“That’s not mine,” I say.
My voice comes out too loud. Too desperate. It brings every eye in the hallway snapping toward me.
Including the cops.
“That’s not mine,” I repeat, and I hear how it sounds—exactly like every guilty person who’s ever said those words. “I don’t know how that got there. I’ve never seen that before in my life?—”
Someone whistles behind me. Low and mocking.
“She’ll be expelled for sure.”
“More like jail. You see all that?”
More whispers. More phones. More eyes.
I’m drowning in it. In the attention, in the accusation, in thewrongnessof it all.
And then I feel it—breath against my ear, hot and victorious.
“Wish you were dead yet?”
I spin so fast I almost knock into the person behind me.
McKenzie. Ofcourse, it’s McKenzie.
“You,” I growl. The word comes out feral. Barely human.
She tilts her head, examining me like I’m a bug under glass. “Yes, me.”
“What is wrong with you?” My voice drops low. Deadly. The way it used to get back in Grass Valley when someone was about to get hurt. “Caleb’s mom is sick.”
I want her to flinch. Want her to show even a flicker of humanity. Of remorse.
Instead, she makes a mocking, sad face—bottom lip stuck out, eyes wide with fake sympathy.
“Awww,” she coos. “You really shouldn’t have messed with me then, huh?”
And something inside me just... snaps.
All the control I’ve been clinging to—the girl who’strying so hard to be good enough for Helen, clean enough for Caleb, different enough from Darlene—evaporates like it was never there.
Because I’m not different. I’m exactly who I’ve always been.
The girl from the trailer park. The one who knows how to fight because fighting’s the only language some people understand.
The girl who protects the people she loves with teeth and claws and whatever the fuck it takes.
I launch myself at McKenzie, screeching in fury with my nails out like claws.
I’m going for her eyes. For that perfect fucking face. For anything I can reach.
Everyone around us erupts—screaming, shoving, phones recording this too because of course they are.
My nails catch her cheek. Draw blood. Four perfect lines blooming red against her foundation.
McKenzie shrieks—high and genuine this time, not performative—and tries to shove me off.
But I’m smaller, scrappier, meaner. I’ve been in real fights. She’s only been in the kind where someone breaks it up before anyone actually gets hurt.