The clock in Room 2-3 ticked so loudly, Rhaine was convinced it was counting down to the end of her sanity.
Five more minutes until lunch. Five minutes until she could stop pretending to be the quiet, well-behaved, back-row student everyone assumed she was.
Ms. Villanueva droned on about the upcoming history project. Rhaine dutifully wrote the assignment in her notebook, pen scratching neatly across the page. She didn't speak. She didn't laugh. She didn't even look up unless it was to glance at the wall clock again. From the outside, she knew she looked like every teacher's dream silent, focused, and perfectly forgettable.
The bell finally rang, and Rhaine's body moved before her brain caught up. She shoved her books into her bag and slipped into the hallway. Her pace quickened as she crossed the courtyard toward the cafeteria. The low roar of voices got louder, along with the faint smell of fried lumpia and microwaved spaghetti.
Her real day was about to start.
Maya Serrano and Elliot "Eli" Chua were already camped out at their usual table — back left corner, where the sunlight didn't hit too harshly and you could see everyone without being in the middle of the chaos. Maya was halfway through a chicken empanada, and Eli was sketching something in the corner of his notebook.
The moment Rhaine dropped into the seat beside them, she exhaled like she'd been holding her breath all morning.
"Math," she announced. "Is. The. Devil."
Maya snorted mid-bite. "What happened this time?"
"They put fractions inside fractions, Maya. Fractions aren't supposed to have children. That's unnatural." Rhaine grabbed a carton of chocolate milk from her bag — she always brought her own — and took a dramatic sip. "Also, the vending machine got new snacks. Tried one of the chocolate bars? Tasted like cardboard that went to college and came back with a philosophy degree."
Eli didn't even look up from his sketch. "You're quiet in class for two hours straight, then you sit down here and your mouth just"
"Decides to make up for lost time?" Rhaine grinned. "That's called balance, thank you very much."
They fell into easy conversation random jokes, a heated debate about whether pineapple belonged on pizza (it did, in Rhaine's opinion), and Maya's tragic retelling of her latest attempt at flirting. The outside world, with its whisper networks and judgmental stares, melted away here.
Then Maya froze mid-sentence and tilted her head toward the cafeteria line. "New girl alert."
Rhaine followed her gaze. A tall girl stood at the front, dark hair pulled into a loose ponytail, wearing the school's navy sports jacket over her uniform. She looked like she belonged on a poster for the volleyball team except she was scanning the crowded tables like she wasn't sure where to land.
"Who's that?" Rhaine asked before she could stop herself.
"No idea." Maya smirked. "But you've got that face."
"What face?"
"The one you get when you see a cute girl," Eli said without looking up.
"I do not have a okay, maybe a little." She took another sip of milk and forced herself to look anywhere but at the new girl.
The truth was, she didn't let herself look too long at anyone outside this table. Maya and Eli knew her all of her but the rest of the school didn't. And that was safer. She'd learned the hard way that trust could shatter overnight. Better to keep her heart folded neatly away where no one could poke at it.
She was halfway through convincing herself to forget the whole thing when the new girl walked past their table. Up close, she had a faint dimple when she smiled.
"Hey," she said to Rhaine, casual but direct. "You're in my history class, right?"
Rhaine's mind instantly spun through twenty possible replies, most of them witty or at least coherent. Her mouth betrayed her.
"Uh… yeah."
"Cool." The girl nodded and kept walking toward a table on the far side of the cafeteria.
The silence at Rhaine's table lasted about half a second.
"Ohhh," Maya whispered, leaning in. "You're in trouble now."
Eli smirked, finally looking up from his drawing. "History just got interesting."
Rhaine rolled her eyes, but her ears were warm. She stabbed a fork into her lunch like that could shut them up.
It didn't.