The scoreboard still flashed 31–28 when I slipped past the security guard with a tin of cookies pressed against my chest.

Chocolate chip with sea salt. Mike's favorite. I'd burned the first two batches at 2 a.m. and cried a little over the third, because my mom used to make these, and I'd never gotten them right until last night.

I smoothed the front of my white dress. Mike gave it to me two weeks ago. *You'd look like an angel in this, Flo.*

Nobody had called me an angel since my parents died.

"Hey! Players only past this point."

A trainer with a clipboard stepped in front of me. I lifted the tin like a badge.

"I'm Mike's girlfriend. I just want to surprise him."

He squinted at me, then shrugged. "Captain's in the lounge. Make it quick."

*Girlfriend.* The word still felt borrowed. For three years in high school, I'd watched Mike from the bleachers, from the back of the cafeteria, from two rows behind him in chemistry. Then, one month ago, at the freshman welcome party, he'd climbed onto a table, killed the music, and said my name into a microphone.

"Flora, I've liked you forever. Be mine?"

Two hundred people had cheered. I'd said yes before he finished the question.

Now I stood outside the players' lounge, grinning like an idiot, and pushed the door open.

"Surprise! Congrats on the—"

The tin slipped.

Cookies hit the floor and skidded under the couch. Under the couch where Mike had Amy pinned beneath him, his mouth on her neck, her fingers knotted in his hair.

His jersey lay by my feet. Her pink bra hung off the armrest.

Amy. My best friend. The girl who'd held my hand at my parents' funeral.

Mike's head snapped up. He didn't jump. He didn't apologize. He sighed, like I'd interrupted a phone call, and grabbed his varsity jacket off the floor.

"Jesus, Flora. You don't knock?"

My whole body shook. "Knock?"

"This room is for the team." He shoved one arm into his sleeve. "Who even let you back here?"

"You're—she's—" My voice cracked in half. "Amy, what is this?"

Amy sat up slowly. She didn't bother covering herself. She just tucked her blond hair behind one ear and leaned into Mike's shoulder like she belonged there.

"Don't look so shocked, babe." She smiled at me. Sweet. Familiar. "Honestly, I thought you'd figure it out ages ago."

"Figure *what* out?"

"Mike and I hooked up junior year. Senior year too. Prom night, actually." She tilted her head. "Remember when you said you saw his car outside my house? You believed me when I told you he was helping my dad with the lawn mower."

She laughed. Actually laughed.

I stared at Mike. He was checking his phone.

"Look at me," I said.

He didn't.

"*Look at me!*"

Finally, his eyes lifted. Bored. Annoyed. Nothing else.

"Then why?" My throat burned. "Why did you stand on that table in front of everyone? Why did you ask me out?"

He shrugged into the rest of his jacket. "Because Amy rejected me. I thought dating you would make her jealous."

The room went silent.

Not quiet. Silent. Like someone had sucked the air out through a straw.

"It worked, too," Amy said, tracing a finger down his chest. "Took me a whole month to cave."

My hand drifted to my collarbone. To the silver heart necklace Mike had given me on my eighteenth birthday. I'd slept with it on every night since.

Amy's eyes followed my fingers. Her smile sharpened.

"Oh, sweetie. You still wear that?"

"He gave it to me."

"He gave you what I didn't want." She counted on her fingers. "That necklace? I said it looked cheap. The vanilla perfume? Gave me a headache. That ugly stuffed bear you keep on your pillow? I tossed it in his backseat and told him to get rid of it."

Mike didn't deny a single word. He just rubbed the back of his neck.

"You were always so grateful for my leftovers," Amy said softly.

Something inside me went very still.

Three years. Three years of birthday cards I'd rewritten six times. Three years of turning down other guys because maybe, someday, Mike would notice me. Three years of thinking that somebody finally chose me.

And it was a joke. Their joke.

I laughed.

I didn't mean to. It just came out, hollow and ugly, and both of them blinked at me like I'd lost my mind.

