1
The main hallway at Lincoln High always smelled the same — cheap disinfectant losing a fight against gym-class sweat, with a leftover thread of floral perfume pooling inside the metal lockers. It was a smell I’d stopped noticing years ago, but today, for some reason, I wanted to say something about it out loud, just to fill the space between one class and the next.
The four of us were walking to math, still digesting fifty minutes of English in which Ms. Reynolds had spent the entire period picking apart a poem about birds that nobody was going to remember existed once the test was over. Madison walked on my left, Brooke on my right, and Taylor a step behind, like always — I never could tell if that was her choice or if we just never left her enough room.
“You know what I think is a complete waste of time?” I said, hitching my bag up on my shoulder. “All of this. Nobody’s ever going to sit around discussing symbolic birds later in life. The only thing that matters in this building is one thing, and it’s not on the board.”
“Status,” Madison finished, like it was obvious. Because it was.
That was the rule nobody had ever written down but everyone at Lincoln High had lived by since the first day of freshman year: it didn’t matter who knew the most, who had the best grades, who was getting into which college. What mattered was who could walk down that hallway and make people stop talking for a second. And we did that. Every single morning.
That’s when I spotted Clementine leaning against her locker, laughing at something with a friend, her cheer uniform stretched a little too tight around the middle.
“Did you guys see Clementine?” I said, dropping my voice just enough to sound discreet, knowing full well I didn’t. “She should probably lay off the sweets before bed. That belly’s about to pop right out of the uniform.”
The others laughed, almost in unison — the kind of laugh that doesn’t need to find anything funny anymore, just a reflex, trained in over years of practice.
“I noticed,” Madison said, in that tone of hers that always managed to sound bored and devastating at the same time. “There’s no standards left. They’ll let any little piggy on the squad now.”
We laughed again. I knew it was cruel. I think we all did. But there was something about laughing together that made that part disappear — like the cruelty stopped belonging to any one of us the second we shared it, turned into some plain fact about the world, something you could say without any weight attached, without an owner.
We kept walking, and I felt what I felt every single day without ever saying it out loud: the stares. They came from every direction — the girls leaning against their lockers, the boys sitting on the floor cramming notes at the last minute, the freshmen who hadn’t figured out yet where they fit. The girls looked with the kind of envy they tried to pass off as indifference, quick glances, quicker looks away. The boys didn’t even bother hiding it.
I never admitted this to anyone, not even Madison. But I loved it. I loved being wanted. I loved being envied. Every walk down that hallway felt like breathing in air that was somehow more concentrated than what the rest of the world got to breathe, and for those few minutes between classes, I owned the entire place. No exaggeration.
That’s when we passed the corner where the “weird kids” always gathered — two boys and a girl, sitting on the floor with their books spread out, going over something for chemistry or physics, it didn’t matter which. Brooke slowed down just enough to make sure they knew we’d seen them.
“Morning, freaks,” she said, with a smile that would’ve looked friendly to anyone who didn’t know her. “Love the outfits. Hand-me-downs from your grandfather?”
One of the boys looked down at his notes. The girl seemed to shrink even smaller, if that was possible. And we laughed — not just the four of us, but a few other students nearby too, pulled into the moment because we’d built it, and it was easier to just fall in.
That’s when Taylor, who’d been quiet up to that point, said, almost to herself, “Chris is actually kind of cute. If you ignore the hair.”
I stopped. Actually stopped walking, for a second, turning to her with one eyebrow raised.
“Who’s Chris?” I asked, looking over at the group on the floor with an expression I didn’t even try to soften. Disgust, if we’re calling it what it was.
“That one. With the long hair,” Taylor said, tipping her chin toward the tallest boy in the group, who kept his eyes on his notes like he had no idea he was being picked apart.
We all laughed again, but this time I wanted to add something.
“You running a fever, Taylor?” I asked, a smile creeping onto my face. “I mean, I get it, honestly. That one looks contagious.”
