Rio's POV

  The morning was too bright for the way I felt.

  That kind of brightness that has no consideration for you.

  That arrives regardless and fills everything up and expects you to meet it.

  The sky a clean, open blue, the sun doing its best, the street warm and ordinary under our feet.

  A perfectly decent morning that had no idea what it was asking of me just by existing.

  Mia walked beside me.

  Quietly. That was the first thing I noticed.

  She was usually the one filling the silences, turning them into something else before they could settle. Today she was letting them sit.

  Her posture was smaller than usual, her eyes somewhere near her feet, her whole body doing the subtle work of someone trying to take up less space than they normally would.

  I watched her for half a block before I said anything.

  "You know you can look at me."

  Her head came up fast. The red arrived in her face immediately, spreading from her neck upward, the kind of blush that doesn't ask permission.

  "I wasn't— I wasn't avoiding. I just." She gestured vaguely at the air in front of her. "You know."

  "I know." I kept my voice easy. Light. The specific lightness of someone carrying something heavy and choosing not to show it. "Whatever happened between us, it was okay. I mean it. And I was the one who approached you."

  She looked at me sideways. Careful. Still deciding whether to believe it.

  I let a beat pass.

  "But you should know I don't do that for other girls."

  I closed the distance between our faces slightly as I said it. Just enough.

  She pulled back immediately, caught off guard, the red deepening.

  There.

  Something loosened in my chest. Not much. But something.

  "Now." I straightened up. "We're already te. Let's go."

  "Okay, okay." She pushed my back, the force of it lighter than she probably intended. "I wasn't the one making us te."

  "Don't hurt me, Mia. There are ws, you know. Basic courtesy."

  "I can do whatever I want with my man," she said, too quickly, and then immediately looked like she wished she hadn't. "I mean—"

  "As if."

  "Ha ha."

  "Let's go."

  We started walking again. The city moved around us, indifferent and continuous, and for a few minutes I let myself just be in it. The sound of her voice. The warmth of the morning. The ordinary rhythm of two people walking somewhere together.

  It takes my mind off things.

  The thought arrived quietly.

  That's what she does. Takes up enough space in a moment that the other things don't fit.

  I didn't examine whether that was fair to her. I just let it be true and kept walking.

  Twenty minutes Later

  The school gate appeared at the end of the street, the morning crowd thinning as the te students hurried through.

  "We're almost there," I said. My shirt was sticking to my back slightly. The brightness of the morning had become heat.

  "Yes." She was quiet for a moment. Then: "Rio."

  "What?"

  "Have you...." A small pause. "Have you...ummm.. talked to them about coming to my house?"

  The question was innocent. She meant it innocently. The words themselves were simple and ordinary and asked for nothing complicated.

  But the thing they nded on inside me was not simple.

  Dark clouds moved across my mind. Behind my eyes.

  The memory of st night pressing forward from wherever I had managed to push it, finding this crack in the surface and coming through it.

  How do I tell her?

  Should I tell her?

  What would I even say?

  How do I expin what happened in a dark room without turning this morning into something neither of us can walk away from easily?

  "I haven't mentioned it yet." I kept my voice level. Practiced.

  "Don't worry. You've met my mom. You know how she feels about you."

  "Oh, no rush." Her voice softened. The concern in it was real, not performed. I could always tell the difference.

  "Take your time. It doesn't have to be soon. It can be whenever you're ready."

  Thank you, Mia.

  The words formed and stayed internal.

  I didn't know how to say them in a way that conveyed what I actually meant.

  We pushed through the gate at the st possible minute, our feet finding a faster rhythm, the hope of not standing outside the cssroom door for an entire period motivating us in a way ordinary punctuality never had.

  We almost made it.

  "What is she doing here with you?"

  My body stiffened.

  Not at the voice itself. At what the voice did to me. The way it moved through me, finding the specific pce where st night lived, pressing on it.

  Not now. Please not now.

  I turned around.

  Sia stood a few feet behind us.

  Her uniform neat, her posture familiar, her face wearing an expression I had no good word for.

  Not anger exactly. Something underneath anger.

  Something that had been building longer than this moment and was using this moment as a surface.

  "Sia." My voice came out careful. "Hey."

  "I asked what she's doing here with you."

  "I mean." The words dissolved before they became sentences.

  My mouth was doing nothing useful. I was aware of Mia beside me and Sia in front of me and the space between them that I was occupying, and all I could think was that I did not have the resources for this today.

  That st night had taken everything I had and I had not yet repced any of it.

  "Hey." Mia's voice came from beside me.

  Quiet but clear. "What's the matter? It's not like we went somewhere. He was just walking to school with me because you weren't there. The roads can be unsafe for him."

  She said it all in one steady breath. The voice of someone who had decided that defending the situation was better than letting it be misread.

  Something shifted in Sia's eyes.

  I watched it happen. A small internal adjustment, something recalcuting, something deciding.

  "Okay." Her voice came out measured. "You can go. But be careful. It's not safe outside."