"Flora?" Mike frowned. "You okay?"

"You know what's funny?" I wrapped my fingers around the necklace. "I baked those cookies at two in the morning. I used my mom's recipe. I've never used it for anyone before."

I yanked. The chain bit into my neck, then snapped.

The little silver heart bounced across the tile and landed beside his cleats.

"We're done, Mike."

He actually smirked. "Okay."

"I mean it."

"Sure you do." He stood, stepped over the cookies, and crushed one under his heel without even glancing down. "You've been in love with me since you were fifteen, Flo. Everybody knows. You'll cry for a week, then you'll be blowing up my phone."

"Don't hold your breath."

"Don't need to."

Then he turned, cupped Amy's face, and kissed her. Right in front of me. Slow and long, his hand sliding down her bare back, his eyes open and fixed on mine the whole time.

Like he wanted me to remember it.

I walked out.

I didn't run. I wouldn't give them that. I made it past the trainer, past the trophy case, past the crowd still screaming Mike's name in the hallway. Somebody tried to high-five me. I kept going.

The cold hit me when I shoved through the stadium doors. My dress was too thin for October. His dress. I wanted to rip it off right there on the steps.

My phone buzzed.

**Amy:** 📷

My thumb hovered. I knew I shouldn't open it.

I opened it.

Amy lay sprawled across Mike's navy sheets, in his dorm, in his bed. She was wearing a red silk dress with a low back and thin gold straps.

My dress.

The one I'd spent two months of diner tips on. The one I'd been saving for next Friday, the anniversary of our first date. The one I'd asked Amy to keep in her closet so Mike wouldn't see it early.

*"He's going to lose his mind when he sees you in this,"* she'd told me.

The caption appeared beneath the photo.

**Amy:** Thanks for keeping him warm until I wanted him back. 💋

I stared at the screen until the letters blurred.

Then a second message came through, this time from a number I didn't recognize.

**Unknown:** Check the timestamp on her picture, Flora. Then ask yourself who else knew.

I deleted Mike's number at 3 a.m. By 8, I was standing on the stage of Harlow Hall with a script in my hand.

"From the top, Flora," Mr. Pruitt called from the third row. "Balcony scene. Give me heartbreak."

Heartbreak. I could do heartbreak now.

"*O Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou Romeo?*"

My voice carried all the way to the back wall. When I finished, the room stayed quiet for a long moment. Then Jenna, our stage manager, started clapping.

Mr. Pruitt took off his glasses and rubbed his eyes. "That," he said, "is why you got this part."

Juliet. I'd wanted her since I was nine, since my mom took me to a summer production in the park and I'd cried through the whole last act. The theater school scholarship panel would be in the audience on opening night. One good performance, and I'd have a real future.

Mike didn't get to take that too.

I spent the next week sewing my costume by hand. Ivory satin, gold thread at the sleeves, a hundred tiny pearl buttons down the back. Every stitch was one less minute I spent thinking about him.

Then Friday came, and the official cast list went up on the bulletin board.

A crowd had already gathered. People went quiet when they saw me. A few glanced away.

I pushed through to the front.

**JULIET — Amy Lindqvist**

I read it three times. The letters didn't change.

"Flora..." Jenna touched my elbow. "I'm so sorry. I don't know what happened."

"I do," I said. "Or I'm about to."

---

Mr. Pruitt's office door was half open. He was packing a coffee mug into a box like he wanted to hide inside it.

"You gave me the role," I said. "Two weeks ago. In writing."

He didn't look up. "Close the door, please."

I shut it hard enough to rattle the frame.

"Was I bad? Tell me I was bad. Tell me she was better. I'll walk out right now."

"You weren't bad." He finally lifted his head. He looked about ten years older than yesterday. "You were the best Juliet I've seen in this building."

"Then *why*?"

He sat back down. "The football boosters fund half our budget. Lights, sets, the spring tour. Yesterday I got a call. The team captain had spoken with them personally."

