THE VOICE HE MOCKED

Mara had a system for mornings. Seventeen steps from the east doors of Halvern Academy to her locker, and if she counted every one of them in her head, she could get there without noticing who was watching. Today the system broke at twelve. She should have seen it coming. The hall had gone quiet the way it did when somebody had a plan, and not real quiet either, just a lot of people suddenly fascinated by their phones. A girl giggled and got shushed. Not to be kind. They didn't want the surprise spoiled. Don't look up. Count. Her right foot dragged on the marble and her scholarship shoe squeaked, which it always did, which was its own little announcement. Six. Seven. The strap of her bag dug into her shoulder, and inside it was the notebook, the only thing she owned that she'd have actually fought somebody for. "Morning, Hobble!" Brooks Hale, cheerful as a game show host. A couple of people laughed. She kept walking. Eight, nine, ten. Eleven. Twelve. The foot came out of the crowd a second too late for her to do anything about it. A loafer, buttery leather, probably worth more than her mother's monthly prescriptions. Its owner, Tessa Brandt, wasn't even looking. She was checking her lip gloss in her phone camera. Mara went down. Palms first, then both knees, then the notebook shot out of her bag and went skidding off across the floor like it was trying to escape. Somebody whooped. Somebody said, "Oh my God, she actually fell," and somebody else said, "Is it recording? Is it recording?" It was. She could see the little red dots around her, a whole field of them. Get up. Her knee was bleeding through her tights. The marble was cold on her hands. She thought, very clearly, if I cry, that's the clip, and she pushed herself up on the good leg and then the bad one, which shook the way it did when she asked too much of it. By the time she was standing, her eyes were hot but dry. A small victory. She'd take it. Her notebook was gone. She turned in a half circle and found it, three feet away, in somebody's hand. Dante Rhys was leaning on the foot of the east staircase like it was a bar and he was waiting on a drink. Loosened tie, rolled sleeves, hair falling over his forehead in a way that probably took twenty minutes. Halvern's golden boy. The Rhys in Rhys Records. He could have ended the whole thing with one lazy word, and he held her notebook open with two fingers like it was a menu. "'Seventeen Steps,'" he read out loud. The hall went silent to hear him. "Cute. You write this, Hobble? Dear diary?" Her face went hot all the way to her ears. "Give it back." "Come and get it." She knew better. She'd known better for two years. Dante never offered her anything that wasn't a trap. But every song she had ever written was in that notebook, every night in Practice Room 4B, every line she'd never been allowed to say at a normal volume. She took one step. She knew exactly what it looked like, the drag, the hitch, the sway, because someone in the crowd baaed like a sheep and the whole hallway cracked up. Dante smiled. It was a beautiful smile. It was the worst thing she'd ever seen on a human face. "Careful," he said. "Wouldn't want you to hurt yourself." "Dante." Vivienne Cross had appeared at his elbow, hooking her arm through his like she was claiming a coat. "Don't be mean." "I'm being generous." He held the notebook out, just past her reach. "Look at her, Viv. Anybody else would've gone home by now. It's almost impressive." "It's almost sad," said Vivienne, and everyone laughed again. Seven days, said the cold little voice in Mara's head, the one that did her sums for her. You cannot get suspended this week. You cannot. So she didn't lunge, or cry, or beg. She looked straight at Dante, and she let him see she wasn't going to do any of it for his audience. "Keep it," she said. Her voice shook, but it carried. "You wouldn't understand it anyway." Something crossed his face. Quick, strange. She didn't have time to look at it properly. Then Brooks hooted and the noise swallowed everything, and Dante dropped the notebook like it had bitten him. It landed face down. She walked over and picked it up herself. Nobody helped. She hadn't expected them to. Except that over by the music wing door, there was a boy in a charcoal sweater with a cello case on his back. Elliot Voss. Dark curls, serious eyes, the only person at Halvern who ever said good morning to her like he wanted to know how it was going. Their eyes met. His mouth opened. And then Tessa laughed, and Brooks laughed, and the whole hall leaned on him, and his mouth shut again. He looked at his shoes. Mara turned around before he could see what that did to her. Thirteen. Fourteen. Fifteen. By lunch the video had four thousand views. She didn't watch it. She didn't have to. She ate her dry bread on the back steps of the music wing, the one spot the cameras couldn't find, and picked at the scab forming on her knee. Then her phone rang, and the number was from Greenwood Care, and her stomach fell down a flight of stairs. "Miss Ellison? Billing department." "Is she okay? What happened?" "Your mother is stable." The woman had the careful, flat voice of someone reading off a laminated card. "I'm calling about the account. We sent two notices last month. The balance is overdue and the board has asked us to finalize this week." "Finalize what?" "If the full amount isn't received in seven days, Mrs. Ellison's placement will be transferred to a state facility." Mara had seen one of those once. She'd begged a friend for a ride, back when she still had friends with cars. She remembered the smell, cabbage and bleach, and the long beige hallway, and the women parked in wheelchairs facing the wall. Her mother used to fill concert halls. Her mother, facing a wall. "How much?" Her voice came out small. The woman said the number. It was almost four times everything Mara had in the world. "I can pay some of it," Mara said fast. "I'll take another shift, I'll work weekends, I just need a little more time. Please." "I'm sorry, Miss Ellison. It's out of my hands." The line clicked. Mara sat there. Down in the courtyard a bunch of pigeons burst off the pavement when the bell rang, and she watched them go and thought how easy it looked, just leaving. Her phone buzzed again. A text from a number she didn't know. Just a link and a caption. Hobble Falls Again 😂 #HalvernHobble Forty thousand views now. In the thumbnail she was sprawled on the marble with blood on her knee, and behind her, in perfect focus, Dante Rhys was smiling. She stared at it until the picture blurred, then scrubbed her face with her sleeve, hard. There wasn't time. She had seven days, a bleeding knee, a notebook full of songs nobody would hear, and a mother who couldn't afford for her to fall apart. She would figure it out. She always did. On the other side of the school, in a glass room on the fourth floor, Dante Rhys was holding his phone out to Vivienne Cross. "I've got a better idea," he said.