  I nodded. Said nothing.

  "And." She looked at Mia. Something passed across her face that she buried before it became visible to anyone who wasn't looking carefully. "Thank you for walking with him, Mia."

  "You're welcome." Mia's voice was even.

  "We're te," I said. The words came out more quickly than I intended. "Don't you have css, Sia?"

  "I do. I was waiting for you." She moved forward. One step. Two.

  I took a step back without deciding to. My body making the decision before my mind could weigh in.

  It didn't help.

  Her arms came around me. Tight. The kind of tight that doesn't leave room for much of anything. Her chin near my shoulder. Her voice arriving just below the threshold of what Mia could hear.

  "Don't talk to her so much."

  A whisper. Soft. The softness of it was the worst part.

  Not a suggestion.

  Not a concern.

  A line being drawn with a smile attached to it.

  I thought about the girls from before.

  The ones who had tried to get close to me and then, one by one, had stopped trying.

  I had never asked why. I had chosen not to ask why because somewhere I already knew and knowing fully would have required me to do something with the knowledge.

  I know what you're capable of.

  The thought moved through me quietly. I know and I keep not knowing because not knowing is easier than knowing.

  She let go. Stepped back. Her expression had returned to something ordinary by the time she looked at Mia again.

  "Bye." And she walked away.

  I stood there for one second. Two.

  "Come on," Mia said, not commenting on any of it. "We're definitely standing outside the door now."

  We ran.

  The cssroom door

  "May we come in, ma'am?"

  The eyes arrived immediately.

  All of them. Turning from whatever they had been doing to nd on the two people standing in the doorway who had clearly misjudged the morning.

  This was the part I had never gotten used to.

  The way a room full of people looked at you when you were the only one of your kind in it. The particur quality of that attention.

  Ms. Xara looked up from her desk.

  The expression she wore for the css was one thing.

  Sharp, controlled, the expression of someone with no interest in being tested.

  But when her eyes found me, something shifted in them. A warmth arriving that hadn't been there a moment ago.

  A quality of attention that was different from the attention she paid to the room.

  She looks at me like she's been waiting for me to arrive.

  The thought came and went quickly.

  "Why are you te?"

  "Sorry, ma'am." Mia stepped slightly forward. "We left too te this morning. It won't happen again."

  A pause. The kind of pause designed to let you feel the inconvenience you've caused.

  "It better not. Sit down."

  "Yes, ma'am."

  We said it at the same time, a small accidental harmony, and I moved to my usual seat.

  The corner

  The pce that offered a view of the room while remaining at a sufficient distance from most of it. The seat of someone who has learned to prefer edges.

  "Homework." Ms. Xara set down her pen. "Bring it out one by one and submit. And if you haven't done it." She let the pause do its work. "Raise your hand. Don't make me find out myself. It won't go well."

  I sat very still.

  The homework I had not done.

  The homework that had existed as a concept while st night happened and had not once entered my mind between then and now.

  The sweat that arrived was independent of the morning heat.

  I had heard the stories. The toilet cleaning. The repeat submissions. The particur creativity Ms. Xara applied to consequences when

  she felt they were warranted.

  I raised my hand.

  A few others raised theirs alongside me, which was something.

  A shared misery having at least the comfort of company.

  "I appreciate the honesty." She stood. Moved along the row. "But honesty doesn't repce the work. It just changes the shape of the consequence."

  She addressed the others first. Three girls. One assigned to redo the homework three times, two assigned to clean the cssroom for the next ten days. Standard enough. The mathematics of minor infractions.

  Then she reached me.

  Something happened in her expression. Something I couldn't name precisely.

  A quality of arrival, as if this were the moment the morning had been building toward and she had been patient enough to wait for it.

  "And you, Rio." A pause just long enough to be deliberate. "You'll be my assistant for the month."

  What.

  "Ma'am." I kept my voice respectful. Careful. "I have csses."

  "Yes. That's why it will be after csses."

  "But why would you need an assistant after—"

  "You'll understand when you start." She moved back toward her desk with the unhurried ease of someone who has already decided how this conversation ends. "This weekend. You begin then."

  "Ma'am, I don't think—"

  "This is your punishment, Rio." She sat down. Looked at me with that expression, the one that was warm and sharp at the same time, the one I didn't have a category for. "I suggest you treat it as such."

  I opened my mouth.

  Closed it.

  The css had returned to its own business, notebooks opening, pens finding paper. Mia shot me a sideways look that said several things without saying any of them.

  I stared at the front of the room.

  An assistant. After css. Alone.

  What kind of punishment is that.

  Xara's study

  After css

  She sat for a long moment after the st student had filed out, the room settling into its end-of-day quiet, the sounds of the school growing distant.

  Then, very quietly, to no one in particur, to the empty room and the afternoon light and the idea of what was coming—

  At st.

  A small sound. Private. Something that had been waiting a long time to be released.

  At st, I got you, Rio.

  The afternoon light sat warm on her desk. The chair across from hers was empty.

  For now.

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