Tyler told people he was seeing a doctor. "He's been off." He admitted to a group at lunch. "Like jumpy. I tried to joke about the video and he snapped."
Others said he hadn't slept since that day. His mom started showing up to school to talk to the principal, while his dad made angry phone calls to the district. By the end of the week, the rumor mill shifted again. This time toward Logan. Some said it was guilt.
Others said karma. One kid whispered that Logan saw something when he looked into Nia's eyes that day. Something that messed him up. And as ridiculous as that sounded, the way he started acting made people wonder. He came back to school the following Monday.
His swagger was gone. He kept his head down, no loud jokes, no smirks, no taunting. Just silence. At lunch, he sat at the edge of the cafeteria alone. When Nia walked in, his eyes flickered up for a second, then quickly dropped back to his tray.
Even Hannah noticed. "Okay, what's his deal? He looks like he saw a ghost." Nia hesitated. "Maybe he finally saw himself."
For a while, things seemed to calm down. The gossip faded, teachers pretended everything was normal. But the story didn't end there. Because Logan wasn't just quiet, he was different. He stopped hanging out with his old friends.
He avoided the soccer field. He flinched when people touched his shoulder. And one afternoon, after school, Hannah spotted him sitting alone in the parking lot, staring at nothing. When she told Nia about it, Nia's first instinct wasn't anger or satisfaction. It was something closer to pity.
"Something's wrong with him." Hannah said softly. Nia nodded. "Yeah, but it's not me he's fighting." That night, as she lay in bed, she couldn't stop thinking about that moment in the cafeteria.
The look in his eyes just before he fell. It wasn't pain she'd seen, it was fear. And that fear didn't come from her. It came from somewhere else. Something that had been living inside him long before she ever showed up.
But what no one at Westbrook knew was that Logan's collapse wasn't the beginning of his breakdown. It was the first time anyone saw it. And the truth behind it would finally come out sooner than anyone expected. It was the guidance counselor, Mr. Travis, who finally called Logan in. He'd been watching him closely since the incident.
The quietness, the slipping grades, the hollow stare during class. When Logan showed up to his office that Wednesday afternoon, he looked exhausted. His hair was messy, eyes shadowed like he hadn't slept in days. Mr. Travis closed the door and sat across from him. "Logan, I'm not here to punish you.
I just want to talk." Logan rubbed his face, eyes down. "Everyone thinks I'm crazy." "Nobody thinks that." He laughed bitterly.
"They do. I see the way they look at me, like I'm broken." Mr. Travis leaned forward. "Then tell me what happened that day. Not what people think happened.