They always walk like that. Dibs, he said, simple as ordering lunch. Miles Whitfield, smarter than Tucker and weaker for it, laughed without really laughing. Like, you need to call Dibs.
When have you ever not gotten what you wanted? Never, Beckett thought. And he had no intention of starting now. Her first three classes went by without incident.
If you didn't count the incident of being invisible, which Vera had turned into an art form over two different schools and one funeral. Middle row, not close enough to be noticed. Not far enough back to be flagged as a problem. Notes taken in neat small handwriting.
Eyes down. Don't invite anything. It had worked before it stopped working at lunch. The dining hall at Westbrook was less a room and more a map of alliances athletes here.
Greek life there. The honors kids by the windows where the light was better for studying between bites. Vera took her tray, scanned the room the way her father had taught her to scan a parking lot and found the smallest, emptiest table in the corner. She made it four bites into a sandwich before the shadow fell across her tray.
Hey, Beckett Callaway. He said it like a title, like it should mean something on its own. No last name required the way the president doesn't need a first name. Vera looked up.
Old habits told her to be flattered, to smile, to play along the way. Girls were supposed to play along. New habits, her father's habits, carved into her over years of quiet Saturday mornings in a garage that smelled like sweat and canvas told her something different. She recognized the look in his eyes, that specific stillness right before a hand moves.
"Nice to meet you, " she said carefully. "I've actually got to get to class. Class doesn't start for 20 minutes. I know where my next one is.
I don't want to be late finding it." She stood. He didn't touch her. Not yet, but his hand came up anyway, resting against the table's edge in a way that blocked her chair from sliding back cleanly. "Sit, " he said, and he smiled.
The smile that had worked on every girl in three counties. Let me welcome you properly. I appreciate it. I really do need to go.
She stepped around him. The dining hall went quiet. Not silent. That specific hush.
The one that happens right before something interesting happens. 300 conversations dropping half a register all at once. Did she just Tucker's mouth actually fell open. Beckett's jaw tightened because nobody walked away from him. Because that wasn't how this worked.
Because in 19 years, no one had ever once made him feel small in a room full of people. And this this nothing, this new girl with the careful eyes had just done it in under 30 seconds. Vera felt the weight of it the rest of the day. Conversations that stopped when she passed.
Eyes that followed her down the hall and then flicked away, pretending they hadn't. I made a mistake. She thought I should have played along, smiled, said something polite and forgettable, and let him feel like he'd won. Except she couldn't make herself regret it, which was its own problem.
That night, she called. "How's Texas?" Callie asked. The way she always started, like Texas itself was the headline and not everything underneath it. Big.
Vera lay back on her bed, phone against her ear, the ceiling fan turning slow enough to count the rotations. Everything's bigger here, including the egos. She told her about the parking lot, about the dining hall, about the way the room had gone quiet and the way Beckett's face had changed. Not anger exactly, something colder.
Callie was quiet on the other end. That kind of quiet that says more than words. Careful, Callie finally said. Guys like that, they don't handle rejection well.
I can handle myself. That's not what I said. Vera looked toward her closet where the black belt now hung from a hook because she hadn't been able to leave it folded in the box any longer. Where her father's photograph finally located, sat propped against the mirror, watching her with that half smile he'd always worn in pictures like he knew something the camera didn't.
I'm not going to be a hero, Callie. Okay, I mean it. I know you do, Callie said. That's what worries me.
The harassment didn't announce itself all at once. It came in pieces the way water finds cracks in concrete. Slow, patient, until suddenly the whole structure gives. Tuesday, her parking permit was missing from her windshield, just gone, peeled clean off, leaving a pale rectangle of sunfaded paint where it used to be.
When she went to the registrar's office to request a new one, the woman behind the counter, kind enough, tired enough, informed her that a replacement would cost $35. Someone must have taken it, Vera said. Happens sometimes, the woman said, not quite meeting her eyes, which was strange because Vera hadn't said who she suspected, and the woman hadn't asked. $35 her mother didn't have to spare, and both of them knew it, and neither one said so out loud. Wednesday brought something worse.
Vera opened her student email between classes to find a financial aid notice. She hadn't requested a message stating that her scholarship paperwork had been flagged for review, that supporting documents needed to be resubmitted within five business days, or funding could be suspended. Her stomach dropped straight through the floor because that scholarship wasn't extra. It was the whole architecture holding this fresh start upright.
Take it away, and the boxes in her bedroom would need to go right back into the truck. She went to the financial aid office in person, waited 40 minutes in a plastic chair, and when she finally sat across from an administrator who pulled up her file, the woman frowned at the screen, scrolled, frowned again. I'm not seeing a flag on your account, the woman said. Everything looks fine on our end.
I got an email. Can I see it? Vera pulled it up. The woman studied the header for a long moment, something shifting behind her eyes.
This didn't come from our office, she said carefully. The domain's close, but it's not ours. Spoofed. The word sat in Vera's chest like a stone dropped down a well, and she didn't hear it hit bottom for a long time.
Someone had gone to the trouble of building a fake email address that mimicked the university's financial aid office. Someone who knew or guessed or simply assumed, because that's what money assumes about new girls in secondhand cars, that her scholarship was the one lever worth pulling. She didn't say Beckett's name to the administrator. She had no proof, just a cold, certain feeling settling into her spine.