My stomach dropped. "Mike."

"He made it very clear. If Miss Lindqvist wasn't cast, the money would go away." Mr. Pruitt spread his hands. "Twenty kids lose their show, Flora. Or one kid loses a part."

"One kid loses her scholarship."

He flinched. That was the only answer I got.

---

When I came back into the rehearsal hall, Amy was waiting. Of course she was. She stood center stage in a soft gray sweater, hands pressed together like a girl in a church painting.

"Flora!" Her eyes were already wet. "Oh my God, I swear I didn't know. I'll tell Mr. Pruitt right now. It's yours. I don't even want it."

Everyone was watching. Fifteen cast members, three techs, Jenna with her headset half on.

"Then go tell him," I said.

Amy blinked. She hadn't expected that.

"Of course," she said. "I just—can we talk first? Alone?"

She took my arm and steered me into the costume room. The second the door closed, her tears disappeared like someone had flipped a switch.

"Here's how this goes," she said. "You smile. You say congratulations. You take whatever little part Pruitt throws you."

"And if I don't?"

She picked a thread off my sleeve. "Then I tell people you've been harassing me since the breakup. Mike backs me. You're out of this club by Christmas."

"You'd really do that? Over a *play*?"

"It's not about the play, babe." She smiled. "It's about you finally learning your place."

She walked out. I heard her voice through the door, trembling again. "She needs a minute, you guys. She's really hurt."

---

I found my costume an hour later.

It hung on its rack with the satin slashed open from collar to hem. Long, ugly cuts. The pearl buttons lay scattered across the floor like teeth.

I made a sound I'd never heard myself make before.

"What happened?" Jenna rushed in. Then three more people behind her. Then Amy, pushing through.

"Oh no." Amy's hand flew to her mouth. "Flora, your dress..."

"Somebody cut it."

"Who would do this?" Amy turned to the room. "Wait. Didn't someone say Flora's locker was open earlier?"

Before I could move, a sophomore had already pulled it open.

A pair of fabric shears sat on top of my sweatshirt. Bits of ivory thread were still stuck in the blades.

The whole room went cold.

"Those aren't mine," I said. "I left them on the sewing table this morning. *Anyone* could've—"

"It's okay." Amy's voice wobbled. "You're upset. I understand. But you didn't have to ruin your own dress just so it would look like I did it."

"That doesn't even make *sense*!"

The door banged open.

Mike strode in still wearing his practice pads. Someone must have texted him. He didn't look at the dress. He didn't look at the scissors. He walked straight to me and clamped his hand around my wrist.

"Apologize to her."

"Let me go."

"Apologize. *Now*." His grip tightened until my fingers tingled. "Stop embarrassing yourself, Flora. Amy is the one I love."

Every eye in the room was on us. Somebody had their phone up.

My eyes burned, but I didn't drop them.

"Then why did you spend three years making me believe you loved me?"

Something moved across his face. Just for a second. His jaw slackened, and his hand loosened on my wrist.

Nobody breathed.

Then Amy sniffled behind him, and his fingers clamped down again.

"Because you made it easy," he said. "Say sorry."

I didn't.

So the decision got made for me.

---

By six o'clock, I had an email from the student activities office. *Suspended from all Drama Society activities pending review.* By seven, a second one. *Your scholarship interview has been withdrawn.*

By eight, the video was on the campus forum.

**Thread:** Psycho ex slashes her own dress to frame Amy 💀

**Top comment:** imagine being this obsessed with a guy who never wanted you lol

I closed the laptop.

Then I got out my sewing kit, spread the ruined satin across my bed, and started stitching. I didn't know what I was fixing it for. My hands just needed to do something besides shake.

My phone rang at 10:14.

**Ethan.**

I wiped my face with my sleeve and cleared my throat twice before I answered.

"Hey, bud."

"Flo! Guess what." My little brother sounded like he'd had three energy drinks. "I'm coming up tomorrow. Aunt Carol's driving me. I'll be there by noon."

