The Truth Behind the Door

The call cut out before Harper could say anything else. She sat there staring at the black screen for a second, replaying the sound that had come through right before the line died, that laugh, low and unmistakably a girl's laugh. She told herself it could've been the TV. A hallway. Anyone walking past him. But she'd been telling herself things all night, and every single one of them had been wrong.

She had seen him go off with someone else earlier and decided not to think about it. She'd found the pile of letters he never mentioned and decided it meant nothing. She'd agreed to meet him in a place as strange as the locker room without asking why because at that point she'd stopped asking questions altogether. That was then. If he had anything to say, it could be said in looking at her face.

She headed toward the music wing, where a door was ajar just enough to let voices spill into the hallway. She was not near enough when a voice reached her and stopped her dead in her tracks.

"Come on, Sasha."

Noah.

She got near enough to see without being seen. Sasha was perched on top of a practice table, twirling a piece of hair around one finger, and Noah was standing between her knees, close in a way that had nothing to do with tutoring.

"What about your little tutor?" Sasha was saying, half laughing already.

“Harper? “Cute isn’t really the word for her” he sher," and Sasha pushed for more, asked whyaskingven bothered dating her if that was all she was to him, and he said he’d never actually called it dating. Harper thought she’d heard that part wrong. He said she thinks it’s real. That was the funny part of the story.” She pretty much does my homework for me. Just compliment her a little, ask her for help with calculus, and you got yourself a semester.

Sasha laughed at that, called her easy, and Harper felt something give way in her chest, some structure she hadn't realised she'd built out of every late night he'd texted her, every time he'd said she was smart in a way that made her feel like maybe smart was enough. None of it had cost him anything. It had all been a system.

"What happens when she figures it out?" Sasha asked.

He shrugged like the question barely interested him. "I'll think of something. Not like she's hard to replace."

Sasha wrapped her arms around his neck and told him he was terrible, and he agreed, and then he kissed her.

The envelope slid out of Harper's fingers before she'd decided to drop it. It hit the floor with a sound too small to explain how loud it felt. Noah's head turned toward it.

His face changed the second he saw her standing there. "...Harper."

Sasha looked over and said, "Oh," and nobody moved for what felt like a long time. Harper bent down for the envelope with hands that wouldn't quite stay steady, and when she finally spoke, it came out as a short, flat laugh.

"So this is the date."

"I can explain," Noah said, stepping toward her.

"No."

"I know how it looks."

"It looks like exactly what it is."

She folded the letter in half without really meaning to, just something to do with her hands. "I spent weeks wondering why you'd notice me at all. I actually thought maybe I was finally enough."

He didn't have anything ready for that. "I don't want to hurt you," he said, which was somehow the worst thing he could've said.

"You should've thought of that before you kissed someone else in front of me."

Sasha groaned, bored of the whole scene already. "Can we stop pretending this was some fairy tale? He likes popular girls. You help people with their homework. Different league, honestly, I thought you understood that." Her eyes dragged over Harper's sweater and her glasses. "You dress like you work in the library. The glasses are giving science fair, not cute."

Noah laughed under his breath at that, quiet enough that he probably thought she wouldn't hear it. She heard it. It landed worse than anything Sasha had said.

"You told me you liked that I wasn't fake," Harper said, looking only at him now. "That I didn't need to change for you."

"You don't."

"But you needed me hidden."

He looked away. And that told her all she needed to know. He'd never taken her hand in public. Never brought her around his friends. Never walked next to her in a crowded hallway without some excuse ready. She understood the real excuse now. "She was your homework girlfriend," Sasha said, delighted with herself. "I'm the fun one." "Excuse me?" "You're unbelievable." "I just think people should be a little more open-minded about this stuff." 

She laughed again, and this time there was nothing sad in it, just disbelief with nowhere to go. "You lied to me." "I simplified things."

"You used me."

"You got to spend time with me," he said and shrugged, as if that had ever been the trade she agreed to.

She turned to go, and his hand closed around her wrist. "Don't be dramatic about this."

"Let go."

"You'll calm down. You'll come around."

"No," she said, and meant it in a way that surprised even her.

Sasha rolled her eyes at the whole thing. "Oh, please. No offence, but where exactly do you think you're going to go? You're smart, you're reliable, and sure. But nobody dreams about the girl who spends lunch with her biology notes. You should've just stayed grateful for what you had."

Harper's face burnt, and Noah said nothing to stop any of it. Not one word in her defence.

She wrenched her arm loose. "I'm done."

He grabbed it again, tighter this time. "We are not finished."

Something in her broke loose. "Don't touch me," she said, and shoved him hard enough that he stumbled into the table behind him, and whatever had been almost playful in his face turned into something uglier.

"So that's how this goes," he said, grabbing both wrists now. "You think somebody better's out there waiting? No guy lines up for the boring girl. You should've appreciated what you had."

That was when a voice came from the doorway, flat and certain.

"I told you."

Luca stood there, one shoulder against the frame, his bag still hanging off one hand. His eyes found Harper first, and something shifted in them before they moved to Noah and went cold, controlled, and quieter than she'd ever seen him.

"I told you he'd hurt you," he said.

She hadn't even noticed she was crying until she felt it on her face. Luca looked at Noah one more time, jaw tight, and asked her, low enough that it barely carried:

"Do you want me to break his nose?"