Paige laughed, but this time at Lauren rather than with her. Lauren shot her a look.
Aaliyah tried walking around again. Lauren stepped closer.
“You got me suspended.” Aaliyah stopped.
“No. You violated an order.”
“You reported me.”
“Other people reported you too.”
“You always need adults to save you.”
Aaliyah looked at the three girls surrounding her. “And yet you’re the ones who came looking for me.”
That sentence changed the mood. A few students in the background reacted quietly.
Lauren’s face tightened. She lifted the red cup.
Aaliyah looked at it. “Don’t.”
Lauren smiled. “What?”
“You know exactly what.”
For half a second, nothing happened. Meredith said Lauren’s name quietly.
Then Lauren snapped her wrist forward.
The red drink hit Aaliyah across the face, hair, chest, and the front of her dark green hoodie. Some of it splashed onto the orange textbooks and dripped from their bottom edges onto the brick courtyard.
Aaliyah froze. Her coffee remained in one hand.
The liquid smelled like fruit punch. It ran into one eye and down her cheek.
Someone behind the girls gasped. Paige covered her mouth, though Aaliyah could not tell whether she was shocked or laughing.
Lauren lowered the empty cup. “Oops.”
Aaliyah closed her eyes. She took one breath.
Then another.
When she opened them, she looked first at the stained books rather than Lauren. A red streak had spread across the page edges of the government text where she had written her name months earlier on the kitchen floor.
That small detail made her angrier than the wet hoodie. She had spent a year carrying those books between classes while three people repeatedly treated her presence like a debate.
Aaliyah walked to the nearby bench. She set the textbooks down carefully.
Then she placed her coffee beside them. The movement was slow enough that several students stopped talking.
Lauren laughed nervously. “Oh, now you’re mad?”
Aaliyah wiped fruit punch from her eye. “You threw a drink in my face.”
“It was a joke.”
“No.” Aaliyah turned toward her.
“It was something you planned because you wanted me to react.”
Paige’s expression changed. Meredith looked at Lauren.
Lauren asked whether Aaliyah had become paranoid too. Aaliyah pointed toward the phones.
“You came here with two people, stood in my way, and waited until people were filming.”
Lauren stepped closer. “Not everything is a conspiracy.”
“Then move.”
Aaliyah reached for her books. Lauren moved in front of the bench.