Decades of Bad luck

Let the record show that I checked my phone four times before leaving the house.

Not for the school calendar. Not for the Evergreen High student portal I'd been given login details for and had absolutely not set up yet. No — I checked it for Knox's good morning text, which arrived at 7:02 like clockwork (Ready for the yellow dress, Kane), and for the weather app, which said twenty-three degrees and sunny, which felt personally offensive.

The point is: I had four opportunities to discover that today was Decades Day at Evergreen High, the school's annual spirit week kickoff where every grade was assigned a different era and dressed accordingly. Seniors got the seventies. I know this now. I did not know it then.

I walked into that building in my yellow dress, knee-high boots, and a little gold necklace, feeling like the main character of my own comeback story.

I was the main character, all right.

Just apparently of the wrong decade.

The east corridor hit me first — a wall of color and polyester and very committed hair. Bell bottoms. Platform shoes. Feathered hair that someone had clearly been planning since last Tuesday. A boy in a full rust-colored leisure suit walked past me eating a granola bar with complete dignity. A group of girls had gone full Mamma Mia, sequins and all, at eight in the morning.

I stopped walking.

A freshman bumped into me from behind. "Sorry — oh." She looked at my dress. Then at my boots. Then back up at my face with the particular pity of someone who has never experienced secondhand embarrassment in their life and is experiencing it now for the first time. "Are you… not doing Decades Day?"

"I'm doing my own decade," I said. "It's called now."

She nodded very seriously and walked away, fringe vest swaying.

I pulled out my phone.

Me: knox. Small question. Completely casual. Is today some kind of themed dress-up event that everyone in the entire school knows about except me?

The reply came in eleven seconds.

Knox: .....Decades Day.

Knox: Seniors are seventies.

Knox: Are you not—

Knox: Oh no.

Me: I'm in the yellow dress.

Knox: The devastating one??

Me: THE DEVASTATING ONE.

Knox: Avery.

Me: Don't.

Knox: I'm not saying anything.

Me: You're thinking something.

Knox: I'm thinking you look incredible and also this is extremely funny and I'm sorry on both counts.

I shoved my phone into my bag and walked to AP English Lit with my chin up, which was the only available option. The hallway parted around me the way hallways part around people who are visibly having a morning — not unkindly, just with the wide-eyed awareness of students who recognized a situation developing in real time.

Finn was already in his seat when I walked in. He'd gone full seventies — wide-collared shirt, slightly flared jeans, hair pushed back. He looked up, opened his mouth, and then did something genuinely kind: he didn't laugh. He just smiled, slow and warm, and said, "Yellow's a good color on you."

"Don't," I said, dropping into my seat.

"I mean it."

"Finn."

"You look like sunshine in a room full of disco balls. Objectively, you win."

I buried my face in my arms on the desk. He laughed then — soft, not mean — and slid something across the surface. A hair tie with a little daisy on it, the kind sold in three-packs at the pharmacy. "Found it in my bag. Very seventies adjacent. Consider it a costume accessory."

I lifted my head, looked at it, and felt something loosen in my chest. I pulled my hair up into a high ponytail with it. "Better?"

"Perfect," he said simply.

Knox arrived forty seconds before the bell, slid into his seat behind me, and leaned forward immediately. "For what it's worth," he murmured, close enough that I could feel the words more than hear them, "you are genuinely the best-dressed person in this building."

"I'm wearing a sundress in twenty-three degree weather."

"Iconic. Very ahead of your time." He tapped the back of my chair once. "Also I texted the group chat to tell them you were doing Modern Era as a power move. You're welcome."

I turned around slowly. "You did not."

He held up his phone. The group chat — forty-seven members, including my father, which I had somehow not fully processed until this moment — showed Knox's message from six minutes ago: New girl is doing Modern Era. Respect the vision.

Below it, seventeen laughing emojis and one from my dad that just said: That's my kid.

I faced forward before Knox could see me smile about it.

The day proceeded with the specific energy of someone trying very hard to be invisible while wearing yellow. Third period, I got three compliments from people who thought I was being ironically cool, which I accepted graciously. Fourth period, a junior asked if I was making a statement about the commercialization of nostalgia, and I said yes because it was easier than the truth. By lunch I had almost convinced myself I'd done this on purpose.

And then Riley happened.

She was holding court at the center table with her squad, all of them flawless in coordinated seventies looks — matching earth tones, hoop earrings, the kind of effortless group costume that required a planning document. She clocked me the second I walked through the cafeteria doors. That smile. That particular, precise smile.

"Oh, Avery." She said it carrying, pitched just loud enough for the surrounding tables to catch. "Did nobody tell you about Decades Day?" She pressed a hand to her chest, performing concern for an audience. "I would have texted you, but — well. I guess you're still figuring out how things work here."

The table laughed. Not everyone — a couple of people looked at their trays — but enough.

Last time I'd come up with *yep.* Today I had nothing at all, just the heat climbing up my neck and the acute, terrible awareness of every person watching to see what the new girl did next.

"She knew."

Knox's voice, from directly behind me.

I turned. He was there — tray in hand, jersey, easy posture, the kind of calm that fills a room — and he was looking at Riley with an expression I hadn't seen on him before. Not angry. Just done. Flat and final and carrying the full weight of every chant this town had ever directed at him.

"She's doing Modern Era," he said. "It was her idea. I texted about it this morning." He glanced around the surrounding tables with the unhurried confidence of someone who had never once needed a room to like him but always had it anyway. "Thought it was the best call of Spirit Week, personally."

Silence.

Then someone at the table next to Riley's said, "Actually that's kind of sick."

Then someone else: "Wait, that's actually a flex."

Riley's smile stayed on but the wattage dropped. Her eyes cut to me — sharp, recalibrating — and I saw it: the exact moment she decided this wasn't worth it today. She turned back to her squad, flipping her hair, and the moment dissolved.

Knox stepped up beside me, tray balanced, completely unbothered. "Hungry?"

"Starving," I managed.

"Good." He nodded toward a table by the window where Finn was already sitting, waving us over with a breadstick. "Come on. Finn saved seats."

We walked across the cafeteria together, and I was extremely aware of how many people watched us do it — the team captain and the new girl in the yellow dress, cutting through Decades Day like they owned the room.

I sat down. Finn pushed a chocolate milk toward me without being asked, because apparently that was just who Finn Henderson was. Knox dropped into the seat on my other side and stole one of my fries before his tray even touched the table.

"You didn't have to do that," I said quietly, not looking at him.

"I know," Knox said.

"Riley's going to make my life difficult now."

"Riley was going to do that anyway." He shrugged, stealing another fry. "At least now she knows you've got people."

I looked at him then. He was already looking back, blue eyes steady, a small smile tucked into the corner of his mouth.

*You've got people.*

Finn was telling some story about his leisure suit's zipper getting stuck in third period, gesturing wildly with the breadstick, and the table was warm and loud and nothing like San Diego and nothing like what I'd expected.

I reached over and took one of Knox's fries without asking.

He grinned. Didn't say a word.

Outside, Minnesota was twenty-three degrees and relentless.

Inside, in a yellow dress with a daisy hair tie and stolen fries—

I felt, for the first time, like maybe I lived here.