I ate lunch with Mia beneath the pear trees on the west lawn, where the breeze tasted sweet and the air didn’t feel heavy with judgment. We shared snacks. She read something in her textbook loud, it was an odd fact about worms, and for the first time in longer than I cared to admit, I laughed.
Everything was simple again.
For a few days.
Days where I let myself believe this new life could stretch into something more permanent. Sure, I had failed to find love, but I was cooking up new goals.
And then, in the middle of my last class of the week, a note arrived—folded neatly, passed from hand to hand from the front until it landed on my desk with a kind of delicate finality.
The principal would like to see you immediately after class.
My heart didn’t race, not at first. I wasn’t that
