• Chapter 16

  • The crushing workload of senior year AP classes hit like a freight train.

  • Sid and I both attacked it with a kind of obsessive focus. We discovered we were intellectual kindred spirits—both genuinely energized by learning rather than exhausted by it.

  • We devoured new concepts, already thinking ahead to college coursework.

  • We fell into an easy rhythm of swapping notes, talking through difficult concepts, and challenging each other with extra problems neither teacher had assigned.

  • Days blurred together in a productive bubble that felt safely distant from my old life.

  • After midterms, during evening study hall, I heard the chair beside me scrape against the floor.

  • Without looking up from my calculus proofs, I slid over a container of sliced apples and

  • strawberries.

  • “My mom’s on a health kick again. She sent enough for both of us, Sid.”

  • “How much longer are you planning to keep up this bullshit, Phoebe?” My head snapped up.

  • Zephyr was lounging in Sid’s seat.

  • He had positioned himself to block me into the corner, one arm stretched across the back of my

  • chair.

  • “So you ghosted me, switched to AP without saying a word, and now you’re playing house with this preppy little bitch to make me jealous? Who the fuck said you could do that?”

  • end up at the same college, you need to drop this loser immediately. I’m not playing around.”

  • classroom went deadly quiet.

  • in their textbooks while obviously straining to

  • Chapter 16

  • contained zero humor, meeting his eyes

  • Sid’s seat.”

  • narrowed

  • decide where

  • he grabbed my

  • roughness.

  • his physical advantage obvious.

  • powerlessness I’d felt in the bathroom

  • mix of

  • “Excuse me.”

  • taps on

  • you’re in

  • posture, head slightly tilted as he regarded Zephyr

  • AP Physics

  • to make his

  • with rage, launching to his feet to grab Sid’s collar. “Say that

  • to the

  • twenty seconds. He’s very strict

  • face darkened as he spat out a string of

  • moment Sid reclaimed his seat, he turned to me,

  • 42

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