"You were home late last night," Frank Tancredi remarked, as his daughter sat opposite him at the great narrow dining table where they usually had their routine of breakfasting and news-reading.

Sara sought hiding into the task of peeling an apple, which her cramped stomach suggested she wouldn't be able to eat.

"Was I?" She said. "I didn't realize. I ate with the girls at the pub. You didn't mind?"

"No, no. What time did you get back?"

Sara licked her lips. As she didn't know when precisely her father had gone to bed, it was best to remain vague.

"I didn't see what time it was, but it can't have been very late."

"Before midnight?"

She hesitated, feeling trapped. "Yes, surely before that."

Frank resumed reading his article.

Sara looked down at her apple, half-peeled, and the white exposed flesh filled her mouth with bile.

All night, she'd tossed and turned, thinking maybe she should pretend she was sick today. This was a bad idea, for many reasons. First, it might have given Frank the idea that she'd been out late or drinking at the pub. Second, it would only be delaying the inevitable, and Sara was always the rip-the-band-aid-straight-away kind of person.

Sooner or later, she would have to face school, and to dig her head in the sand for a while would only show Gretchen how much power she had, anyhow.

Sara was well-placed to know that where Gretchen saw vulnerabilities, she would only press her fingernails deeper into the wound to draw blood.

But what should Sara do, when she saw them in the halls?

Just ignore them? That would be immature. But if she went to them, that gave Gretchen an opportunity to ignore her, and wouldn't that be worse?

After an interminable while of sitting in silence while her father sat reading the paper, Sara could finally get up and say she was running late to catch her bus.

"Aren't you hungry?" Frank surprised her by asking. "You didn't eat anything."

"I, uh –" Sara tried to think of something that would turn him off and said, "New diet."

Frank hid his face back in the news as if the mere thought of being his daughter's confidant when it came to what he no doubt viewed as 'girly concerns' were some contagious disease.

"Well, you don't want to be late for school. Off you go, girl."

…

It didn't feel like she was walking into the same building as she had known for three years going on four, that morning, or even a place she was remotely familiar with.

Sara had read about this in some science article last week, how the body reacts to the smell of danger: how, suddenly, the whole world that surrounds you seems to turn into a hostile environment.

Even the bus ride had been off, although Gretchen always drove to school in her own car. Suddenly, the usual chatter of throbbing conversations was no longer just noise to Sara, it was rumors. Every pair of eyes that met hers sent her body into alarm, and she hurried into the first empty seat she could find and shoved headphones over her ears, without even plugging them into her phone.

Whether she was being paranoid or just aware to her new situation, she was probably going to find out soon enough.

At school, on her way to her locker, she thought the groups of students parted to let her through like the red sea.

Am I dangerous to talk to now, poisonous to touch?

Sara grabbed her history text book and the books for her next periods, too, because she'd rather avoid unnecessary trips down the hall.

When she closed the door of her locker, just like in a movie, there was someone's face waiting for her behind it, though not the face she had expected to see.

Sara gasped and had to tighten her hold around her load of books not to drop any.

"Lincoln. You scared me."

The young man just peered earnestly at her face. His green eyes squinted into small slits, appraising her anew, as if all this time he had been around her and had only recently found out that she was really an especially dangerous snake species.

"Can we talk?" He said.

"Uh – now?"

There was little doubt that the students in the hall were chattering about them, as their eyes were unabashedly fixed in their direction.

And why did all the students seem to be in groups, why was alone such a noticeable dangerous state in high school?

Lincoln stared back at her, unmerciful. "Yeah."

Sara swallowed. "Okay. Let's just not get late for class –"

"Is Michael your boyfriend now?"

Her jaw dropped at the suddenness of it. She'd expected they were going to walk away, to somewhere more private. Though probably, Sara disappearing with another boy would not have made things easier for her.

"No," she said.

But at the same time, she was wondering just how true that answer was. Though she definitely had not asked him out in any traditional way, and their evening together last night could hardly qualify as a regular 'date', maybe they would never be anything that fit the preestablished labels of her schoolmates.

Lincoln's voice hadn't softened, nor had the steel green look in his eyes. "Because it looked like that, from a distance."

"Well, it didn't feel like that to me. And I don't think he –"

"No, you don't really trouble your head about boys' feelings, do you? Sending mixed messages, as long as your own head is clear, that's all right with you."

"You're being a jerk. Can we not make this about something it isn't?"

He sighed, "I feel like everything's about something coded with you. Like it's all games."

