I woke up Sunday morning and spent a solid ten minutes just in bed staring at the ceiling.
The fairy lights were still glowing, a hazy, artificial gold against the flat bright of the morning. I'd crashed without turning them off, which wasn't like me. I was usually compulsive about the rituals of security; locks checked twice, lights out, the bedroom door clicked shut. But I'd gotten home from Bianca's party, sent a single, cryptic text to Jade that just said something happened tonight and I don't know what to do about it, and then face-planted onto my duvet with my jacket still on.
By 8:15 AM, my phone was screaming with seventeen unread messages.
Jade: WHAT HAPPENED. MILA. WHAT HAPPENED.
Jade: Okay it's been four hours I'm calling you at nine if you don't answer.
Jade: It's a boy isn't it. IT'S A BOY.
Priya: I heard from Jade. Call us.
Tessa: Hey. I know you probably got home late. When you're up, can we talk?
I sat up, the room spinning for a second.
Tessa's message carried a different kind of weight. She'd been a ghost to me all Thursday and Friday, wrapped in that loaded silence that said she was waiting for me to hit the wall she'd already bled against. For her to reach out the morning after the party meant the news had already traveled.
I called her before I even made it to the bathroom. She picked up on the second ring.
"Tell me everything," she said. No preamble. No "good morning."
"How do you already know?"
"Because Petra is a sieve. She's supposedly Bianca's shadow, but she's constitutionally incapable of keeping a secret if it's juicy enough."
*A pause, heavy with subtext.*
"She said you clapped back at Bianca in front of thirty people. In her own house."
"She swung first, Tessa."
"I know she did. She always does." Another pause, longer this time. "Are you okay?"
"Yeah," I said, and the weird part was, I meant it. The adrenaline had curdled into a strange, cold clarity. "I'm actually fine."
"Mila." Her voice shifted, it became careful, clinical. "What she's going to do now is worse. That's the playbook. The public embarrassment was just the opening act. When she can't make you look small, she moves to the things that actually cost you."
"Like what? My social life? I don't have one."
"Fuck no, like your scholarship.
Or whispering in the right ears so the faculty thinks you're a problem. Or getting to the people around you before you can."
*A beat.*
"She has Sienna for the dirty work. Sienna is a surgeon with a reputation."
I stood up and walked to the window. The street below was a ghost town. Sunday morning stillness. The sky was a flat, bruised grey that promised rain but hadn't committed to the fall yet.
"She's doing all this because of Zane," I said. It wasn't a question anymore.
*Silence.*
"Tessa. Talk to me."
"Yes," she said finally. "She's doing it because of Zane."
"Tell me. The real version. You said 'different day'... it's Sunday. It doesn't get more 'different' than this."
I heard her take a breath, the sound of someone deciding whether to hand over a map of a minefield.
"Bianca and Zane dated for eight months last year," she said. "It was the kind of wreck everyone could see coming from a mile away, but they just kept driving. She was obsessed, Mila, not the 'cute' kind.
The 'I-have-built-my-entire-identity-around-this-person' kind. And Zane..." She hesitated. "Zane isn't cruel. But he's also not the type to stay out of a sense of duty. He ended it in March. Clean, direct. No drama on his end."
"And her end?"
"She scorched the earth. She destroyed two girls she thought he'd talked to about her before the breakup. One of them didn't even make it to finals. She just... left."
I let that sit in the air between us.
"So when he looked at me — "
"She saw a threat. Which means you're now on the list." Tessa's voice was flat, devoid of comfort. "I'm not telling you this to scare you. I'm telling you because you need to know what kind of game you're in."
"I can handle it."
"That's what they both said." She didn't say it to be mean. Just honest. "I'm on your side, Mila. Just... take this seriously."
"I am," I said. " I promise I am."
After we hung up, I sat back on the bed. I thought about Zane walking me to the door. About the way he'd said "Yeah, me too," like the words had escaped before he could catch them.
Then I thought about the girl who left school mid-term.
I picked up my phone and scrolled to Ace's number; the one written in that bold, sprawling hand. I stared at the digits for a long minute.
I typed: Is Zane awake?
The three dots popped up instantly.
Ace: Probably. He doesn't sleep much. Why?
Me: I need to ask him something.
Ace: Ask me instead.
Me: It's about him specifically.
A longer pause this time. The dots danced, vanished, then came back with a vengeance.
Ace: What did Tessa tell you?
I set the phone face-up on the duvet and watched it glow. He knew. Of course he knew. He'd been Zane's shadow since they were nine; he'd seen the whole wreckage. The fact that he'd jumped straight to Tessa meant I was finally hitting the core of the story.
My phone lit up again.
Ace: Mila. Whatever she told you, just talk to him. He'll tell you the truth. He always does.
"He always does."
There was something weighted in that. It didn't sound like blind loyalty; it sounded like a warning.
I typed back: Okay.
I put the phone down, walked to the sink, and started brushing my teeth, watching my reflection in the mirror. I didn't look like a girl who was about to be destroyed. I looked like a girl who was tired of being told what to be afraid of.
Outside, the sky finally made up its mind.
The first heavy drops of rain began to smear against the glass.