After the storm of the inspection, the school seemed to slip back into its usual rhythm.
On the surface, at least.
Everyone more or less accepted it as fact now that Jaynara Stevens was the one who'd been reading "forbidden" books.
Even though The Quiet Reason wasn't exactly trash literature, once a story started rolling through a school, it stopped needing truth.
Tongues wagged, details twisted, and what had been a small incident grew barbed and ugly in the shadows.
The moment Jayna stepped onto campus the next morning, she felt it.
It might have been her imagination, but it felt like everyone she passed on the path was staring at her.
Some just glanced over and quickly averted their eyes.
Others nudged their friends, whispering, throwing her quick, curious looks—and not the friendly kind.
Finally, a group of students up ahead turned around in unison to stare as she approached, their eyes lingering too long.
Jayna stopped, squared her shoulders, and glared right back at them.
"What?" she snapped. "See something you like?"
Her voice cracked across the paving stones, loud enough to make a few heads jerk away.
The group scattered almost immediately, muttering, choosing suddenly to be anywhere else.
Jayna hitched her bag a little higher over one shoulder and strode into the building with her chin up and her expression set in its most arrogant line.
By the time she pushed open the classroom door and walked in, the room was buzzing with noise—people laughing, throwing erasers, chasing each other between desks.
The second they saw her, the sound thinned out and then died.
Within a handful of heartbeats, everyone was back in their seats, backs straight, eyes pointed at their books like they'd been that way all along.
Jayna stopped halfway down the aisle and looked around.
"…Seriously?" she muttered. "Is this level of obvious really necessary?"
Her gaze drifted instinctively toward the back row.
Ginevra's seat was still empty.
She sighed and dropped into her own chair, then turned to the only available target: Ethan Johnson, who was hunched over his notebook, doodling little stick figures with wild hair.
"Hey," she whispered. "Do you know what's going on?"
Ethan twisted around and lowered his voice.
"I think you're better off not knowing."
Jayna's brows knitted.
"You can't say that and expect me to ignore it," she said. "Just tell me. I can handle it."
She was lying, obviously, but she did her best to sound steady.
Ethan shot her a doubtful look.
"You said it," he warned. "Don't regret it."
He reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone.
Before he could wake the screen, Jayna slapped a hand over it.
"Are you insane?" she hissed. "Using your phone in class? Do you want Mr. Quinn to nail you?"
Ethan rolled his eyes.
"He's not here today, remember? Took a bunch of them into the city for the competition. He can't catch us from there."
Right.
Jayna blinked.
Of course.
The "Physics Cup."
For the past week, Ginevra and Calista had been staying after school every night for extra tutoring in physics. Today was the day they'd both been picked to represent the school at the city-wide competition.
Ginevra's spot was obvious—she was the kind of all-rounder teachers hoarded like gold.
What had surprised everyone was Calista being chosen too. She never looked serious about anything, always joking and spacing out in class, but apparently, her physics test papers said otherwise.
Out of the five students selected from their year, two were people Jayna was close to.
The thought made her chest warm with a quiet, proud kind of happiness.
"Why are you grinning?" Ethan asked, exasperated. "This is not a grin situation."
He jabbed at his phone with his thumb, the school's forum page loading slowly, like it too was reluctant to show what it knew.
"There is totally a grin situation," Jayna said. "Both Ginevra and Calista got picked for the Physics Cup. I'm just thinking my taste in people is excellent, that's all. Look at my social circle."
Ethan gave her a look that was half pity, half disbelief.
"Calista, sure, she's your friend. That I can see," he said. "But you and Ginevra? I'm not seeing it."
Jayna punched him lightly in the arm.
"You weren't the one who said we were like conjoined twins a while ago?"
Only because you're glued to her side all day…
Ethan wisely kept that to himself. He didn't feel like getting punched twice.
"Anyway, forget that," he said. "Look at this."
He finally got the page to load and handed the phone over.
Jayna bent her head, eyes locking on the screen.
A few seconds later, she let out a short, incredulous laugh.
"You think this is supposed to be me?"
"I mean," Ethan said honestly, "I don't think it looks like you."
On the screen was the top post on the school forum, already exploding with comments.
The title blared in bold at the top:
"The Reigning Queen of Class One Second year – Everyone Come See"
Subtlety clearly wasn't the author's strength.
The post itself claimed, on the author's "personal honour," that everything written was absolutely true, photos included.
Below were several grainy, badly lit photos.
In them, a girl in a revealing outfit leaned against street railings at night, laughing with a few older guys.
Her face was so blurred that it was hard to tell what she actually looked like, just that she was slim, long-haired, and vaguely pretty.
In the last photo, one of the men had an arm around the girl's waist, pulling her close.
Underneath the pictures, the author had written a few lines.
Short.
Poisonous.
They named Jaynara Stevens outright, saying that not only did she read "improper" books at school, she was also "without morals" outside of it—flirting with shady older men, behaving indecently, involved in "scandalous, depraved acts of all kinds."
Jayna curled her lip.
"Wow," she said. "They even dug out phrases like 'depraved and corrupt.' Whoever wrote this has a decent vocabulary, I'll give them that."
Her tone was cold now, almost bored.
It was the only way to keep from showing how hard this actually hit.
Because whoever wrote it wasn't just attacking her.
They were aiming at something deeper—her character, her worth, the way everyone would see her.
Ethan grimaced and took the phone back, scrolling down a little.
More comments.
Dozens of them.
Some students demanded that the school "thoroughly investigate."
Others were nastier—calling her names, tearing her apart without even bothering to pretend they knew her.
