Chapter 2 The Invasion

Avery's POV

My mother told me over cold coffee that we were moving into the Ryder estate. She said it the same way she told me everything lately, like she was testing whether the words would break if she pushed them out too fast. Two months behind on rent, the landlord had stopped calling and started sending letters instead, and I already knew all of this because I'd seen her open those envelopes with her hands shaking before tucking them into a drawer like they'd disappear if she closed it fast enough.

"Mrs. Ryder offered us the cottage," she said, still stirring the cold coffee. "She heard about our situation through the school board."

I set my mug down and looked at her, waiting for her to explain how the school board knew anything about our situation, but she just kept moving the spoon in circles. "Mrs. Ryder is the mother of the boy who threw that party," I said. She nodded slowly and I watched her face shift into something careful and tired, the exhaustion of someone who'd been fighting alone for too long and had finally run out of options. I wanted to tell her I'd rather sleep in my car than move into a house owned by people who probably already saw the video, who probably already knew exactly why my scholarship got pulled and exactly whose name was attached to the anonymous posts that kept appearing. But she was already carrying everything, and I couldn't add this.

"When do we go?" I asked instead. "Tomorrow morning," she said, and the way she said it made me understand there wasn't going to be any more discussion.

The move happened faster than I expected. Four boxes, two suitcases, and a bag of groceries my mother insisted on bringing even though the cottage had its own kitchen. I packed my laptop and my notebooks and the stack of code I'd been working on since the party, and I didn't pack anything from the walls because there wasn't anything to pack. The Ryder estate appeared at the end of a long driveway lined with oak trees, and the house itself was three stories of stone and glass with enormous windows that caught the morning light like they were designed to make anyone who looked at them feel small. The cottage sat behind the main house tucked behind a garden that was still blooming even though it was almost October, and it was small and clean and functional and nothing like the apartment I'd grown up in.

"Mrs. Ryder invited us to dinner tonight," my mother said while we unpacked my box of code notebooks. "The whole family. To welcome us properly." I closed my laptop and looked at her, and she paused before saying his name the way people do when they know something is going to land hard. "Jaxon," she said, and it did land, right in my chest where it stayed. He'd been at the party that night, standing at the edge of the crowd with his arms crossed, just watching while someone filmed me stumbling through the living room. He hadn't helped and he hadn't tried to stop it and he'd just stood there and watched.

"You don't have to talk to him," my mother said. "You just have to be polite." I told her I could be polite, and she looked at me for a long moment before nodding like she was trying to believe me.

I got through dinner by not looking at him. Mrs. Ryder was warm and gracious and asked questions about my classes and my coding projects like she actually wanted to know the answers, and she had the kind of face that made you want to tell her everything which made me want to tell her nothing. Mr. Ryder was more focused on Jaxon's upcoming game and the scouts who might be watching, and he asked about Jaxon's shoulder and Jaxon said it was fine and Mr. Ryder said he needed to be more than fine. Jaxon said almost nothing else the entire meal. He passed the potatoes without making eye contact and asked for the salt in a voice that had no inflection, and I did the same thing and pretended he wasn't there. We were both very good at it.

The support page had started the night of the party, just a joke at first, a place to post embarrassing photos and discuss the incident in detail. But it had stayed up and it had grown, and people I'd never met left comments about the way I'd looked that night and the way I'd acted and the things they'd heard I said. It had been two months and the page still got new posts every week, and someone was keeping it alive on purpose. I thought about that while Mrs. Ryder passed the dessert and asked if I was excited to be living so close to the main house. I thought about it while she smiled and told me I could use the east wing kitchen whenever I wanted. I thought about it while Jaxon pushed his plate away and said he had film to watch and left the room without looking back.

That night I sat in my new bedroom with my laptop open to the support page, scrolling through the posts that all felt like they were written by the same hand. The original video was still there with forty-two comments and counting, and the photo someone had taken of me leaving the party had twenty-seven more. A poll about whether I'd been aware of what I was doing that night, the numbers shifting every time I refreshed. New post, posted two hours ago, a photo of the cottage from the outside taken from the main house, and the caption read Enjoy the new house.

I stared at the photo for a long time, trying to remember if I'd seen anyone standing at the edge of the property that morning. The cottage was at the back of the property hidden by trees, and you couldn't see it from the main house unless you went to the east side and looked past the garden. Someone had walked to the edge of the property specifically to take this photo, someone who knew I'd moved in today, and my phone lit up on the desk beside me with a text from an unknown number. Three words, the same three words from the caption. Enjoy the new house.

I put the phone down face-first on the desk and tried to breathe through the thing that was tightening in my chest. The video had been bad enough and the lost scholarship had been worse, but this was someone following me into the one place I'd thought might be safe and letting me know they could reach me anywhere. I lay in the dark of a bedroom that felt borrowed and temporary and thought about all the things I'd survived in the past two months, and this was just one more thing. One more house and one more impossible situation and one more person who wanted me to know I wasn't safe anywhere. I closed my eyes and told myself I'd figure it out tomorrow, because I always did, but even as I said it I wasn't sure I believed it anymore.