Chapter one: The Offer

LENA

"Be my girlfriend."

I stopped the bow mid-stroke. Landon Cross stood in the doorway of practice room four. He held a folder in one hand. He crossed the room and set it on my music stand.

I looked at the folder, then at him. "Get out."

"Read it first." He didn't move from the stand.

I set my cello against my knee. The folder held two pages, stapled once. My name typed at the top. His name typed below it.

I read the first line. Six months of fake dating. I read the second. Fifteen thousand dollars.

"You have forty-seven dollars in your checking account." His voice stayed even. "Your brother needs a second surgery. Eighteen thousand after insurance. The deposit closes Thursday."

My hands went still on the page. Nobody outside my family knew those numbers.

"How do you know that."

"It doesn't matter how I know it." His eyes stayed on me, not the door. "It matters what you do with it."

I looked down at the contract again. No real feelings. This is a transaction. I read that line twice.

I thought of my grandfather's kitchen. The window always cracked open. His hand guiding mine on the bow. Sunday mornings, always Bach. He used to say a promise only counted once it was written down. I wondered what he would have said about this one.

I set the folder on the stand. "No."

He didn't flinch. "Fifteen thousand."

I kept my face still. I counted instead of answering. Four strings. Four pegs. Rosin dust on the floor by my shoe.

"Leave."

He picked the folder back up. He didn't argue. He walked out and shut the door behind him, quiet, like he'd expected exactly this.

I sat there for a long minute. The hallway noise faded down to nothing. My phone sat next to my sheet music on the stand. I picked it up before I let myself think it through.

Leo's face came up on my screen. A photo from Christmas. His gap-toothed grin, still there from before the first surgery. The deposit closed Thursday. My mother had been writing numbers on an envelope. Every night that week. I had already counted them myself. The number never changed.

I typed one line. I want the contract.

I sent it before I could talk myself out of it.

His reply came in forty seconds. Library. Tomorrow. Eight AM.

I set the phone face down on the stand. My hands weren't shaking yet. That felt like a matter of time, not a fact.

I packed up slowly. The case latches clicked one at a time under my fingers. I looped the strap over my shoulder. I pushed through the practice room door into the hallway.

Priya was waiting by the lockers. Arms crossed, the way she always stood on Thursdays. She took one look at my face. "What happened."

"Nothing." I kept walking.

She fell into step beside me anyway. "You have your counting face on."

I didn't answer that. I turned down the east stairwell instead of the main hall. The long way. It gave me two extra minutes before I had to say anything out loud.

Leo needed the surgery. My mother needed sleep she hadn't gotten since August. I needed fifteen thousand dollars I didn't have. The only person offering it had stood in my practice room. He'd named my brother's number like he'd memorized it off a whiteboard.

I thought about Landon Cross. He had never spoken to me before today. Not once, not in three years at this school. I played cello in a corner of the arts wing nobody visited. He threw footballs on a field everyone watched. Our paths didn't cross by accident.

Someone had given him that number. Or he'd gone looking for it himself. Either way, somebody had been paying attention to my family. Longer than one afternoon, from the sound of it.

My phone buzzed again in my pocket. Not him this time. My mother, a single line. Leo asking for you, call when you can.

I called from the bus stop. The phone went cold against my ear. The bench sat damp under me from last night's rain.

Leo picked up on the second ring. Already talking before I got a word out. Some joke about the hospital gown they'd make him wear. I let his voice fill in the parts of me that had gone quiet.

"You okay?" His voice caught on the silence I'd left.

"I'm okay." I watched a bus pull away from the far corner. "I might have a plan for Thursday."

"What kind of plan?"

I looked down at my own hand. A faint mark where I'd pressed my thumbnail into my palm without noticing. "The kind I don't want to explain yet."

He let it go. That was Leo's way when he decided I needed room. We talked about his video game for another minute. Then about my Bach prelude. Then I hung up. The bus schedule blurred in front of me.

Eight AM tomorrow. The library. Two signatures.

Landon Cross had never once spoken to me before today. He had walked into my practice room already knowing my numbers. Knowing exactly which ones would make me say yes. I didn't know yet what he was hiding behind that even voice. I only knew it was something.