Under his roof

"Good morning, Wren!"

"Morning, Ms. Collins."

Wren keeps her smile in place until she rounds the corner. Then she lets it drop, rolls her neck once, and keeps walking.

One hundred and sixty-four.

She adds it to the count she keeps in the back of her head the one she started eight months ago on the bathroom floor with her father's old tablet in her hands and two years of Thursday dinners and Linda doesn't need to know burning off the screen. She had sat there until the tiles made her bones ache, then she got up, washed her face, and decided her mother would never find out from her.

So every morning she smiles at the woman in the yellow cardigan and every morning she counts.

She has told no one. Not even Priya.

She smells it before she sees it.

Marker. Fresh. The sharp chemical bite of it still hanging in the air around her locker like whoever did it wasn't even in a hurry.

FATTY. Red. Capital letters. Underlined twice.

Wren sets her bag down. Unzips the front pocket. Peels a purple star sticker from the sheet inside and smooths it over the word with her thumb, pressing the edges down until they stick.

Second sheet this semester.

"That's the third time this month."

Priya is beside her dark eyes tight, phone already half out of her pocket.

"Put it away," Wren says.

"I'm just going to "

"Priya." She zips her bag. "Put it away."

The phone goes back. But Priya walks the rest of the way to homeroom with her arms crossed and her jaw set, and twice she looks back down the hallway like she is memorizing faces.

Wren looks straight ahead.

Madison Cross slides into homeroom at the exact moment the bell stops ringing. White dress. Iced coffee. She moves through the door like it opened specifically for her and takes her seat without looking at anyone.

She never looks at Wren directly. She doesn't have to.

Jade Alcott does it for her catches Wren's eye from three rows over and smiles, slow and deliberate, the smile of someone delivering a message they've been told to deliver.

Wren turns to the window.

Outside, the sky is the flat grey of a morning that hasn't decided what it wants to be yet. A junior she doesn't know is sitting on the front steps eating a sandwich. A teacher's car pulls into the lot with a broken taillight.

Ordinary. All of it ordinary.

She focuses on the ordinary.

Under the desk her thumbnail is pressing into the pad of her index finger pressing and releasing, pressing and releasing but her face shows nothing and her posture shows nothing and when Mr. Harris asks about the reading she raises her hand first and answers clearly and watches Madison not react from the corner of her eye.

The cafeteria smells like industrial macaroni and floor cleaner. Wren takes her tray to the library like she does every Tuesday and finds the corner table where Priya is already waiting with her own lunch and an expression that means she has been on her phone.

"Jade posted," Priya says.

"How many?"

"Seventy-four. It's a video this time." She slides her phone across the table face-down. "Don't watch it."

Wren doesn't touch the phone. She opens her water bottle. Takes a drink.

"I'm going to " Priya starts.

"You're not."

"Wren "

"Last time you did something I spent a week explaining to Mr. Hassan why my best friend threw a yogurt cup at a junior."

"She deserved "

"Priya." Wren looks at her. "Please."

Priya closes her mouth. Opens it. Closes it again. She picks up her fork and stabs a piece of pasta with more force than necessary. "I'm logging it."

"You're always logging it."

"One day it'll matter."

Wren gets up to throw away her napkin and almost walks past the bulletin board without looking. Almost.

The index card is half-hidden behind a drama club poster white, small, handwriting that looks like someone wrote it at the end of a very long day.

Babysitter needed. After school and evenings. Live-in preferred. Excellent pay. Call Jana.

Wren stands in front of it.

Last night her mother sat at the kitchen table and didn't move for forty minutes. Just sat with both hands flat on a stack of envelopes and stared at the wall. She didn't know Wren was in the hallway watching through the gap in the door. When Wren walked in she straightened up and said how was school and Wren said fine and they made dinner together and talked about the neighbor's new dog and neither of them mentioned the envelopes.

The electricity notice has been in the drawer for eleven days now.

Wren tears the card off the board.

She calls from the second cubicle of the third floor bathroom, sitting on the closed lid with her back against the tank and the card in her hand.

Two rings.

"Hello?" A woman. Tired in the bones.

"Hi I'm calling about the babysitting position?"

The exhale on the other end is almost a laugh. "Oh thank God. How old are you, sweetheart?"

Her name is Jana. The job is after school, weekdays, some evenings. One child a girl, six years old, named Daisy. Live-in preferred but not required to start. And the pay

Wren does the math before Jana finishes the sentence.

Eight weeks. Maybe seven if she's careful. Seven weeks and the notice comes out of the drawer and gets answered. Seven weeks and her mother stops sitting at the kitchen table with her hands flat on envelopes like she is trying to keep them from floating away.

"I can start Monday," Wren says.

"You're a lifesaver," Jana says, and the way she says it full, exhausted, completely genuine makes something pull behind Wren's sternum. "I'll text you the address."

The address arrives.

Wren reads it.

Clover Drive.

She knows Clover Drive. Tucks the card into her pocket and goes back to Priya and says she got a job and doesn't say where because right now the where is just a street name and nothing else. Goes home and makes tea and sits with her mother and talks about nothing. Goes to bed.

At 2am she opens Instagram by accident old habit, the kind she hasn't broken yet and freezes.

Jade's post has ninety-one likes.

In the comments, a username she doesn't recognize has written: isn't this the girl Cole Ramsey called nobody lmao

Wren stares at the screen.

The bathroom. The water fountain. Around the corner. Don't bother. She's nobody.

She knew other people were in that hallway. She never knew any of them heard.

She puts the phone face down on her nightstand. Lies in the dark with her thumbnail pressing into her index finger. Pressing and releasing.

Monday, she tells herself.

Monday everything changes.

She doesn't know yet that the address in her phone belongs to Cole Ramsey.

She doesn't know that before Monday is over she will discover something about him something buried, something devastating that will make the next four months the most complicated of her life.

All she knows right now is that the electricity notice is in the drawer.

And she is going to get it out.