“Okay,” I say.
“That’s not the response I’m looking for.” Moreno sighs.
“I hear you.”
“That isn’t either.”
I draw breath. There’s a coffee ring on the desk near my elbow, and I’ve been looking at it for the last forty seconds because it’s easier than looking at her. I’m on the verge of tears, and no Halden Girl mask will stop them if they start, so I just need to get out of here.
Moreno’s voice softens. “Look, Sloane, I’m not asking you to tell me what’s going on. That’s your business. But I’m asking you to come back.”
I nod, pick up my bag, and leave her office as fast as I can without looking like I’m fleeing. I rush down the corridor and into the stairwell, and only there do I realize I’ve been holding my breath since I left her office.
I sit on the third step from the top, put my bag in my lap, and then the sobs come.
My shoulders go first, then my face, then my eyes. I press my mouth into the wool of my coat sleeve because Halden Girls do not cry loudly in stairwells, even when nobody else is in the stairwell and nobody would hear.
The tears I’ve been holding all week come out.
There’s a damn good chance Mason has the photos, and if he shares them, I become the story again. If that happens, my family will once again treat me like a crisis to be contained, and Rowan will destroy himself to protect me and neutralize the threat.
And the place I came to heal from all that will become exactly what I fled.
I will not be that again, and I will not inflict that on the people I love, so all week the weight has sat on my chest and I’ve managed it by smiling right, shutting myself off from anything controversial, and letting the thing Moreno saw in me go quiet.
But the problem — the thing I didn’t plan — is that people are noticing. Rowan first. He tried gentle and patient, like I was justhaving a bad week. But as the days piled up, he started pulling away from me — or maybe I started pulling away from him.
Either way, the ease that had started to creep into him and into us is fraying. For a while, he’d stopped trying to be everything to everyone, solving all the world’s problems and leaving no air in his lungs for himself.
And now Moreno.
If two people can see through it, it’s not a mask. It’s just a bad performance.
My phone buzzes against my thigh.
Ivy: Are you coming tonight or am I screaming at hockey boys alone?
Then, three seconds later, it buzzes again.
Ivy: Also I haven’t seen you except to say hi or bye in like five days??? What’s going on with you???
She’s noticed, too, and now she’s doing what Ivy does, which is yelling warmly.
I don’t reply. My phone buzzes again.
Ivy: Sloane, you can’t ignore me forever. Where are you right now?
I should ignore it, but Ivy doesn’t relent on things like this.
I type back.
Sloane: Humanities building. Third floor stairwell.
The read receipt appears immediately, but I don’t wait for a reply. Instead, I put my phone down on my knee and close myeyes, letting the silence and the cold concrete wash over me until the stairwell door opens one floor below. Ten minutes later, I hear footsteps.
“Okay, so,” Ivy says. “You’re sitting in a stairwell crying, which I have a policy about.”
I wipe my face on my sleeve. “What’s the policy?”
