Belle's POV
I still haven't replied to my father's assistant. That was yesterday. The message is sitting in my phone like something with weight, and every time I check my screen I see it and put the phone back down and find something else to do. Right now I'm setting the table because the housekeeper left at four and my father will be home at six-thirty and there is a specific way things are done in this apartment. Placemats first. Glasses at the two o'clock position. Forks on the left, exactly one finger's width from the plate edge. I have been setting this table the same way since I was nine years old, and I could do it in complete darkness, which I sometimes think is the whole point.
The elevator opens at six-twenty-eight.
My father comes in, sets his briefcase by the door, and washes his hands at the kitchen sink. He doesn't greet me with a word. He nods, which is how he says hello when a day has been long and satisfactory. I take my seat. He takes his. The food is already on the table.
We eat.
He asks about my grades. I give him the numbers. Ninety-six in AP Chemistry, ninety-eight in English, a hundred in History because the test last week was identical in structure to the practice version and I'd studied both. He says good and cuts his food and that's the whole thing. We eat the rest of the meal in the specific silence of people who have run out of words that are safe.
I think about whether to ask him about the call to Principal Watkins. I decide not to. Not yet. Asking a question tells him I'm worried, and being worried tells him something worked.
After he leaves the table I clear the dishes. I hear his study door close. I wash everything by hand because the dishwasher is loud and I've never liked the sound. Then I go to my room and sit on the floor with my back against the bed and open my notebook.
I was going to review my Chemistry notes.
But the notebook falls open to the middle section, where I keep the pages I don't use in class. And there it is, in my own handwriting, slightly smaller than usual, like I wrote it quickly and quietly as if someone might be watching.
Ethan Cole.
Written in the margin. Just the name. No context, no date, nothing around it.
I sit with that for a moment. I know when I wrote it. Two weeks ago, Thursday evening, after a shift at the library. I'd been reshelving the science section and I found one of those marked-up books again and I came home and opened my notebook and wrote his name in the margin and then felt immediately ridiculous and turned to a different page and wrote six pages of Chemistry notes to cover the feeling. Like cramming studying on top of it would make it disappear.
It did not disappear.
I close the notebook and put it under the bed. Then I take it out again and put it on my desk because hiding it feels worse than leaving it in the open. I look at the cover like it's going to do something. It doesn't.
My phone buzzes.
Jasmine.
She doesn't call first, she texts, because calling requires the other person to be ready and Jasmine never waits for readiness. The message says she heard something interesting and to call her. That's all.
The thing about Jasmine is that interesting always means something specific. It means she's found a thread and she's holding it and she's waiting to see whether you'll take it or whether she'll have to pull it herself. We've been friends since seventh grade. I know her system. She collects information the way some people collect objects, carefully and with purpose, and she only offers to share when there's something she wants in return. Sometimes the trade is obvious. Sometimes it isn't.
I don't know what she's heard. But I know the timing. Two days since the partner announcement. One day since my father called the school. One text, tonight, with the word interesting.
I put the phone face-down on my desk.
I think about what she might know. I think about what my father might have said to Watkins, and what Watkins might have said to someone else, and how fast something moves through a school when it involves a name like mine and a name like his. I think about the way Jasmine said his name at lunch, easy and familiar, and the small thing that did to me that I still haven't looked at directly.
I pick up the phone. Jasmine's message is still there.
She knows something. She might know about the Watkins call. She might know about the partner pairing, which is less dangerous but still something. She might know something I don't know yet, which is the actual threat, because information I don't have is information I can't manage.
I should call her. Find out what it is. Stay ahead of it.
I put the phone back down.
The problem with calling Jasmine is that she'll hear everything I don't say as clearly as everything I do. She's been doing that since seventh grade too, reading the spaces between my words like punctuation. If she hears me ask about Ethan Cole's name in the right key, she'll know. And if she knows, it becomes currency. And I don't know yet what she'll want to spend it on.
I leave the message unanswered. I open my notebook to a clean page, not the one with the name, a clean page, and I write out my Chemistry notes for tomorrow. I make them detailed. I fill two full pages. The handwriting is neater than usual, which is what happens when I'm trying very hard to concentrate on something other than the thing I'm actually thinking about.
At ten-fifteen my phone buzzes again.
Same sender. No new words. Just a period.
One punctuation mark in a text message. That's Jasmine for I know you saw it and I'm still here.
I stare at the period on my screen for long enough that my phone dims.
She's not going to stop. She never stops when she's holding something. And whatever she's holding, she found it fast, which means it wasn't hard to find, which means other people might already have it too.
I open the message thread. My thumbs hover over the keyboard.
I still don't type anything.