INICIAR SESIÓNBy Tuesday morning, Harper had discovered there was no ceiling to what people could invent when they were bored enough. The photo of her leaving Luca’s house had spread overnight, and by the time she stepped into Westbrook, it felt like half the school had already decided she’d spent the night there. No one asked her outright. They didn’t need to. They just looked.Whispers followed her down the hallway like static.A group of girls near the entrance went quiet the second she passed. Two boys from Luca’s football team exchanged a glance and laughed under their breath. Someone behind her said, “That’s her,” like she was something new to observe instead of a girl who still had a chemistry quiz second period.Harper kept her gaze forward and walked faster.Mia caught up with her near the stairs, breathless like she’d been waiting for the right moment.“Please tell me you’ve seen what people are saying.”“I’ve seen enough.”“There’s a whole post about it.”“I don’t want to know.”“It says
By the time Harper got home, she had convinced herself she wasn’t going to check the gossip account again. She lasted eleven minutes. Then her phone buzzed on the kitchen counter, and she reached for it before she could stop herself. The photograph of Noah outside school was still there, but now hundreds of comments sat underneath it. Some people were defending him. Others were making jokes. A few had already turned the whole thing into a competition between Noah and Luca, as if Harper were a trophy sitting somewhere in the middle waiting to be claimed. She hated that part most. Nobody seemed interested in what she wanted. Her name kept appearing beside words she hadn’t said and stories she hadn’t told, and every time she tried to explain herself, it only gave people another sentence to twist.She locked the phone and dropped it on the counter. “I’m done.”“Done with what?”Harper looked up. Her mother stood in the kitchen doorway with a grocery bag in one hand. Grace Bennett took one
By Monday morning, Harper had learnt there was a particular kind of humiliation reserved for people who thought they had finally escaped a bad relationship. You could change your relationship status, stop answering calls, refuse to look at someone in the hallway, and still somehow end up surrounded by reminders that they weren’t done with you.Noah had apparently decided Harper’s refusal to take him back was a temporary inconvenience rather than a final answer, because before first period even started, three different people had already asked her if she was “really serious” about Luca. The fourth didn’t bother asking at all. She walked past Harper’s locker with her phone raised, showed the screen to her friend, and both girls glanced at Harper before bursting into laughter.Harper shut her locker a little harder than necessary.“Fantastic.” She turned to Mia, who was leaning against the locker beside hers. “What now?”Mia lowered her phone. “There’s a new gossip account.”Harper groan
Harper had lost track of how long she'd been sitting on the curb. Long enough, her legs had started to go numb underneath her. She'd given up checking her phone a while back, mostly because she didn't know what she wanted to see on it, Luca's name or nobody's name at all.The party sounded far away from out here. Bass through a wall, laughter in pieces, somebody yelling something every couple of minutes that never quite made it through clean.She'd already cried, which bugged her more than whatever had made her cry in the first place. Fiona hadn't called her poor. Hadn't called her plain, or boring, or any of the words that would've at least given Harper something to be angry about. She'd smiled through the entire thing, actually, and somehow that was worse."Talking to yourself now?"She about jumped out of her skin. "Luca."He had her jacket, the one with the zipper pull that had been broken for a year because she kept forgetting to fix it."You left this inside.""Didn't notice.""
Harper should've stayed home.She reached that conclusion halfway through watching two girls argue over whose designer heels had been copied.Apparently, wearing the same pair of shoes to different parties counted as a personal attack.She sipped her lemonade to hide a smile.Maybe she really didn't belong here."Harper."She looked up.Luca was walking backward through the crowd, pointing at himself before pointing toward a cluster of football players by the pool.Give me two minutes.She waved him away.He looked doubtful.She nodded again."I'm fine."He couldn't hear her over the music, but he read her lips.He held up two fingers.Then three.Like he was bargaining for extra time.She laughed and made a shooing motion.He finally turned around.Someone immediately threw an arm over his shoulders.Another handed him a drink.Within seconds he'd disappeared into the crowd again.Harper smiled to herself.It wasn't that people loved football.They loved Luca.There was a difference.
The first five minutes weren't bad, actually. It was the ten after that reminded Harper exactly why she'd spent most of high school skipping parties like this one.Nobody told her to leave and nobody laughed in her face, but people looked at her a certain way, starting at her shoes and working up to a smile that never quite made it to their eyes. She drifted toward the drinks table hoping to disappear into the crowd for a minute. No luck."Harper, right?"She turned around. A blonde girl she half recognized from student council was smiling at her, seemingly for real. "I'm Mia.""Hi.""I've actually wanted to meet you." Mia handed her a bottle of water. "You're the one who got a perfect score on the state chem exam."Harper blinked. "You know about that?""My brother's in your class."Something in Harper's chest eased off a notch, the first time all night. "Congrats, by the way," Mia said. "That's genuinely impressive.""Thanks.""I don't know how you did it. I nearly failed algebra ou







