Belle's POV
The dinner last night was exactly what I expected, which means it was a performance with good lighting and bad subtext. My father sat at the head of the table and asked about my grades and I gave him numbers and he nodded and said nothing else. His associate, a man whose name I forgot before dessert, talked about real estate for twenty minutes. The man's son, who was seated two chairs from me, tried twice to start a conversation. I answered both times with three words or fewer and looked back at my plate. I ate everything because leaving food is a statement and I wasn't ready to make one. I wanted to get through the evening and go home and sleep and not think about AP Chemistry or a hallway that went quiet in a particular way yesterday afternoon.
I'm not thinking about that.
What I'm thinking about is the pop quiz from yesterday. I got a perfect score, which I always do because I read ahead and I don't advertise it because it sounds desperate, and I'm not desperate, I'm thorough. The quiz happened minutes before Calloway announced the lab partners. I remember looking at my paper and feeling steady. Then my name was paired with his and the steadiness went somewhere I couldn't find afterward.
Not relevant. Moving on.
Third period. I copy Calloway's notes about thermodynamics and try to mean it. Three seats to my left, Ethan Cole has already filled half a page before I've finished my first line. He has a system, I've noticed without meaning to. Main point first, then the example, then a question mark next to anything he wants to look up later. I've seen his notebook twice, both times by accident. It is organized in a way that looks effortless and isn't.
Calloway throws out a question about activation energy. Three hands go up. Ethan doesn't raise his. He just answers, like the question was directed at him personally. He's right. Calloway moves on. The girl behind me writes down what he said word for word.
I wrote it down too, I realize. I cross it out.
At lunch Jasmine is already at our table, mid-conversation with Sofia about something that requires lowered voices. When I sit down she redirects the careful attention toward me.
"Cole and Hartwell," she says. Not a question.
"It's a science project."
"Obviously." She picks up her fork. "How did he react?"
"He didn't."
"He never does." She says it with the ease of someone who has been watching long enough to form opinions. There's something in the way she says his name, easy and familiar, like it's been in her mouth before, and something about that catches in my chest in a way I am not going to look at directly. "Did he talk to you after?"
"No." True. He watched me read a message and I left. That's all it was.
She smiles at her plate. "Sure."
The smile does something to my appetite. I eat anyway. I think about the way she said his name. Not the words. The ease of them.
After school I go to the library, which I do every Thursday and which has nothing to do with anything that happened this week. I'm a volunteer. I reshelf books and help with returns and fix the small damage that people leave behind without noticing they've done it. I've done it for two years. Nobody from my social circle knows I do it, and I keep it that way, and I don't think too hard about why.
The east section needs the most maintenance. Science, history, geography. Students pull titles off the shelves and return them to the wrong spots and I work through the row correcting it. That's the job.
I'm near the end of the science row when I notice the gap. Then I notice the gap isn't random. The same small cluster of titles has been disturbed every Thursday for at least a month. Someone pulls them, reads them in the stacks, and reshelves from memory instead of checking the number on the spine. I pull the title that's furthest out of place. There are faint pencil marks on the inside cover. A sentence underlined on the third page. The checkout log says the book hasn't been formally borrowed in months.
The next two books have the same marks. Careful and small, like whoever made them wasn't sure they had permission to leave a trace.
I put the books back in the right order. I do not think about who uses this section on Tuesdays and Fridays, because I have no reason to think about that specifically.
I finish the cart, sign out at the desk, pull on my jacket. Coach Nance's voice comes through the half-open door near the gym entrance. I'm not trying to hear it. I'm just walking past.
"Scout's coming to the Semi-Final." A pause. "Don't mess this up."
Then quieter. A register you use when the real meaning lives underneath the words.
"Stay focused. No distractions."
I keep walking. Cold air outside. I tell myself I have no reason to form a theory about who that conversation involved. There are twelve players on that team. Any one of them could have been standing in that room.
At the bus stop I check my phone.
My father's assistant sent a follow-up while I was in the stacks. Timestamped two hours ago.
"Mr. Hartwell has spoken with Principal Watkins. He asks that you confirm the arrangement has been noted."
I read it twice.
My father does not use the word arrangement casually. He uses it when something has already been decided and my only remaining job is acknowledgment. He uses it when a conversation that should have involved me has already happened without me. That's how he operates. He arranges. He expects compliance. He doesn't ask first.
Principal Watkins. My father called the principal of my school. During school hours. Today.
I don't know what was arranged. I don't know what name came up. I don't know whether the scout Nance mentioned and my father's phone call and the word distractions all belong in the same sentence, but they're sitting together in my head and they won't move apart.
I put the phone in my pocket. The bus is coming. Around me people are checking their own phones, carrying normal Thursdays, completely unaware that something has shifted somewhere and I don't yet know what it shifted into.
The message is still open. Still waiting for my reply.
I don't send one. Not yet.