CHAPTER 9 - WHISPERS

The rumor started small.

Ezra almost didn't catch it at first — just a strange look from a girl at the next locker, a conversation that stopped a beat too fast when he walked past. He told himself he was imagining it. He'd gotten good at imagining the worst over the years; it was practically a survival skill by now.

By second period, he wasn't imagining anything.

"Did you hear?" someone whispered behind him in the hallway. "Apparently somebody wrote Ryland a love letter last semester."

"No way. Who?"

"Nobody knows yet. But people are saying it's real. Like, an actual confession."

Ezra's stomach dropped so fast he had to stop walking for a second, pretend to check something in his bag, just to keep his face from giving anything away.

*It's fine,* he told himself. *Nobody knows. Nobody could possibly know.*

He'd never told a single person. Not Sophie. Not his mother. The letter had been unsigned, folded twice, slipped through the vents of Jace's locker before homeroom on a morning he could still recall in humiliating detail. Jace had laughed about it with his friends for a week and never once suspected who'd written it.

So how was anyone talking about it now?

There was only one answer, and it made his hands go cold.

He pulled out his phone in the bathroom between classes, locked himself in a stall, and typed with shaking thumbs.

**Ezra: Did you tell someone?**

The reply took longer than usual.

**Unknown: About what?**

**Ezra: You know what. The letter. People are talking about it at school. Somebody knows.**

**Unknown: I didn't say a word to anyone. I promise.**

Ezra stared at the screen, willing himself to believe it.

**Ezra: Then how does anyone know it exists?**

**Unknown: I don't know. Maybe it's not even about you. Maybe it's nothing.**

He wanted to believe that so badly it physically hurt.

It wasn't nothing.

By lunch, the whisper had grown legs, spreading table to table the way rumors did at Ashford Academy .... faster than any truth ever managed to travel. Nobody had a name yet. That was the only thing keeping Ezra upright as he sat across from Sophie, pushing food around his tray without eating any of it.

"You've heard it too," Sophie said.

"Everyone's heard it."

"Do you know who wrote it?"

Ezra's fork stilled. "Why would I know?"

Sophie shrugged, oblivious, stealing a fry like always. "I don't know, you just seem weird about it. Weirder than usual anyway."

"Thanks."

"I say that with love." She popped the fry in her mouth. "Honestly if it turns out to be some poor soul who actually likes Ryland, I feel for them. Imagine confessing your feelings and the guy can't even be bothered to figure out who you are."

Ezra's throat went tight. He forced a small laugh that came out thin and unconvincing, and hoped she was too busy complaining about the cafeteria pizza to notice.

Across the room, near the football table, Logan Pierce had his phone out, showing something to the guys around him. Ezra couldn't hear the words, but he could hear the laughter, and every ounce of it felt aimed directly at his chest even though nobody was looking his way. Yet.

Jace sat a few seats down from Logan, quiet, not really part of the conversation. For one dangerous second their eyes met across the cafeteria. Jace looked away first.

Ezra's pulse didn't slow down for the rest of the period.

That night, he barely made it through dinner before excusing himself to his room, phone already in hand before his door was fully closed.

**Ezra: People are still talking about it. It's getting worse.**

**Unknown: I'm sorry. That sounds awful.**

**Ezra: What if someone figures out it was me?**

**Unknown: Would that really be the end of the world?**

**Ezra: Yes. Obviously yes.**

**Unknown: Why?**

Ezra almost threw his phone across the room.

**Ezra: Because he already humiliated me for writing it once without even knowing it was mine. Imagine what happens when he knows.**

There was a long pause. Long enough that Ezra started to type something angrier, something about how none of this was funny, before the reply finally came.

**Unknown: I don't think it would go the way you think it would.**

**Ezra: You don't know that.**

**Unknown: You're right. I don't.**

Ezra pressed the heels of his hands against his eyes, willing the tightness in his chest to loosen. It didn't.

**Ezra: I just want it to stay buried. That's all. I never wanted anyone to know. Especially not him.**

**Unknown: I understand.**

**Ezra: Do you?**

**Unknown: More than you think.**

Something about that answer sat strangely with him, though he couldn't place why. He was too tired, too wrung out from the day, to chase the feeling any further.

**Ezra: I should sleep. I have a paper due tomorrow I haven't even started.**

**Unknown: You should. Get some rest.**

He set the phone down, but it buzzed again almost immediately. One more message, sitting there glowing in the dark of his room.

**Unknown: Whatever happens tomorrow, just know it's not your fault.**

Ezra frowned at the screen, a cold, creeping unease working its way up his spine.

**Ezra: What's supposed to happen tomorrow?**

No reply.

**Ezra: Hello?**

**Ezra: You're scaring me a little.**

Still nothing. He watched the screen for a full minute, then two, his heartbeat loud in his own ears.

Finally, one last message appeared.

**Unknown: Tomorrow everyone will know.**

Ezra sat bolt upright in bed, phone gripped so tightly his knuckles ached.

**Ezra: Know WHAT? Who told you that? WHO ARE YOU?**

The three dots didn't even appear this time.

The message just sat there, unanswered, glowing at him in the dark like something already decided, something already set in motion that no amount of pleading could stop.

Outside his window, the street was quiet. Ordinary. Nothing about the night suggested that by tomorrow, everything Ezra had spent three years hiding would belong to the entire school.

Ezra knew before he even reached the front doors.

He could feel it in the air the way you feel a storm before the first drop of rain ..... the wrongness of too many eyes turning toward him at once, too many phones lifting halfway before their owners caught themselves and looked away.

