In the video, Ellie was smiling.

The way she looked at Neal—doting. Soft.

She had never once looked at me that way.

Not in three years, at least.

The video ended with Neal rising on his toes, leaning toward Ellie's face, and then it cut off.

Neal's social media feed had a new post.

A screenshot of his early admission recommendation letter next to a photo of him and Ellie at the karaoke lounge.

The caption read: High school's over. New beginnings. Got the school, got the girl.

Mutual friends had already piled into the comments.

"So jealous! Your girlfriend's gorgeous AND top of the class!"

He'd replied with a blushing emoji.

"Bet SOMEONE's gonna see this and cry so hard he grows a pair of tits lmao"

"Sissy boy, the girls upstairs are talking about YOU!"

I turned off my phone and lay back on the bed.

The ceiling was very white. The light stung my eyes.

I thought about all the years I'd spent chasing that early admission recommendation.

Practice tests until three in the morning. Every weekend given up. More than a dozen notebooks filled with revision notes.

I'd been so close to getting that spot.

So close to going to the same university as her.

She didn't know that when I'd picked my preferences, every single first choice was a school she wanted to attend.

She'd said she wanted to go north. Wanted to see snow.

So I'd put every preference down as a northern school.

And now?

I sat up, turned my phone back on, and logged into the college entrance exam application portal.

One by one, I changed every first choice.

All to the south.

She hated the heat. Said she didn't like the south.

But I liked places where spring came warm and full of flowers.

The south sounded good.

The farther from her, the better.

I hit submit. The screen read: Changes saved successfully.

Then I turned off my phone and drank the bowl of porridge that had gone cold.

It tasted thin. No sugar.

She knew I liked things sweet.

But she hadn't bothered to ask.

The same way she knew I was waiting for her, and never came.

The next day, I went back to school to pick up my records file.

The second I walked through the gate, every pair of eyes on me carried contempt.

"Somebody got a room with some older woman the minute exams were done. Tsk, tsk, tsk."

"Wait, who?"

"The sissy! There's video and everything!"

I stopped walking. Not far ahead, Neal stood at the center of a crowd.

He was holding up his phone, playing a video.

A hotel corridor. Me in soaked clothes, swiping a key card to open a door.

"So young, and already getting wrecked by some cougar…"

Neal grinned, letting the silence do the rest.

Whispers rippled through the crowd, eyes picking me apart.

I walked up and stood in front of him.

"Delete the video."

"Why would I?"

He tilted his head, smiling like he had no idea what the problem was. "You went to the hotel yourself. What's that got to do with me?"

"What gives you the right to spread lies?"

"Am I lying?"

He glanced over at Ellie. "Ellie, tell us. Did he go to a hotel or not?"

Ellie stood off to the side, a records envelope in her hands.

She looked at the video on the phone screen, then at me.

"Ellie."

My voice wouldn't stop shaking. "Tell them. Tell them why I was at that hotel."

She knew everything about last night.

Even if she didn't have feelings for me—all those years had to count for something. She'd at least speak up for me.

Right?

She looked me in the eye and said four words.

"If you're innocent, prove it."

When I heard that, I thought I must have misheard.

"What did you say?"

"You didn't do anything, so what's there to be scared of?"

She looked away, voice flat as nothing,

"The truth speaks for itself. There's no need to argue with him."

I cried half the night in that hotel room over her message.

She brought me medicine. I thought she still cared, at least a little.

Turns out that scrap of caring didn't even outweigh a single line of dismissal.

My voice cracked upward, loud and raw:

"Ellie! You're shielding him—even now? He made up a sex rumor about me and you tell me the truth speaks for itself? He took my early admission spot and you tell me not to fight it?!"

Ellie cut me off, her voice louder than mine.

"Then what do you want?! You didn't show up for the exam! Neal did! He won! He got the early admission recommendation! You can throw all the fits you want—none of it changes what happened!"

I stood there, frozen. Tears fell without a sound.

The hallway was so quiet I could hear the wind.

I turned to leave. Neal's hand shot out and grabbed the red cord around my neck.

"Wait, what's this around your neck—"

The cord snapped.

The jade pendant slipped out from my collar, arced through the air, and dropped from the fifth floor.

I watched it trace a long curve and land in the flower bed below.

That was the only thing my mother ever left me.

She told me this pendant would protect me for the rest of my life.

It had cracked once before. I cried for three days and three nights over it. Ellie ran to every jade shop in the city until she found someone who could piece it back together.

When she fastened it around my neck with her own hands, she said:

"If it ever breaks again, I'll get you an even better one."

I was shaking all over when I shoved Neal back.

He lost his balance and stumbled.

Ellie caught him without hesitating.

She was holding Neal, looking up at me, her eyes cold as ice.

"Bertram, enough!"

"Can you stop snapping at everyone like some mad dog?"

I looked at Neal, safe and untouched in her arms. At the smirk curling the corner of his mouth.

I said nothing. Turned and ran downstairs.

It was pouring outside.

I dropped to my knees in the flower bed, clawing through the mud. A fingernail tore off. I kept digging, pain shooting straight up my arm.

Laughter drifted down from above.

"Look at him. Doesn't he look like a dog?"

"More like a pig, I'd say. A wild boar playing in the water, hahaha."

The words came through the rain like needles driven into my spine.

The jade pendant had broken into three pieces, lying in the muddy water.

I picked them up and closed my fist around them.

The edges cut into my palm. Blood seeped out and washed away in the rain.

I knelt there in the downpour and finally let myself cry out loud.

After that, I never went back to school.

My application was changed. My records file was picked up. There was nothing left to go back for.

Ellie sent message after message.

Bertram, stop being dramatic. Neal wasn't trying to hurt you.

The jade pendant broke, I'll find someone to fix it for you.

My parents want to have dinner with you. Will you come over?

I got your jade luck pendant back for you.

Bertram!

One after another. I didn't reply to a single one.

The day the admission results came out, she showed up downstairs at my building.

She rang the doorbell for a long time. Nobody answered.

She called me. Nobody picked up.

She sent a message:

Bert, let's go walk around the university. Check out the campus before term starts. Didn't you say you wanted to see Founders Lake?

Bert, didn't we have a deal?

Founders Lake.

We'd promised to go there together.

She said that when we got there, she'd accept my flowers and my love, and be with me.

A neighbor spotted her and sighed.

"Ellie, sweetie, Bertram's out traveling."

"He did so well on his exams. Got into South Coast University."

The hand holding her phone began to tremble.

It was the phone case I'd given her, printed with two little figures holding hands, walking through the snow.

She'd worn the red cord until the color bled out of it, and still never took it off.

*He went to South Coast?!*