The laugh came louder this time. Taylor went completely quiet and turned red, her eyes locked on the floor in front of her, and for a second — just a second — something in me noticed she hadn’t laughed along with the rest of us. But the thought passed as quickly as it came, swallowed up by the sound of our own voices.
We kept walking, past the bulletin board near the front office now, that mural covered in photos from old events, yellowing newspaper clippings from the drama club, cafeteria rules nobody ever read. There was always something new pinned over something older, layer after layer of Lincoln High squeezed into one square of cork.
One of the pictures made me slow down without really knowing why. It was an old photo, a little faded, from some event years back — but what caught my eye wasn’t the photo itself. It was a drawing pinned beside it, half-hidden under a chess club flyer: a pentagram, hand-drawn, with strange symbols at each point that I didn’t recognize.
I stood there for a second, staring, not entirely sure why — maybe it was just the strangeness of finding something like that stuck between club flyers and bus schedules. But the bell rang somewhere down the hall, and Madison was already two steps ahead of me, and I let it go without giving it another second of my attention. There were more important things going on.
It was turning the corner into the hallway leading to math class that my heart did a jump that had nothing to do with being late.
Sean was standing there, leaning against the lockers with his arm around Tiffany.
My biggest rival for as long as I could remember having rivals. And now with the guy I wanted. I never could say for sure whether I wanted him for him — for the smile, for the way he always looked like he’d wandered out of some expensive ad — or whether I wanted him because he was hers. But in that moment, the difference didn’t matter at all. It was just pure, hot rage, climbing up through my chest.
I looked at him as I walked by. He looked back, just for a second, his eyes finding mine, and then looked away almost instantly, like he’d touched something that burned.
That bothered me more than if he hadn’t looked at all.
“What are you staring at, bitch?” Tiffany’s voice cut across the whole hallway, sharp and loaded with that rehearsed contempt she saved especially for me. “Watch it, unless you want me to teach you a lesson.”
I stopped. Turned around slowly, like I had all the time in the world, because I did.
“Tiffany. Didn’t even see you there,” I said, in the fakest, sweetest voice I could manage. “Wasn’t looking at anyone. You really need to let go of this persecution thing you’ve got going. I didn’t kick you off the squad.”
The others laughed behind me, a small, sharp chorus.
I had, obviously. I’d made up a story about her and the history teacher — a good story, with just enough detail to sound true and just enough vagueness that it could never be fully disproven. He got fired before the semester ended. She got kicked off the squad, where she’d been captain for two years. It had been a perfect plan, one of my best, and even now I felt a strange kind of pride whenever I thought about it, even knowing I shouldn’t.
Tiffany stepped closer, her face nearly touching mine.
“I know it was you,” she said, quiet, just for me to hear. “And one day I’m going to prove it.”
I was about to say something back — I already had the line ready, sharp, waiting to come out — when Sean pulled her by the arm.
“Not worth it, Tif,” he said, not even looking at me again. “Just let it go.”
And it landed like a punch.
Not because of Tiffany. Because of Sean. Because of the way he said it — not worth it — like I was just some random thing in the hallway that didn’t deserve his time, not even enough for a response. Like out of everyone in that entire school, I was the one person who wasn’t even worth a second look.
I felt my face heat up and swallowed down whatever that feeling was before it could show.
“We’re going to be late,” I told the others, my voice harder than I meant it to be, and started walking without waiting for an answer.
I walked the rest of the hallway with my eyes fixed straight ahead, my bag pressed tight against my shoulder, feeling the kind of anger that doesn’t burn off — it just gets stored away for later. I let Madison and Brooke fall behind, laughing about something else already, I don’t even know what. The only thing I could hear was Sean’s sentence, looping over and over inside my head, an annoying, constant replay.
Not worth it.
I walked into math class and sat down in my usual seat without saying hi to anyone, my fingers still gripping the strap of my bag.
Someday, I thought, staring straight at the board without really seeing it. Someday you’re going to be mine, Sean. No guy has ever said no to me.
You won’t be the first.