"Ezra."

Sophie grabbed his arm the second he stepped inside, her face pale.

"What," he said, though some part of him already knew.

"They know," she whispered. "I don't know how, but they know it's you."

The hallway seemed to tilt sideways. Somewhere near the lockers, someone laughed .... sharp, delighted, cruel .... and Ezra's name floated through it like a piece of debris.

"Monroe wrote it?"

"No way. Him?"

"Oh my god, that's actually so sad."

By the time he reached his locker, someone had already taped a piece of paper to it. *Dear Jace,* it read, in looping, mocking handwriting. *You're so dreamy. Please notice me. Love, your secret admirer.*

A crowd had gathered. Logan stood at the center of it, phone raised, grinning like he'd won something.

"There he is," Logan called out. "Hey, lover boy. Got anything else you want to confess?"

Laughter rippled outward, ugly and immediate. Someone attempted an impression of him, breathless and simpering, and it landed hard enough that Ezra felt it in his chest like a physical blow.

He ripped the paper down and kept walking, jaw locked, eyes burning, refusing to let a single tear fall in front of an audience that would only use it against him.

It didn't stop.

By second period, more letters had appeared .... taped to his locker, slipped into his bag, one even left on his desk before he arrived, complete with a crude little heart drawn beside his name. Every hallway held some new humiliation waiting for him. Every laugh sounded like it was aimed directly at his ribs.

He found Jace by the stairwell before lunch, surrounded by teammates, one of them holding up a phone with the photographed letter still glowing on the screen.

"So it was you," someone said, loud enough for half the hallway to hear.

Ezra's whole body went cold.

Jace turned. Their eyes met.

For one terrible second, Ezra watched something shift across Jace's face .... shock, unmistakable, the pieces sliding into place behind his eyes. He looked at Ezra like he was seeing him, actually seeing him, for the first time in three years.

Then he looked away.

He didn't say anything to the boy still holding up the letter. He didn't tell Logan to stop recording. He didn't do a single thing to stop what was happening two feet away from him.

He just stood there.

Silent.

Still.

Ezra had imagined a hundred versions of this moment over the years .... imagined Jace finding out, imagined every possible reaction, from cruelty to mockery to something softer he'd never quite let himself hope for. He had never imagined this. Jace simply standing there, saying nothing at all, while the entire hallway laughed loud enough to drown out whatever might have been going on behind his eyes.

Somehow the silence was worse than anything Logan could have said.

Ezra turned and walked away, faster now, blindly, not caring which direction he went as long as it was away from all of them. He didn't stop until he reached the end of the science wing, empty at this hour, and shoved through the door of the boys' bathroom, locking himself in the furthest stall before his legs gave out.

He sat down on the closed toilet lid because his knees wouldn't hold him anymore.

His chest was heaving. and his eyes full of tears , some airless, clawing thing stuck behind his ribs that wouldn't let him breathe properly. He pressed both hands over his mouth to keep the sound in, because even here, even alone, some part of him was still terrified of being heard, still bracing for someone to laugh.

He thought of Jace's face. That one second of shock, like a door opening.

Then nothing. Then the door closing again, and Jace just standing there while Logan held up the letter and half the hallway laughed like it was the funniest thing they'd ever seen.

*Three years.*

Three years of jokes about his weight, his name, his father, and somehow none of it had gutted him the way this did ... because this wasn't a joke about something he couldn't help. This was the one true thing he'd ever handed anyone, the one honest piece of himself, and they'd turned it into the biggest joke of all.

His hands shook so badly it took him three tries to unlock his phone.

**Ezra: Everyone knows.**

He didn't even finish typing before the tears came, hot and humiliating, dripping onto the screen. He wiped his face with his sleeve hard enough to hurt and kept typing anyway, because it was the only place he had left to put any of it.

**Ezra: They put fake letters all over my locker. They did a voice. They RECORDED it. Logan filmed the whole thing like I'm some joke for everyone to pass around.**

**Ezra: And Jace just stood there. He looked right at me and he didn't say ANYTHING. Three years of him ruining my life and this is the one time I actually needed him to say something and he just stood there like I wasn't even a person.**

His breath hitched so hard it turned into something closer to a sob. He clamped his hand over his mouth again, listening for footsteps outside the stall, terrified someone would hear him falling apart over a boy who couldn't even be bothered to defend him.

**Ezra: I hate him. I hate that I don't actually hate him. I hate that some stupid part of me still wanted him to fix it.**

**Ezra: I can't go back out there. I can't do this for the rest of the day. I don't know what to do.**

The reply, when it came, felt too slow. He stared at the screen through blurred vision, willing the dots to appear.

**Unknown: Ezra, breathe. I'm here.**

**Unknown: What he did today .... that's on him. Not you. You didn't do anything wrong by feeling something. He's the one who couldn't handle it like a person.**

Ezra wiped his face again, chest still heaving, and typed with trembling fingers.

**Ezra: It doesn't feel like that right now. It feels like I'll never get to walk down a hallway in this school again without someone laughing.**

**Unknown: You will. I promise you will. Just not today. Today just get through it. Today just breathe.**

He sat there a long time, knees pulled up to his chest, phone clutched in both hands like it was the only solid thing left in the room, listening to his own ragged breathing echo off the tile until the bell rang again somewhere far away, indifferent to all of it, calling him back to a building full of people who now knew the one thing he'd never wanted anyone to find out..