BENNY‘S POV
The glass terminal of my tablet reflected a face that looked unusually focused. My hair was still pinned in its pristine, salon-pressed style, but there was a faint, unfamiliar tightness in my jaw. If my mother saw me spending this much consecutive energy on an academic assignment on a Friday night, she would have called a family physician. In our circle, girls like me paid for premium tutors or quietly charm-offended legacy boys into writing our summaries. We didn't sweat over raw data. But right now, as the quiet evening air settled over the library pavilion, I was entirely locked into the screen.
It had been a few days since our disastrous makeup session—the one where I had awkwardly slid an unopened bottle of imported electrolyte juice across the table to Lyra after reali
