Chapter 2
It didn't take Ethan Cross long to learn every soft spot I had.
Week one: the comments were about my body.
"Move over, Bailey. Some of us need the hallway too."
Bailey. Always my last name. Never Nora. Like I wasn't a person — just a thing in the way.
Loud enough for his friends to hear. Quiet enough that no teacher ever did.
Week two: they got personal.
I was eating lunch with Mara — the only person at Jenkins High who'd talked to me like a human being on day one — when he walked past our table. Didn't stop. Didn't even slow down. Just looked at my tray, looked at me, and said, "Didn't you already have lunch?"
Mara's fork hit the table. "What the hell is wrong with you?"
He was already gone. His friends were laughing somewhere behind us.
I told Mara it was fine. She told me to stop saying that.
Week three: he found the thing that hurt the most.
We were in P.E. Coach Davis made us run laps. I came in last. Obviously. I always came in last. My face was red and my lungs were burning and I was trying so hard not to look like I was dying, even though I was.
Ethan was leaning against the bleachers, barely sweating, arms crossed. As I passed him, he said — not to me, to his friend, but loud enough:
"At least she's trying, right?"
And then he laughed.
That one broke something. Not because it was the cruelest thing he'd said — it wasn't. But because it was dressed up as kindness. Because if I got angry, I'd look crazy. He was being nice, Nora. He said you were trying. What's your problem?
And that's what killed me. He didn't just hurt me. He made me feel stupid for being hurt.
Mara wanted me to report him. I said no. She wanted me to confront him. I said no. She wanted to confront him. I said absolutely not.
"Then what are you going to do?" she asked, sitting cross-legged on my bed one Sunday, painting her nails like we were having a normal conversation about a normal problem.
"Survive until graduation."
"That's not a plan, Nora."
"It's worked three times before."
She looked at me with those big brown eyes that always saw too much.
"You deserve better than surviving."
I didn't answer. I just watched her paint her left hand — messy, uneven, perfect. And I thought: maybe. But not here. Not with him sitting right next to me in every English class, smelling like soap and cruelty.
Here's the weird thing, though.
It happened on a Wednesday. Ethan bumped my shoulder in the hallway — hard, deliberate — and my binder hit the floor, papers scattering everywhere. His friends howled. I crouched down to pick them up, face burning, and he was already walking away.
But then he glanced back.
Just for a second. And something crossed his face — his jaw clenched, his eyes dropped to the mess on the floor, and he looked almost —
No.
No, Nora. Stop.
He did not look guilty. He did not feel bad. You are not going to be the pathetic fat girl who convinces herself the boy who humiliates her every day secretly has a heart of gold. That's not real life. That's a bad movie.
I picked up my papers. I went to class. I forgot about it.
Except I didn't. Because the next time he said something cruel, I watched for it again — that half-second flinch, that tightness in his jaw — and it was there. Blink and you'd miss it.
Stop looking for things that aren't there.
I couldn't.
A Thursday in late September. I left my sketchbook in the art room — I'd started taking Art II as an elective, mostly because it was the one class Ethan wasn't in.
Or so I thought.
I went back after the last bell. The hallways were almost empty. My sneakers squeaked on the floor. I could hear the marching band practicing outside, muffled and far away, like the school was breathing.
The art room door was half open, light spilling out.
I pushed it open and stopped.
Ethan Cross was sitting at one of the back tables, hunched over a sketchpad. Alone. No friends. No smirk. No audience.
He was drawing.
His hand moved in slow, careful strokes — not the lazy, careless way he did everything else. The late afternoon sun came through the window and caught the side of his face, and he looked — I don't know. Soft. Younger. Like he'd taken off a mask and forgotten to check if anyone was watching.
He hadn't heard me come in.
I couldn't see what was on the page. Just his hand, his focus, and that face — a version of him I didn't know existed.
My sketchbook was on the shelf by the door. Right there. I could grab it and leave. He'd never know I was here.
I reached for it. My fingers closed around the spine.
And a stupid, reckless part of my brain whispered: What is he drawing?
I left before I could find out.
But all the way home, all through dinner, all night staring at my ceiling in the dark — I couldn't stop seeing it. That face. His real face. The one he didn't show anyone.
The boy in that art room was not the boy who told me my chair had a weight limit.
So which one was he?