"Tomorrow?" My needle froze mid-stitch.

"Yeah! And I've got a surprise for you. A big one. You're gonna freak."

"Ethan, this week's kind of—"

"Please? I haven't seen you since August. I've been saving up for this forever."

He was sixteen and still said *forever* like he meant it.

I pressed the back of my wrist to my mouth until I could trust my voice.

"Okay," I said. "Noon. I'll be waiting out front."

"Best sister ever. Love you, Flo."

"Love you more."

He hung up. I sat there holding the phone against my chest.

It buzzed again.

**Instagram:** *amy.lindqvist liked your photo.*

I tapped it. An old picture, from my profile two summers ago. Ethan at the lake, grinning, missing half a front tooth from a skateboard fall. *My favorite human,* I'd written.

Weird. She'd never liked my posts before.

I shrugged it off and went back to the dress.

I didn't know that, across campus, Amy had already screenshotted that picture and sent it to Derek Kowalczyk—the rich boy everyone at this school was afraid of.

Or that her message had only five words.

*Her brother. Tomorrow. Have fun.*

Ethan showed up at 11:52, eight minutes early, holding a pink bakery box like it might explode.

"Don't look yet!" He hopped out of Aunt Carol's car before it fully stopped. "Okay. Now look."

He flipped the lid. Inside sat a tiny vanilla cake, lopsided frosting, blue letters crammed edge to edge.

**CONGRATS COLLEGE GIRL FLO**

"I mowed the Hendersons' lawn all summer," he said. "Twelve bucks a week. That's the surprise. You never got a party, you know? After Mom and Dad..."

He didn't finish. He didn't have to.

I laughed so I wouldn't cry. "You spelled *college* wrong."

"I did *not*." He squinted at the box. "Okay, the baker did."

Then his grin slipped. He poked my arm, right below the shoulder.

"Flo. Where'd you go?"

"What?"

"You're, like, half of you." His brows pulled together. "Are you eating? Is that guy feeding you? Mike?"

"Mike and I broke up."

"Good," Ethan said instantly. "I never liked how he called you *Flo* like he owned it."

"You call me Flo."

"I'm *allowed*."

---

We ate the cake on a bench by the quad with plastic forks. Ethan talked nonstop about junior year, a girl named Priya, his driver's test. For one whole hour, I forgot to feel anything bad.

Then we passed the fountain.

"Hey, Goodwill!" a girl's voice sang out. "Where'd you get that jacket? A dumpster?"

Amy stood with three girls in matching cream coats. In the middle of them, a skinny freshman clutched a financial aid envelope to her chest. Her jacket was thin, too big, the zipper held together with a safety pin.

"Please give it back," the freshman whispered.

Amy dangled a backpack by one strap. "This? Sure."

She tossed it. It hit the water with a heavy smack and sank.

The girls shrieked with laughter.

"My laptop's in there—"

"Scholarship kids get free laptops, right?" Amy said. "Just cry to the office again."

Ethan was already moving.

"Ethan, wait—"

He climbed straight over the stone ledge, sneakers splashing into the fountain, and hauled the dripping backpack out. Water poured from every zipper. He handed it to the freshman, then turned to Amy.

"What is *wrong* with you?"

Amy's lashes fluttered. "Excuse me?"

"You heard me. She didn't do anything to you." His voice cracked on the last word, but he didn't back down. "Leave her alone. Or I'll report you myself."

Amy's eyes slid past him. Found me.

Her smile spread slowly.

"Oh," she said. "You're the brother."

My blood went cold. "Amy. He's sixteen. Walk away."

"Sixteen and so *brave*." She pulled out her phone and tapped the screen without looking away from Ethan. When someone answered, she turned her shoulder. "Hey. He's here. Yeah, the one in the picture. Uh-huh. Thanks, babe."

She hung up and wiggled her fingers at us. "Enjoy your visit, Ethan."

---

"Who'd she call?" Ethan asked on the walk back.

