearing casual… the snacks, the balloon, the particular smile she used when she wanted to seem like something was less deliberate than it was. I stared at her for a full second and felt the evening rearrange itself around me.“You’re not surprised?” she said, reading my face.I wasn’t, not entirely, but surprise wasn’t the right word for what I was feeling. Something closer to the specific exhaustion of a situation that had been building toward this moment without your permission.“Come in,” I said.She stepped inside and her eyes moved immediately around the room, doing the thing eyes do when they’re cataloguing… the blanket on the sofa, the two cups on the table, the television still on low. Then they found Rydan, standing in the middle of the room with the box in his hand and an expression I had never seen on him before.It was t
Rydan’s POVI put the phone back exactly where it had been.Same angle, same position on the cushion, screen facing up. I folded my hands in my lap and looked at the television and watched nothing on it. The water was still running in the bathroom. Steam had drifted faintly under the door gap into the hallway.I had read the message once. That was enough.*I hope you haven’t told him yet.*Told him what. That was the question sitting in the middle of everything, quiet and patient, waiting for an answer I didn’t have. Whatever it referred to… whatever Vivian was holding that Franklin either knew or didn’t know… it was something she and Rydan were apparently both supposed to be aware of. Except I wasn’t. Which meant the conversation that message belonged to had never included me.Franklin came out of the bathroom twenty minutes later, hair damp, looking more like himself than he had all morning. He picked up his phone from the sofa without glancing at the screen, slid it into his pocket
Karl’s POVI was halfway to my next class when my phone buzzed with a text from Principal Morrison.‘Morrison: Come to my office now’I stared at the message, irritation flaring. What now? I’d been careful, at least as discreet as I could be while refusing to stay away from Calen.By the time I rea
Calen’s POVMadison raised her hand to hit me again, and something inside me snapped.My hand shot out and caught her wrist mid-air.The surprise on her face was almost comical. But I didn’t let go. I squeezed, harder than I’d ever gripped anything in my life, feeling the bones shift under my finge
Calen’s POVI lay in bed that night, staring at the ceiling, trying to make sense of what I was feeling.My emotions toward Karl were growing deeply. Becoming something I couldn’t ignore or explain away as just physical attraction or fear-driven compliance.It didn’t make sense. I should hate him.
Calen’s POVI unfolded the paper slowly, aware of Jeff leaning over my shoulder to read it.A phone number was written across the top in neat handwriting. Below it, a simple message:‘Text me. We need to talk.’No name or explanation. Just a number and a cryptic instruction.“Is that his number?” J