Now, this wasn't fair, and Sara wasn't going to have it. "I've been nothing but straight with you, Linc. I said I wanted to be friends, that's all, and that's what we've been doing. Exactly what is coded about that?"

"So where'd you go?"

"What?"

"With Michael," he spat the word like it was a disgusting lump of dirt.

Sara slammed the door of her locker, vaguely wondering if, from afar, this looked like a quarrel between lovers.

"You know what? That's really none of your –"

"Burrows."

Sara felt like Gretchen's slim hand had snuck into her chest and squeezed at all she could find.

She turned around to find her friend brightly smiling at the scene, her lips red as ever, her grin unforgiving. "Just look at you," she said, her eyes still on Lincoln. "You look like you're about to burst."

"Would you give us a moment, Morgan? We weren't finished."

Gretchen's smile became colder at the harshness in Lincoln's voice.

Sara herself was getting rather tired. If Lincoln was going to behave like the macho man everyone around school made him out to be, then she had no interest in being his friend.

She hadn't wanted to hurt him last night, and part of herself suffered for it. But she also thought it was completely unfair for him to act like there'd been a secret agreement between them all along, that though she'd said no to being his girlfriend, they would actually get there in the end, and he got a right to say who she could or couldn't date in the meantime.

"I think Sara's finished with you," Gretchen said. "Aren't you, S?"

Sara looked back at Lincoln in helpless silence.

The way Gretchen had framed it, there was little more she could do.

If she said no, then Lincoln would only add that to her 'mixed messaging'. Maybe a clean cut was for the best.

Yet she couldn't forgive herself for the cruelty of it, like Gretchen had just stabbed Lincoln in the heart and she just stood there, not touching the sword, not trying to help him.

When finally he walked away, Sara felt it had lasted forever, that moment of looking at each other in agonizing silence, and the relief to be released from the grip of his burning eyes was soon blasted away when she found herself facing the girls –

Lisa, Nika, and Gretchen.

"What a loser," Gretchen sighed, her eyes following Lincoln beneath long blackened lashes. "Never would have bothered to notice him if I thought he was going to join the no-means-yes team."

Sara found it safer to remain silent.

Instead of studying Gretchen, who was a master at acting, she looked at Lisa and Nika, but their faces were blank and terrified, of little help to figure out what was going on.

"Gretchen, I know you're angry," Sara said, because the idea that the four of them could go back to normal after what had happened last night was ridiculous, and she knew Gretchen would only be going with it if could lead her to some greater, meaner finish.

"Angry?" Her voice was the same sweet honey shade as ever. "Nonsense. I don't tell you who to date, S. It's your life. Your decision."

Maybe that's when it struck Sara she had always seen Gretchen's performance and yet, she'd never thought to try and break it until now. After all, everyone in school was acting. Gretchen was only the best at it. But now, that syrupy voice felt only like a trap meant to draw small creatures and entangle their limbs into a lure.

As Sara stared into Gretchen's face, she realized just how deep a predicament she was in.

What could she do now? Walk away, when Gretchen was – visibly – offering friendship? But there would be a sting at the end of it, Sara knew this for certain. Just how bad a sting, only time could tell.

"Well," Gretchen said when the bell rang, her black shoulder-length hair bouncing supply as she looked behind her. "We should get going. Class is about to start."

Cautious, Sara followed the girls down the hall, casting glances at Lisa and Nika every once in a while, but their faces were the same brittle masks as before.

What was Gretchen up to? What did she want?

The only thing Sara knew for certain was what she didn't want, and that was going back to hanging out as if nothing had happened.

She must think I'm stupid, Sara reckoned.

Or maybe just weak. Maybe just too nice to push away old friends on suspicion and instinct alone, when they themselves were betraying no outward signs of hostility.

Sara still didn't know what to do about this when she stepped into the classroom, which had already started to fill up.

"Go on," the teacher said, "take your seats."

And Sara went to take hers in the front row, when the vacancy of the chair next to hers struck her senses as abominably wrong.

Michael was always there before her, always, even on that first day, when his presence had intrigued her so.

Instead of sitting down, Sara cast a look behind her, scanning until she found Gretchen, but there was nothing to read on her smiling face.

"Miss Tancredi, please sit down."

"But –"

Sara's voice seemed to turn solid in her throat.

Giving up on Gretchen, her eyes had found Lincoln instead, and the way his gaze fled hers, staring intently at the window instead, with his hands squeezed into fists above the table, was good enough to give her one unambiguous message.

Michael would not be coming to school today.

…

End Notes: Thanks for all your support. Please share your thoughts in the comment section!