"I don't know." I grabbed his sleeve. "Just stay with me today. Okay? All day."

"You're being dramatic."

"Humor me."

He did. Until six o'clock, when he jogged out to the parking lot to grab his charger from Aunt Carol's car.

"Two minutes," he said. "Swear."

I gave him ten. Then I called. It rang once and cut off.

I called again. Straight to voicemail.

I ran.

---

I heard laughter before I saw anything. Car doors slammed. An engine roared. A black SUV tore past me, and through the open window, a boy with slicked-back hair grinned at me.

Derek Kowalczyk. Everyone knew his face.

Then I saw Ethan.

He lay between two parked cars, curled on his side. His phone sat beside him, smashed into a spiderweb of glass. And under his head, spreading across the concrete, dark and shining—

"*Ethan!*"

I hit my knees so hard my jeans tore. I grabbed his face. It was wet and hot and wrong.

"Ethan, look at me. Open your eyes. *Please*, bud, open your eyes!"

Nothing. His chest jerked with tiny, shallow pulls.

My hands came away red. I stared at them and couldn't stop screaming his name.

---

"Three broken ribs. Skull fracture. Brain swelling," the ER doctor said. "We need to operate now. Billing needs a deposit before we can admit."

"How much?"

The woman at the desk didn't blink. "Eighteen thousand."

I had four hundred dollars in my checking account.

I also had the education fund. Mom and Dad's money. The account they'd opened the year I was born, the one I'd sworn I'd only touch for tuition.

I signed the transfer with blood still under my fingernails.

---

At nine, I called Mike. Music thumped through the speaker the second he picked up.

"What, Flora?"

"Ethan's in surgery." My voice broke into pieces. "Derek and his friends beat him in the parking lot. You know Derek. You *know* him, Mike. I need you to tell the police—"

"Hold on." Muffled noise. A girl giggled. Amy. "Okay. Look. Amy said your brother attacked her first. Tell him to stop causing trouble."

"He's *sixteen*! He has a skull fracture!"

"Then he shouldn't have started a fight." A pause. "Don't call me about this again."

The line went dead.

I didn't throw the phone. I didn't scream. I just sat in the plastic waiting-room chair and felt the last warm thing inside me go out.

---

The Dean of Students called the next morning.

"After review, we're classifying the incident as an altercation involving a non-student visitor," he said. "Witnesses state your brother was aggressive toward several female students."

"Witnesses. You mean Amy."

"I'd advise you not to pursue this, Miss Delaney. The Lindqvist family has been very generous to this university. Further accusations could affect your standing."

I gripped the edge of Ethan's bed rail. "My brother almost died."

"And I'm very sorry for that." He didn't sound sorry. "Have a good day."

That afternoon, I filed for a leave of absence. Then I called a landlord renting a studio across town, cash up front, no questions. If Derek wanted to finish the job, he'd have to find us first.

---

Ethan woke up at 2:17 a.m.

His fingers twitched in mine. I snapped upright.

"Bud?"

His eyes cracked open. One was swollen almost shut. His lips moved twice before any sound came out.

"Flo..."

"I'm here. I'm right here."

"I'm sorry, Flora." Tears slid sideways into the bandage. "I couldn't protect you."

Something broke loose in my chest. I bent over him, careful of the tubes and the brace and the stitches, and pressed my forehead to his hand.

"You idiot," I sobbed. "You're not supposed to protect me. I'm supposed to protect *you*."

He squeezed my fingers. Weak. But he squeezed.

I cried until my throat was raw, until the nurse peeked in and quietly shut the door again.

My phone lit up on the tray table.

**First Harbor Bank:** *Due to irregular activity, the Delaney Family Trust account has been temporarily frozen. All transactions are suspended pending investigation.*

I read it twice.

Then I looked at the bill the nurse had left by the sink.

**Next payment due: 9:00 a.m.**

Seven hours.

And somebody, somewhere, had just made sure I had nothing left to pay it with.