Chapter 1

Three schools in four years.

You'd think I'd be used to it by now — the new hallways, the new faces, the same old feeling of being the biggest person in every room. But standing in front of Jenkins High on a Monday morning in September, my stomach doing backflips under my size-18 jeans, I felt like I was doing this for the very first time.

"Fresh start," I whispered to myself. "You're allowed a fresh start."

My therapist's words. Not mine.

I pulled my backpack straps tighter and walked through the double doors.

The hallway hit me like a wall — noise, bodies, lockers slamming. Nobody looked at me. That was good. At my last school, people looked. People always looked, and then they whispered, and then I'd spend lunch in the bathroom pretending I wasn't hungry.

Not here. Not this time.

I found room 114. AP English. I picked this class on purpose — no jocks, no cheerleaders, just nerds and try-hards. My people.

I was wrong.

The second I walked in, I saw him.

Back row, slouched low in his chair, legs stretched out like he owned the place. Dark curly hair. Sharp jaw. Arms that didn't belong in an English classroom — they belonged on a sports poster.

He was the kind of beautiful that made you forget your own name.

And I was staring.

I knew I was staring. My brain was screaming at me to stop. But my legs had gone stupid and my eyes wouldn't move and I was just standing there in the doorway like an idiot, backpack too heavy, heart too loud.

His eyes flicked up.

Met mine.

I looked away so fast I almost gave myself whiplash.

Move, Nora. Sit down. Be invisible.

The only empty seat was next to him.

Of course it was.

I squeezed between the desks, hyper-aware of every inch of space my body took up. My hip brushed someone's chair. I muttered "sorry" without looking.

I sat down. Put my bag on the floor. Opened my notebook. Stared at the blank page like it contained the meaning of life.

Don't look at him. Don't look at him. Don't —

"You're new."

His voice was low. Closer than I expected.

I turned my head. He was leaning toward me, one elbow on his desk, eyes scanning my face like he was reading a book he didn't plan on finishing.

Up close, he was worse. Green eyes. A tiny scar through his left eyebrow. The faint smell of something clean — soap, maybe. The kind of boy who didn't try and didn't need to.

"Yeah," I said. "Just transferred."

He didn't smile. Didn't nod. Just looked at me — then looked at the chair I was sitting in, then back at me.

"Careful," he said. "That seat has a weight limit."

He said it quietly. Almost gently. Like he was telling me the weather.

My face went hot. Then cold. Then nothing.

The girl in front of us let out a sharp laugh, then covered her mouth. The guy across the aisle glanced over. I couldn't tell if he'd heard or not. It didn't matter.

The words were already inside me, spreading like ink in water.

I opened my mouth to say something. I don't know what — something sharp, something brave, something that would make him feel two inches tall. But nothing came out. My throat had closed up. My eyes were burning and I would rather die — literally, actually die — than cry in front of this boy on my first day at a new school.

So I did what I always do.

I turned back to my notebook. I picked up my pen. And I wrote the date in the top right corner, September 4th, in perfect handwriting, like nothing had happened.

Like I couldn't feel him still looking at me.

Like it didn't hurt.

The teacher walked in. Started talking about the syllabus. I didn't hear a word. I was too busy doing math — calculating how many days until graduation, how many classes I'd have to sit next to this boy, how many more ways he'd find to remind me of the thing I already thought about every second of every day.

My body. My stupid, too-big, takes-up-too-much-space body.

New hallway. New face. New boy with a beautiful jaw and a mouth like a knife.

Same story.

Fresh start, my therapist said.

Right.

I clicked my pen shut and made myself a promise — the same one I always made, at every new school, in every new seat, next to every new version of the same cruel boy:

Don't let them see you break.

The bell rang. I stood up, grabbed my bag, and walked out without looking back.

I made it all the way to the bathroom before my hands started shaking.