After first period, the desk beside the window was empty again.
Aria stared at the empty space like a bruise, fingers tracing the faint graphite smear he always left behind. She didn't know why her chest tightened so much when he wasn't there. She just knew the knot in her throat had become part of the day.
Her three best friends crowded her locker the moment the bell rang, voices sharp with curiosity.
"Why are you wearing his shirt?" Chloe asked before the rest of them could even say hello.
"Since when are you and Ethan even a thing?" Maya added, eyebrows high.
"Are you serious? Who does that?" Tasha laughed, but it was a nervous sound.
Aria opened her mouth to answer — to explain or to lie — when a sudden roar of noise burst down the corridor. Feet pounded; chairs scraped; a crowd pushed toward the hall with a dangerous, excited energy.
"Something's happening!" someone shouted.
Aria ran. Fear made her legs move faster than anything else. She pushed through the tide of students and stopped breathing when she saw them.
Ethan was on the floor, and Jackson — her ex — had his hands on him. Ethan's shirt was torn, a dark stain spreading across his sleeve. Blood slicked the side of his face. Jackson's face was twisted with that cheap, stupid fury guys like him wore when they were proving they belonged to the loudest side of town.
For a second everything slowed. Students formed a circle, hands over mouths, phones up, recording. The noise was a distant ocean.
Aria didn't think. She moved.
She shoved through the crowd, tapping the only part of her brain that mattered: protect. She grabbed Ethan by the shoulder, hauling him up. He sagged into her, small and heavy with pain. Without hesitating she slipped off her hoodie and wrapped it around him, fingers shaking as she pressed it to his wounds, using the fabric to staunch the blood.
"Get off him!" she screamed, voice raw and bright. Her slap across Jackson's cheek landed so cleanly the whole hall inhaled. He staggered back, stunned by the force of it.
"How dare you?" Aria's voice was low and lethal. "If you ever put your hands on him again, I will make you pay. Stay the fuck away from him — and from me. You think you're strong? Go outside and find someone your size. Don't take it out on the quiet one."
Jackson's mouth opened; no clever retort came. He looked from Aria to Ethan, and the sight of how carefully Aria held him — how she moved around him like someone protecting something fragile and precious — seemed to land on him like a cold weight. He didn't say anything. He just watched as she helped Ethan out of the hall, tucking the hoodie closer around his shoulders.
They went to the private room — the small, seldom-used space at the back of the art block that only the wealthier students or faculty families could reserve. It smelled of cleaner and old varnish. Aria eased Ethan onto the couch and started cleaning the cuts with trembling hands.
"You need to learn how to fight for yourself," she said, voice a mixture of anger and pleading. "Don't be so calm, Ethan. People will keep taking your calm for weakness if you keep letting them."
Ethan pulled the blanket tighter and raised a hand to stop her. He stared at her, a twist of something like pain and tiredness in his face. "Just like you did to me," he said quietly. "You pushed me first. You joined them."
Her fingers froze. The words landed like a punch.
"I know I messed up," she said, voice small. "I know I hurt you. I'm sorry. Please—" She leaned forward, eyes desperate, "Please let me help. Please let me fix this, just a little."
He let out a humorless laugh, sharp and short. "You said sorry before. You said it like you were saying a line." He reached for his book, the old black notebook he carried like armor. "I can't—" He closed his hand around the cover and stood. "I don't want this."
Before she could say another thing, he left. He walked out of the private room like someone removing a thorn, shoulders tight, gaze fixed straight ahead. The door clicked behind him and the hallway swallowed the sound.
Aria collapsed onto the couch in a wave — grief and shame and something like fear piling into her ribs. Her hands clawed at the hoodie still damp from his blood. She hadn't meant for it to go this far. She hadn't meant to be the person who made him leave.
She cried then — not loud, but raw and whole. The sobs came out of her like a confession she could never take back. The room blurred and the world shrank to the small, empty couch and the echo of his footsteps down the corridor.
Through her tears, one thing burned bright and terrible in her mind: I can't lose him. I won't let him go.
If Jackson thought he'd walked away unpunished, he was wrong. Aria's anger folded itself into something colder, sharper. She lifted her head, tears still wet on her cheeks, and whispered to the empty room, "Jackson, I will make you pay for every pain you've given him. I'll give it back to you — doubled."
Outside, the school moved on like a body that had taken its injuries and kept walking. Inside, Aria folded her grief into a promise and made it a weapon.