He frowned and quickly locked the screen.
There was no point letting her see the worst of it.
"Jaynara," he said carefully, "what are you going to do?"
He looked at her—the way she smiled one second and shook her head the next—and he suddenly wasn't sure she was as unaffected as she pretended to be.
Jayna sighed.
Honestly, there was a little ache somewhere in her chest, but it was half-hidden under a layer of dark amusement.
"I just don't get it," she said. "I've barely been in this class any time at all. I haven't stepped on anyone's toes, haven't stolen anyone's scholarship money.
"So why are they so desperate to drag me through the mud? Using this kind of disgusting trick?"
She paused, then added dryly,
"Don't tell me it's because I'm too pretty."
Ethan had no answer.
He'd sat beside her long enough to know she wasn't the monster the gossip painted.
She was loud, reckless, sometimes thoughtless—but never malicious.
Yet he'd also seen enough of people to know that sometimes, that didn't matter.
"Sometimes no matter how decent you are, there'll always be small-minded people who twist everything you do," he said, scratching the back of his neck. "The way they see you has more to do with what's wrong inside them than anything you did.
"But the people who really know you—they'll always believe you, no matter what."
He thumped his fist lightly against his chest.
"So, whatever happens, I'm on your side."
Jayna blinked, then snorted.
"Wow," she said. "Heart of a tiger, nose for roses. Look at you being all poetic and loyal."
Some of the tightness inside her eased.
She sank back into her seat with a long breath.
"So," Ethan asked, glancing around the room, "what's your plan?"
Jayna looked slowly around too.
At the students carefully not looking at her.
At the ones who snuck glances when they thought she couldn't see.
She gave a small shrug.
"Wait," she said.
Just that one word.
Wait and see who moved.
Wait and see who believed what.
The morning slipped by.
Teachers came and delivered their lessons as usual.
Students took notes, whispered, dozed, stared into space.
No one called her out.
No one came in with a printed copy of the post, waving it like a weapon.
No one from other classes wandered in at break, pretending to borrow chalk while trying to get a closer look at her.
It all felt so normal that it almost wrapped back around to strange again.
By about three in the afternoon, the students who'd gone to the physics competition started trickling back.
Jayna spotted them the moment they reached the door.
The second one to step inside was Ginevra.
All day, Jayna's nerves had been stretched taut like a wire.
At the sight of that familiar figure, something in her unclenched.
She remembered, with an almost painful clarity, the soft, brief hug in the starlight last week.
Even with the new, ugly rumours hanging over her today, that memory still made her chest feel full, as if someone had quietly poured warm water into it.
Ginevra was dressed as neatly as ever in her school uniform, but today, her hair was tied up in a high ponytail that made her look sharper, more energetic.
Jayna watched her walk over and raised a hand in greeting almost automatically.
"Hey, Miss Physics Champion," she said, turning in her seat. "How come you're back this early?"
Ginevra set her bag down and hooked it neatly on the side of the desk before looking at her.
"The competition's over," she replied. "So they let us come back."
"How'd it go?" Jayna asked.
Ginevra looked at her for a long moment, then said nothing.
There was something off in Jayna's smile today—a forced brightness, something brittle flickering underneath.
Ginevra hesitated, then asked quietly,
"Did something happen?"
Jayna laughed lightly.
"What could possibly happen?" she said. "I was thinking, though… you guys have great timing. Getting back just in time for P.E. period."
Since Jayna wasn't talking, Ginevra let it drop.
"If you're hot, you should go wash your face," Jayna added, eyeing the sheen on her forehead. "It's boiling today, and you've still got your jacket zipped up to your neck. Even Calista took hers off when she came in."
The way she said it, it sounded almost like a complaint, almost like she was fussing over her.
To anyone listening from the outside, there was a soft, coaxing note in it, an accidental sweetness.
Ginevra did, in fact, feel warm.
She slipped off her glasses, shrugged out of her uniform jacket and laid it over the back of her chair.
"I'll go wash up," she said.
Then—for reasons she didn't fully understand—she added,
"I'll be right back."
Jayna caught the small, unconscious act of reporting back and almost melted on the spot.
She really is so obedient it's cute, she thought. Who forgets they're hot just because they're used to following the rules?
She picked up Ginevra's glasses as carefully as if they were made of crystal, then leaned toward Ethan.
"Got a glasses cloth?"
He handed one over, and she began wiping the lenses in small, precise circles.
"Jaynara," a gratingly familiar voice rang out from the front of the classroom, "if Ginevra knew what kind of person you really are, do you think she'd still talk to you?"
Jayna didn't look up.
She finished polishing one lens and moved to the other, as if the owner of that voice were nothing more than classroom static.
"Zoe, why would you say something like that?"
This time it was Lydia, all soft concern.
She'd gone to the city competition as well, which meant she got to pretend she had no idea what had "happened" in her absence.
"What's going on?" she asked, her tone light, perfectly pitched.
From her seat, Jayna watched them with cool eyes—the way they slotted together, one posing the question, the other feeding the answer.
Like a rehearsed duet.
She couldn't prove it.
But if anyone in this room had made that post, her first guess would be the two of them.
Zoe put on an exaggeratedly troubled expression, as if she were being forced to talk about something distasteful.
"Well, Lydia," she sighed, "you probably don't know yet, what with the competition and all. But our little Jayna is famous now."
She shot Jayna a look full of open contempt and went on,
"On the surface she looks all pure and innocent, but underneath… she's filthy."
The word hung in the air between them, heavy and deliberate, like a stone dropped into still water.
And the ripples were only just beginning to spread.