Layla stared at her phone until the screen burned into her retinas. The two blue checkmarks under her "Where are you?" text were like two tiny daggers. He had read it. He was active. But the typing bubbles never appeared. The silence was louder than any argument they'd ever had, a cold vacuum that sucked the remaining warmth of Liam's kiss right out of her chest.
She didn't sleep. She spent the night deleting and rewriting messages she never sent, eventually tossing the phone across the room in a fit of exhausted rage.
The next morning at school, the air felt thin. Layla spotted Jade in the hallway , looking infuriatingly unbothered in a black hoodie, his jaw set in that familiar, stubborn line. She didn't wait for him to look at her; she marched straight into his space.
"Why didn't you respond?" she demanded, her voice low but sharp enough to draw a few curious glances from passing students. "I messaged you. I saw the video, Jade. I saw you with that girl. If you're playing games, just tell me now so I can stop wasting my data on you."
Jade didn't flinch. slowly, he glanced up and looked down at her, his eyes like chips of flint. "I didn't respond because I don't answer to you, Layla. You want to talk about games? You were at a candlelit dinner with the Golden Boy last night. I saw the photos Sarah posted. You looked real comfortable."
"That was…"
"Mind your business," he interrupted, his voice dropping to a dangerous, icy whisper. "We aren't together. I don't owe you an itinerary of who I'm with, just like you don't owe me one for your dates with Liam. Stay in your lane."
His words felt like a slap. Before she could retort, his gaze shifted to someone behind her. Layla turned. Way down the corridor stood the girl from the video. Up close, she was impossible to ignore, edgy, confident, and watching them with a knowing smirk. Layla realized with a jolt of panic that this girl had probably been here all along, a hidden variable she'd been too blind to see.
Desperate to prove she wasn't affected, Layla spent lunch glued to Liam. They sat in the courtyard, their laughter intentionally loud. Liam was his usual, perfect self, attentive, kind, and completely unaware of the storm raging inside her.
"You seem... different today," Liam noted, reaching out to tuck a stray hair behind her ear. "More energetic."
"Just had a good night," Layla lied, though every time she looked at Liam's sweet smile, her mind flickered back to the coldness in Jade's eyes. It was exhausting, trying to balance the two of them. When the bell rang, Liam insisted on driving her to her shift at Tim Hortons. "A beautiful girl shouldn't have to take the bus to work," he joked.
Layla let him drop her off, leaning in for a brief, performative kiss that she hoped Jade, or someone who would tell Jade, would see.
The shift was a blur until the bell above the door chimed and a girl walked in who made the entire air in the shop shift. It was her. The bonfire girl.
Up close, she was breathtaking in a way that made Layla feel suddenly very small and very "plain." She was wearing a tiny black crop top that showed off a flat, toned stomach, paired with high-waisted denim shorts. A detailed floral tattoo wound its way down her arm, and a silver septum piercing caught the light every time she moved. She was curvy, confident, and exuded an effortless "cool" that Layla had spent months trying to mimic.
"Can I get a caramel frappe? Extra whip," the girl said, her voice smooth and melodic. She looked at Layla's name tag, then smiled, a genuine, disarming smile that caught Layla off guard. "Hi. I'm Kianna."
Layla felt her throat go dry. She forced her hands to stay steady on the register. "Layla. You're... you're Jade's friend, right?" She hated how high and tentative her voice sounded.
Kianna chuckled, a low, throaty sound as she pulled out her phone to pay. "Yeah. Something like that."
She took the frappe from Layla's trembling hand, gave a small wave, and walked out, her hips swaying with a confidence that felt like a challenge
The house felt too big as Layla stepped inside. The silence was heavy, broken only by the hum of the refrigerator and the distant sound of a siren somewhere on the Montreal streets. She went straight to her room, throwing her bag onto the chair and collapsing onto her bed.
She pulled out her phone, scrolling past Liam's sweet, consistent messages. She opened the video from the bonfire again. She paused it on Kianna's face, the effortless smile, the way she leaned into Jade as if she belonged there. Something like that. The words were a loop in Layla's mind, a piece of corrupt code she couldn't delete.
Was Kianna the person Jade was "taking it slow" with? Or was she the reason he didn't feel the need to move fast with anyone else?
Layla walked over to her window, staring at the dark gap between her house and his. For a second, she thought about opening the glass and calling out into the night, demanding the truth. But she remembered the coldness in his eyes in the hallway. Mind your business. He was pushing her toward Liam, toward the safe, predictable path. But as she sat there in the dark, she realized the most terrifying thing of all: she didn't want the safety. She didn't want the "Golden Boy" or the "Fresh Start." She wanted the boy who made her want to break every rule in her own system.
She looked at her reflection in the dark windowpane, the girl who was supposed to be a writer, a baker, a student with a plan. She looked like a stranger.
"I'm losing it," she whispered to the glass.
She turned away from the window and crawled under her covers, pulling them tight around her. She wasn't dreaming of Thailand or her novel anymore. She was dreaming of a bonfire she hadn't been invited to and a girl who knew Jade in a way she never would. The system hadn't just crashed; it was waiting for a reboot that might never come.