By the time Harper got home, she had convinced herself she wasn’t going to check the gossip account again. She lasted eleven minutes. Then her phone buzzed on the kitchen counter, and she reached for it before she could stop herself. The photograph of Noah outside school was still there, but now hundreds of comments sat underneath it. Some people were defending him. Others were making jokes. A few had already turned the whole thing into a competition between Noah and Luca, as if Harper were a trophy sitting somewhere in the middle waiting to be claimed. She hated that part most. Nobody seemed interested in what she wanted. Her name kept appearing beside words she hadn’t said and stories she hadn’t told, and every time she tried to explain herself, it only gave people another sentence to tw
