Campus Of Thorns

POV: Maya The red light on the phone kept blinking, and Elena Reyes kept her eyes on it because that was easier than looking at the boys. Gravel pressed into her shoulder blades. A hand held her wrist flat against the asphalt, and somewhere above her a car engine ticked as it cooled. "Hold it higher, Elias," a boy said. "I want her face in the frame." "I've got her face." "Say your name, sweetheart." A shoe nudged her ribs. "Say it for the camera." She turned her head away. The red light followed her. "Elena!" That voice did not belong to them. It was too far off and it cracked in the middle. "Elena, wake up. Mija, look at me." She came off the mattress swinging. Her knuckles hit a shoulder, and her mother grunted and caught both her wrists. "It's Mami. You're home. Breathe." The bedroom came back piece by piece: the water stain on the ceiling, the box fan in the window, and her mother in the green robe she wore to the bakery, hair still wet from the shower. Her phone was in her hand. The clock on the nightstand said 4:52. "Mami, what happened?" "A girl from Hartwell sent me this." Her mother turned the phone around. "Don't look at the whole thing. Just the top." It was a thirty-second clip with a black thumbnail and a caption underneath. Full version Friday. Tag her. The upload had 3,000 views, and the account name was a string of numbers. Elena's hands dropped to the sheet. "They said they deleted it." "They lied." Her mother set the phone face down on the dresser, took a folder from beneath it and opened it on the bed. Inside were a birth certificate Elena had never seen, a student ID with her own face on it and a transcript on cream paper. The name on all three was Maya Torres. "There's a school two hours north called Ravenwood Academy. A woman from the church knows someone on the board. They have a full scholarship waiting for a transfer student, and the car is coming at five-thirty." "You can't be serious." "I sealed your records on Friday. I used the money your abuela left me." Her mother's voice shook and stayed steady. "Elena Reyes is the girl in that video. Maya Torres has never heard of Elias Crowe." "I'm not changing my name because of them." "You are changing it because I'm asking you to." Her mother pressed both palms against her face. "Say it. Please." Elena looked at the transcript. Her own handwriting had been copied into the signature box so closely that she could not tell which one was real. "Maya," she said. "Again." "Maya Torres." Her mother held her until the horn sounded outside. The shuttle let her off at the iron gates of Ravenwood Academy at 9:03 that morning. She had practiced the name on the train until a woman across the aisle changed seats. The campus was brick and slate and trimmed hedges, and the quad was full of students crossing between buildings with coffee and backpacks. Maya shifted her duffel to her other shoulder, found the stone building marked Admissions and started toward it. "Elena Reyes." She stopped walking. A boy stood against the gatepost, one shoulder on the iron, hands in the pockets of a charcoal blazer. He was dark-haired and broad through the shoulders, and his eyes were a gray so pale they looked colorless. He had said the name quietly, the way a person reads a label. "You have the wrong person," Maya said. "I don't." He pushed off the post. "Alexander Vale. You can ask anyone here who I am, and they'll tell you to leave me alone. I'd like you to ignore that advice." "I'm Maya Torres." "You are on paper. Your mother did good work, and it cost her more than she told you." He took out his phone. "It won't hold past Friday." He turned the screen toward her. It showed a black thumbnail and a caption she had read once already in her bedroom. Full version Friday. Tag her. The account name was a different string of numbers from the one on her mother's phone, and below the video a line of small print read Ravenwood Academy students only. The view counter said 41. "That's not possible," Maya said. "It was posted at four this morning, and nobody here knew my name until..." "Until your registration cleared at six." Alexander kept the phone where she could see it. "Somebody on this campus got the file the moment it did. Elias Crowe has a cousin in the admissions office, and the clip came with an alert." "Why are you showing me this?" "Because you'll hear about it by lunch, and I would rather you hear it from me." He lowered his voice. "Walk in with me. Sit with me in the cafeteria and let everyone watch you do it. Nobody on this campus will open a video of a girl I've put my name on." "You don't know me." "I know exactly what's on that video, and I know who made it." His thumb hovered over the screen. "I'm the only person here who wants every copy of it gone more than you do." "Why?" "That's the question I'll answer on Friday." He looked past her shoulder toward the quad. "Don't turn around. You're being watched." She turned around. Thirty feet away, a dozen students had stopped on the path. A girl in a lacrosse jacket held her phone at chest height, and a boy beside her was pointing at Maya with the corner of his own. Two others stood on the steps of the chapel with their heads together. Every screen was lit. The counter in Alexander's hand ticked over. Then 43. "That's the whole campus," he said. "Decide now. You can walk to Admissions alone, or you can walk in with me." Her phone buzzed in her jacket pocket. She pulled it out without looking away from the girl in the lacrosse jacket, and the lock screen showed a message from an unsaved number. Don't take his arm, Elena. Ask him who gave me your file.