Walter stood beside Maya beneath the awning outside. A cold drizzle had started again. You know what Brooke would have done if she'd missed her ride because some old man got sick? Maya looked at him. Walter.
"All right." Unfair question. He shoved his hands into his coat pockets. But you understand my point. Maya watched the ambulance turn onto the wet avenue.
"I didn't do anything special." Walter gave her a long look. "That's what people like you always say." The next Route 417 bus wouldn't arrive for 26 minutes. Walter offered to drive her.
Maya refused. "You carried boxes for me yesterday," he said. You just helped keep Leon calm until the ambulance came. "At some point, you're allowed to accept something." "I know."
Do you? Maya smiled faintly. "Maybe not yet." She walked toward the bus shelter. Rain tapped softly against the plastic roof as she sat alone beneath the fluorescent light.
Her phone came back to life when she powered it on. 37 notifications. Most were still from the lunch video. One message had been sent by an unfamiliar Crown Bridge account. Maya opened it.
A screenshot appeared first. Her own face. Frozen from the cafeteria video at the exact moment she had looked up at Brooke. Below it, someone had added a caption. "Look at her."
"She was ready to swing." Maya's stomach tightened. Then another message arrived. Same account. Same video.
Different angle. A circle had been drawn around Maya's hands. They were relaxed at her sides. But the caption underneath read, "Watch the scholarship girl. She's got a temper."
Maya stared at the screen. Brooke was no longer simply humiliating her. Someone was building a story about her. A version of Maya Carter that could be shown to professors, administrators, scholarship committees. Aggressive, unstable, dangerous.
All the things Maya had spent years proving she was not. The Route 417 bus appeared at the far intersection. Headlights blurred by rain. Maya slipped the phone into her pocket. Her fingers brushed the brass RAC 214 key.
Walter had been right. Brooke had mistaken restraint for fear. And now she was preparing to use Maya's silence against her. Maya stepped onto the bus. For the first time since the cafeteria, she understood that simply enduring Brooke might not be enough.
Because if Brooke could not make Maya lose control, she was going to make everyone believe Maya already had. By morning, the story had changed. Not what happened, the story. Maya knew the difference the second she stepped off Route 417 and crossed Crown Bridge's Brick Plaza. Students were already looking at her.
Not openly. That would have been easier. Instead, they glanced down at their phones, then back at Maya, then away again, as if they had been caught staring through somebody's window. A cold wind moved across the campus lawns. Maya pulled her red and white varsity jacket tighter and kept walking.