Chapter 4 The Rules

Avery's POV

Jaxon is waiting outside AP English when I get there Tuesday morning, shoulder against the wall, talking to two guys from the team. He sees me coming and says something that ends the conversation. They move off. He straightens.

"We need to talk about the house," he says.

"Good morning to you too."

He falls into step beside me. "There are things that need to be clear."

I push through the classroom door. "Then be clear."

He follows me in, which I didn't expect, and sits down in the empty seat next to mine, which I expected even less. The room is half full and three people look over immediately. I open my notebook and ignore all of them.

"The gym is mine six to seven AM and four to six PM," he says. "Don't come in during those times."

"I don't want your gym."

"The pool is shared but I'm in it Sunday mornings."

"I don't swim."

"The study on the second floor has my film on the hard drive. Don't touch it."

I look at him. "Are you done."

"Kitchen after ten is quiet hours. My mother sleeps light."

"Fine."

"And don't move my stuff. I have a system."

"Jaxon." I set my pen down. "I am not here by choice. I am not interested in your gym or your pool or your film. I am going to sit in my room, do my work, and pretend this is a library with better wifi. You will not know I exist."

He holds my eyes for a second. "You left your charger on the kitchen island this morning."

"I'll move it."

"And your shoes were by the back door."

"I said I'll move it."

Mr. Hale calls the class to order and Jaxon faces forward. I face forward. Four inches of air between us and neither of us moves into it.

He has good handwriting. I notice without meaning to, the way his notes come out clean and deliberate while Mr. Hale walks through the first chapter of the reading. No crossing out. No second guessing. He decides what matters before his pen touches the page.

I look back at my own notes and find I have filled half the margin with branching logic diagrams without realizing it.

Madison walks in four minutes late, scans the room, and goes still when she sees Jaxon sitting next to me. It lasts less than a second. She takes the seat one row back and two over and opens her book like she hadn't paused at all.

Her eyes stay on the back of my neck for the rest of the period. I can feel it the way you feel weather coming.

After class Jaxon stands, picks up his bag, and walks out without looking at me. I pack slowly, let the room empty, and head for the door.

Madison is waiting in the hallway, one shoulder against the lockers, nowhere to be.

"Careful," she says. "Getting cozy with Jaxon Ryder is a full contact sport. Girls have left this school over it."

"Good thing I'm not getting cozy with anyone."

"You're living in his house."

"My mother works for his family."

She tilts her head. "Does he know you watch him? In class just now?" A small smile. "You're not as invisible as you think you are, Avery."

She walks before I can answer.

I stand in the hallway while the crowd moves around me and tell myself it didn't land.

It landed.

I take the long route to third period through the east corridor past the tech lab and stop at the window. Empty this period. I have a key because Mr. Calloway handed it to me at the end of junior year after I won the regional coding competition for the second time, pressed it into my hand quietly without making a thing of it.

I unlock the door, sit down at the back terminal, and open my project files.

The narrative engine needs one more branch. The one where the player stops running and turns around to face whatever is behind them. I have been putting it off because I don't know yet what they are supposed to find when they turn. The game can't answer that until I do.

I start building the architecture anyway, laying the logic for a door before I know what's on the other side.

Sometimes that's the only way forward.

The period passes. The bell rings. I save, close out, and lock the lab behind me.

In the main corridor Jaxon is at his locker with two guys from the team, laughing at something on someone's phone. He doesn't see me. I walk past close enough to hear his voice and keep moving without slowing down.

Madison's words follow me all the way to my next class.

You're not as invisible as you think.

The worst part is she isn't wrong. And the second worst part is that I'm not sure, anymore, if I want to be.

I get to fourth period two minutes before the bell and sit in the back and open my notebook and stare at it without writing anything useful for the entire class because Madison's observation has lodged somewhere in my brain and won't come loose.

She was watching me watch him.

Which means she has been paying attention to me in a way I didn't account for, tracking something I thought I was keeping to myself, and if she has already turned that into a weapon then I have been visible to her for longer than I realized and all my careful invisibility was never invisible at all, just invisible to the people who didn't have a reason to look.

Madison always has a reason to look.

After class I go back to the tech lab and sit at the back terminal and work until five thirty, building the architecture of the branch where the player turns around. I still don't know what they find. But I know what the act of turning costs them, the exposure of it, the choice to stop running and face whatever has been behind them all along.

I write that part first.