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Chapter Eighteen: The Lap Rule (New and Concerning)

Lee Grego
last update Zuletzt aktualisiert: 10.01.2026 15:06:36

By Thursday morning, the blurry theater photo had achieved what all blurry photos dream of achieving:

It became evidence. Not good evidence. Not “clear, undeniable proof.”

More like the kind of evidence people use when they want drama badly enough to invent details between pixels.

At Westbridge High, it was all anyone talked about because nothing bonds teenagers like a mystery they can ruin with opinions.

I heard it before I even reached my locker.

“that’s totally Jace”

“and the girl’s, like, his girlfriend”

“no, it’s Plant Girl”

“I swear I’ve seen that bag at school”

I tightened my grip on my own bag strap and kept walking like I didn’t have a nervous system.

Bright side: the photo was still blurry.

Downside: teenagers don’t need clarity. They need a vibe.

Sienna found me by my locker with her phone already out and a look that said she’d been up since dawn doing emotional cardio.

“Okay,” she said without preamble, “I’m going to show you something and you’re not allowed t
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  • OFFSTAGE, on my Mind   Epilogue: The Side of the Light No One Films

    Backstage smelled like heat and hairspray and fresh gaffer tape. It wasn’t glamorous up close, not the way people imagine when they think tour. It was cables coiled in neat loops, laminated lanyards slapped against chests as people jogged past, and voices in headsets saying things like, “Fifteen to doors,” as if time was something you could hold in your hand and squeeze. My lanyard sat heavy against my sternum: CREW — RUNNER/ASSIST. The first night they handed it to me, I kept touching it like it might vanish. Like someone would tap my shoulder and say, Sorry, we meant someone else. But nobody did. Because I wasn’t someone else. I was here on purpose. “Quinn!” Marisol, stage manager, terrifying in the most competent way, called from the production table. She had a clipboard, a headset, and the kind of calm that only comes from having survived a hundred disasters and learned none of them were worth panicking over. I jogged over. “Yep.” She didn’t look up. “We’re doing the alte

  • OFFSTAGE, on my Mind   Chapter Thirty-Four: The Rest of the Year, on Purpose

    That was pretty much how the rest of senior year went. Not dramatic. Not cinematic. Just… intentional. I went to school. I did my assignments. I kept my head down when people tried to turn the hallway into a runway. I stopped reacting to the occasional phone pointed in my direction like it was a weapon. The media didn’t disappear completely, but it got bored when I refused to feed it. Turns out, the fastest way to starve a headline is to keep living like a person. I didn’t start dressing differently. I didn’t suddenly become glossy or curated. I wore what I always wore. I showed up to class with frizzy hair on rainy days and pen marks on my hand from forgetting the cap was loose again. If people wanted “Plant Girl” to become some kind of aesthetic symbol, they were going to be disappointed. I was still just Quinn Parker, trying to graduate, trying to breathe, trying to keep my world mine. Somewhere in the middle of all that, I found something that helped: a hobby that wasn’t abou

  • OFFSTAGE, on my Mind   Chapter Thirty-Three: The Rumor Mill and the Truth

    Jace called ten minutes after I sent the message. Not a text. Not a casual, what’s up? A call, like the words mattered enough that he needed my face, my tone, proof that I was still here and still his. I answered from my bed with the lamp on low and my textbooks spread open like props I wasn’t using. His screen popped up and there he was, hair damp, hoodie on, eyes too bright in that way that meant his thoughts were already sprinting ahead of him. “Hey,” I said gently. He didn’t say hey back. “Quinn,” he blurted, breath quick. “What did you see? What happened? Are you.” He stopped, like he realized he’d asked the last question wrong, then tried again. “Are you okay?” I watched him for a second, letting myself feel the tenderness under the panic. He looked like someone bracing for impact. “I’m okay,” I said. “I’m just… not loving what I saw.” His jaw clenched. “Tell me.” I inhaled slowly, forcing my voice to stay steady even though my chest still felt sore from earlier. “The

  • OFFSTAGE, on my Mind   Chapter Thirty-Two: When the World Gets Bored

    The attention didn’t end the way it started. It didn’t explode and vanish. It thinned. Like fog that clung too long to the grass and then, day by day, lifted, until you could almost convince yourself it hadn’t been there at all. The first week after Blaire’s post, the cameras still hovered at the edges of my life. Outside school, across the street from my house, sometimes even parked too long at the grocery store like someone was waiting for me to do something worth recording. But I didn’t. I kept wearing the same hoodies. I kept tying my hair up the same way when I had a quiz. I kept walking like a person who belonged in her own neighbourhood, because I did. And slowly, painfully slowly, the people hunting for a story realized I was terrible at being one. By the second month, the “reporters” were mostly gone. Not entirely, every so often a phone would still pop up at the worst moment, someone trying to catch me off guard but the big energy had drained out of it. The crowd h

  • OFFSTAGE, on my Mind   Chapter Thirty-One: Learning to Live With the Echo

    The next morning, the street looked normal again. Same mail truck. Same sprinklers ticking in lazy arcs across lawns. Same neighbour walking their dog like my front yard hadn’t been a set the day before. It would’ve been comforting if my phone hadn’t ruined it every time it lit up. I woke up to a quiet house and a loud screen, notifications stacked like a tower I didn’t remember building. Mom had taken my socials off public. Dad had shown me how to filter message requests. I’d blocked more accounts in twenty four hours than I’d blocked in my entire life. And still, the noise found ways to slip through the cracks. I didn’t open most of it. I learned fast that curiosity came with teeth. Instead, I got dressed in the same thing I always wore when I didn’t feel like thinking: soft hoodie, old jeans, my most boring sneakers. No “cute outfit.” No armour disguised as style. No sudden attempt to look like someone who belonged on a screen. If people were going to stare, they could stare

  • OFFSTAGE, on my Mind   Chapter Thirty: Panicking Calls

    For the rest of the evening, the house stayed tense in that way it does after something dangerous passes close. Dad checked the locks twice. Mom kept her phone nearby, volume on. I tried to do homework and ended up staring at the same paragraph for ten minutes without absorbing a single word. Around seven, Dad turned on the TV, not to relax, but like he was checking the perimeter of the world. The local news was on. I was halfway down the hallway when I heard my own name. “…a developing story out of Westbridge, where Westbridge High student Quinn Parker.” My feet stopped moving. My stomach dropped. Mom’s eyes snapped to the screen. Dad’s jaw tightened like he was physically restraining himself from throwing the remote. They played footage from someone’s phone, grainy but unmistakable. Me on my porch. Me facing a semicircle of microphones. Me saying, 'Yes. Jace and I are dating.' They cut it in a neat little clip. No context. No fear. No shaking hands. Just the sentence, cle

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