Chapter 2 The Boy Who Does Not Knock

Lena's POV

I did not sleep.

Not really. I kept one eye on the door all night like something was going to come through it, and by the time grey light started creeping under the curtain, I had maybe three broken hours and a headache sitting right behind my eyes.

I got up, grabbed my toiletry bag, and went to the bathroom.

That was my first mistake.

I am mid-brush, toothpaste foaming, hair a disaster, wearing an oversized shirt that says CAMP RIDGEWOOD 2019, which, for the record, I never even attended. I bought it at a thrift store, when the bathroom door swings open like I am not in it.

He does not knock.

He does not pause.

He walks in the way people walk into empty rooms, already reaching for the shelf above the sink, and I spin around with my toothbrush still in my mouth, and we are suddenly two feet apart.

Declan Calloway.

He is taller than I expected. Sleep-rumpled in a way that should not work but somehow does. He looks at me the way you look at a chair that showed up in the wrong room. Not angry. Not embarrassed. Just mildly inconvenienced by my existence.

I stare at him with toothpaste on my chin.

He reaches past me, picks up his deodorant from the shelf, and walks back out.

No sorry. No explanation. The door does not even click shut all the way behind him.

I stand there for a full five seconds. Then I rinse my mouth, look at myself in the mirror, toothpaste chin, wild hair, camp shirt I never earned, and think: great. Perfect. This is my life now.

Downstairs, my mother is at the stove making eggs as she has always lived here. Grant is at the table with coffee and his phone. They look like a magazine photo. I pour myself juice and sit down and say nothing.

Then Declan comes downstairs.

He sits across from me. He does not look at me. He takes the section of toast his dad slides toward him and scrolls through his phone with the other hand. My mother says good morning to him with that warm, trying voice she has been using since yesterday, and he says morning back, just the one word, flat and clean, and goes back to his phone.

I watch him for exactly three seconds before I look away.

My mother catches my eye across the table and gives me the look. The one that says please try. I give her the look back that says I am sitting here, aren't I. She gives me the look that says That's not the same thing. We have an entire argument without opening our mouths.

Grant says, "Declan, Lena starts at Westfield Monday. Maybe you could show her around."

Declan looks up from his phone. He looks at me. It is the first time he has actually looked at me and not through me, and I wish immediately that he had kept looking through me, because this is worse. His eyes are dark and unreadable, and he does the thing where he seems to measure something about you in two seconds and then decides it is not worth his time.

"Sure," he says. He goes back to his phone.

One word again. Sure. Like, I am a chore he just added to his list.

I push eggs around my plate and tell myself I do not care. I have never needed anyone to be nice to me. I have been navigating school alone since I was twelve, since my dad left, and I became the girl everyone felt slightly sorry for. I do not need Declan Calloway to show me around anything. I will find my own way like I always do.

After breakfast, I go back upstairs. His door is open this time. I glance in without meaning to.

His room is not what I expected. I expected something messy and careless to match his personality. It is actually clean. Books stacked on the desk, real ones, thick ones, the kind you read because you want to. A hoodie was thrown over the chair. One photo on the wall, just one, and from the hallway, I cannot see who is in it.

I look away before he can catch me looking.

I go to my room, sit on my bed, and open my phone. Three texts from Priya. The last one says: Okay, you're either dead or you found a cute boy. Which is it?

I type back: neither. Go away. Then I delete it and type: I'll call you later. Then I sit there and think about the door handle turning last night. Three seconds. Someone was testing whether my door was locked.

And now I know it was him.

Because I saw the way he moved this morning, like he owns every room he walks into, like doors are optional, like the usual rules do not apply to him. Turning a door handle in the dark is exactly something he would do. Not to scare me. Just to see.

Just to see.

I do not know what that means, and it bothers me more than it should.

I spend the rest of the morning unpacking. I put my books on the shelf. I set my phone charger on the desk. I hang the one picture I brought, my dad and me from three years ago, before everything, inside the closet door where I can see it, but nobody else can.

At noon, I go down for water, and the house is quiet. My mother and Grant have gone out somewhere. I am alone in the kitchen when I notice something on the counter.

A key.

Small. Silver. With a little paper tag tied to it with a string.

I pick it up. The tag has two words on it in handwriting I do not recognize.

Bathroom. Knock.

I turn around slowly.

Declan is leaning in the kitchen doorway with his arms crossed, watching me read it. His face gives nothing away. He is not smiling exactly, but something at the corner of his mouth is doing something that is not quite neutral.

He holds eye contact for exactly two seconds.

Then he pushes off the doorframe and walks away.

I stand there with the key in my hand and my heart doing something completely unreasonable inside my chest.

It is just a key. It is a bathroom key with a note about knocking. It means nothing except that he knows he walked in on me, and this is the closest thing to an apology he is apparently capable of.

It means nothing.

I tell myself that three more times on the way back upstairs.

I am almost convinced when I pass his room and see his door is open again. The photo on his wall, the one I could not see from the hallway, is facing me now.

I stop without meaning to.

It is a photo of a woman. Dark-haired, bright-eyed, laughing at whoever is taking the picture. She looks so much like Declan that it is not even a question who she is.

What stops me cold is not the photo itself.

It is the thick red X drawn across it in marker.

And the single word written underneath in that same handwriting from the key tag.

Gone.