HARTWELL

Forty Three Messages

Chapter 3

By morning the group chat had one hundred and twelve messages.

I know because I counted.

I hadn't slept properly. I'd been lying in the dark with my phone under my duvet watching the notifications come in one after another after another like nobody at Hartwell had ever heard of sleep.

The photo was still up. Nobody had taken it down. Whoever posted it hadn't deleted it and whoever ran the chat clearly wasn't in a hurry to do anything about it either.

The names being thrown around were different every few messages. Someone would say it was this person, someone else would say no it was that person, then someone would post a laughing emoji and the whole thing would start again.

I didn't know enough people yet to know if any of the names were right.

I put my phone down at two in the morning and stared at the ceiling.

I have been here one day.

Fiona was in a mood at breakfast.

Not an obvious mood. Fiona didn't do obvious. It was more like everything she said had a slightly shorter fuse than usual. She stirred her coffee without drinking it. She looked at her phone. She put it face down. She looked at it again.

"Do you know who it is," I asked.

"No," she said.

She said it too fast.

"Fiona."

"I said no Emily." She picked up her coffee finally. "Leave it."

I looked at Eleanor.

Eleanor gave me the smallest almost invisible shake of her head.

I left it.

Yasmin found us ten minutes later sliding into the seat next to me with a bowl of fruit and the energy of someone who had slept perfectly and was ready for war.

"Okay so," she said, "I know who's in the photo."

Fiona's coffee cup came down harder than necessary.

"Everyone thinks they know," Eleanor said carefully.

"I actually know." Yasmin looked around the table. "But I'm not saying it here." She nodded toward the corridor. "Too many ears."

"Then why bring it up," Fiona said.

"Because whoever posted it is still in this room." Yasmin picked up a piece of pineapple. "Right now. Eating breakfast like nothing happened."

I looked around the dining hall without meaning to.

Forty, fifty students. All eating. All talking. All looking completely normal.

One of them did that.

The thought sat in my stomach like something cold.

I was late to English because I went the wrong way twice and ended up outside the sports hall before Liam found me looking lost and personally escorted me to Room 12 like I was a problem he had adopted.

"You really need a map," he said.

"I really need to go home," I said.

"Same thing." He held the door open. "After you."

Mr Gordon looked at us when we walked in but didn't say anything. I slid into my seat.

Ethan was already there. Back row. Same spot.

I opened my notebook.

Do not look.

I looked.

He was looking at his phone under the desk which every single person in the room was also doing because the group chat had started up again. Someone had posted a zoomed in version of the photo. The chat was going feral.

Mr Gordon cleared his throat.

"I'm going to say this once," he said. "Whatever is happening on your phones right now is not happening in my classroom. Put them away or I take them. Your choice."

Thirty phones disappeared.

Ethan's stayed out for exactly three more seconds.

Then it went away too.

Mr Gordon looked at him. Ethan looked back. Something passed between them that I didn't have context for yet.

"Right," Mr Gordon said turning back to the board. "Personal narrative. Two pages. Friday. Has everyone started."

The class made a noise that meant no.

"That wasn't a real question," Mr Gordon said. "Start now. Use the next twenty minutes."

I stared at my notebook.

An experience that changed how you see yourself.

I wrote: The day my parents told me I was coming to Hartwell I was in the middle of eating cereal.

I stopped.

Read it back.

Crossed it out.

From the back row I felt that awareness again. That specific feeling of someone's attention landing on you. I kept my eyes on my notebook. I wrote the sentence again. Crossed it out again.

Stop it, I told myself. You're imagining it. Stop.

I wrote a different sentence. A worse one. Kept it anyway.

Yasmin found me between lessons in the corridor and pulled me into an alcove by the water fountain.

"Okay," she said quietly. "The people in the photo. I'm telling you because you're new and you need to know how this school works and this is how this school works." She paused. "One of them is in your English class."

I stared at her.

"Which one."

"I'm not saying which one." She glanced over her shoulder. "But just. Be aware. Of who looks like they're holding something together with their bare hands today."

She walked away.

I stood in the alcove for a moment.

Then I walked back to English.

I sat down.

I looked around the room slowly.

Liam was arguing with someone about something football related. Three girls near the front were whispering and laughing. A boy called Richard who I'd noticed yesterday because he was very tall was drawing something in his margin.

I got to the back row.

Ethan was already looking at me.

Not in the way I'd been imagining. Not that soft unfocused awareness from before.

Actually looking. Directly. Like he knew exactly what Yasmin had just told me.

I held it for one second.

Two.

Then I looked away first.

My heart was doing something annoying and completely unnecessary.

It's not him, I told myself. It's not him. You don't even know him. Stop.

But when Mr Gordon started talking again I couldn't tell you a single word he said.

After class I walked out fast.

Not running. Just walking with purpose. Down the corridor, left, out through the side door into the cold air, I needed approximately thirty seconds of not being inside that room.

I stood outside and breathed.

"You're going to be late to whatever you have next."

I turned around.

Ethan was leaning against the wall two feet away, jacket collar up, hands in his pockets, looking at me like he'd been there the whole time.

"I needed air," I said.

"Right."

Silence.

I should have walked away. I was going to walk away. I was already shifting my weight to do exactly that.

"It wasn't me," he said.

I stopped.

"In the photo." His voice was flat. Completely flat. Like he was talking about something boring. "I know that's what you were thinking in there. It wasn't me."

I opened my mouth.

Closed it.

"I wasn't thinking anything," I said.

He looked at me for a long moment.

Then something happened at the corner of his mouth. Not quite a smile. Not quite anything. Just a small movement that disappeared before it became something.

"Okay," he said.

He pushed off the wall and walked back inside.

I stood there in the cold air.

One day, I thought. I have been here one day and a half.

My phone buzzed.

Group chat. New message. Someone had finally figured out who was in the photo.

I read the name.

My stomach dropped.

I looked back at the door Ethan had just walked through.

Oh.