HARTWELL

Seven Words

Chapter 5

The group chat lost its mind.

Forty messages in two minutes after Fiona's reply. Then sixty. Then someone screenshotted it and posted it somewhere else and the screenshots started coming back into the chat from outside which meant it had left Hartwell now. It was just out there. In the world. Belonging to anyone.

I sat on my bed watching it happen in real time.

Eleanor had stopped pretending to do homework. She was on her phone too, silent, reading everything with the careful expression of someone taking notes.

Fiona still hadn't come back.

Come say it to my face then.

Seven words and she'd walked out and left us in the quiet and now the whole school was vibrating and she was somewhere in this building completely alone with it.

"Should we go find her," I said.

"No," Eleanor said.

"She's been gone twenty minutes."

"I know."

"Eleanor."

"Fiona goes away when things happen." Eleanor set her phone down. "She comes back when she's ready. If you go after her before she's ready she'll bite your head off and then feel terrible about it later." She paused. "I learned that the hard way."

I looked at the door.

Looked at my phone.

The chat was still going. Someone had found a way to zoom in on the photo further. I locked my screen and put it face down on the bed.

I have been here two days, I thought. Two days.

Fiona came back at nine forty five.

She walked in, put her bag on her desk, sat on her bed, and started taking her earrings out like she'd just come back from something completely ordinary.

Eleanor and I watched her.

"I'm fine," Fiona said without looking at either of us.

"Nobody said anything," I said.

"You were both about to."

She was right. We were.

She put her earrings on the desk in a small careful line. Then she picked up her phone. The chat was still going. She read through it without any expression at all. Like she was reading a shopping list. Like none of it was about her.

Then she did something I did not expect.

She screenshot every single message. Every name. Every laughing emoji. Every zoomed in photo. Every comment. Methodically, one by one, going all the way back to the beginning.

"What are you doing," Eleanor said.

"Collecting," Fiona said.

"Collecting what."

"Evidence." She locked her phone. Put it down. Looked at us both for the first time since coming back. Her eyes were completely dry and completely steady. "Whoever posted that photo goes to Mr Laurence for a disciplinary hearing if there are screenshots. That's in the school code of conduct. Section four. I looked it up."

Silence.

"You looked up the school code of conduct," I said.

"In the last twenty minutes. Yes." She picked up her moisturiser from the desk. "People think I'm just loud. I'm not just loud."

Eleanor made a sound that was almost a laugh.

I stared at Fiona.

She started doing her nighttime routine like the conversation was over.

"Fiona," I said.

"Emily."

"Are you actually okay."

She smoothed moisturiser on her face. Looked in the small mirror on her desk. Looked at herself for just a second longer than necessary.

"No," she said. Simply. Honestly. Just that one word sitting in the room.

Then she kept going with her routine.

And somehow that was the bravest thing I'd seen anyone do in my entire life.

I didn't sleep well again.

I lay there listening to the building and thinking about section four of the school code of conduct and Fiona's face in that mirror and Ethan's voice outside the classroom saying it wasn't me in that flat unbothered tone.

Except.

He hadn't been unbothered. I kept replaying it. The flatness wasn't unbothered. The flatness was controlled. There's a difference. I know the difference because I do the same thing. Make your voice flat when something is loud underneath so nobody can hear the loud part.

It wasn't me.

He'd said it before I asked. Before I said anything at all. Which meant he'd been thinking about what I was thinking about him the whole lesson.

Which meant he'd been thinking about me.

I put my pillow over my face.

Go to sleep Emily. Go to sleep right now.

Morning.

Breakfast was different.

Not loud different. Quiet different. The kind of quiet that means everyone is watching everyone else and trying to look like they're not. I walked in with Eleanor and felt it immediately. The shift in the room when Fiona walked in two minutes behind us was almost physical.

People looked.

Fiona walked to the food queue like she was the only person in the building.

Charlotte was at her usual table with her usual people. When Fiona walked past she didn't look up. Didn't react. Kept eating her yoghurt and talking to the girl next to her like nothing in the room had changed.

It was the most frightening thing I had ever seen.

Yasmin appeared at my elbow. "You see Charlotte."

"Yes."

"That's bad."

"I know."

"When Charlotte makes a scene you know where you stand. When Charlotte does nothing—" Yasmin watched her across the room. "You don't know where the hit is coming from."

I watched Charlotte laugh at something. Relaxed. Unbothered. Beautiful and calm and completely terrifying.

"What does she do," I said. "When she goes quiet like that."

"Last time she went quiet like that," Yasmin said, "a girl called Andrea left Hartwell three weeks later."

I turned to look at her. "She got a girl expelled."

"Nobody proved it was Charlotte."

"But it was Charlotte."

Yasmin picked up a piece of melon. "Nobody proved it."

I was late to English again.

Not because I got lost this time. Because I stood outside the door for ninety seconds talking myself into going in.

Ethan was already there.

Back row. Same spot. Book open this time, actually reading, pen in hand making small notes in the margin which for some reason was the most unexpectedly interesting thing I'd seen him do yet.

I sat down.

Liam wasn't in yet.

Mr Gordon was writing something on the board.

The room was half full and getting fuller.

I took out my notebook and told myself to look at the board and only the board and absolutely nowhere else.

A piece of paper landed on my desk.

Small, folded once. I looked at it. Looked around. The girl next to me was talking to someone else. Mr Gordon's back was still to the room.

I unfolded it.

Three words in handwriting that was small and slightly messy.

She'll be okay.

I turned around.

Ethan was looking at his book.

Not at me. At his book. Pen moving. Making notes. Like he hadn't just folded a piece of paper and put it on my desk. Like that was a completely normal thing that hadn't just happened.

My heart did the annoying unnecessary thing again.

I turned back around.

Looked at the note.

She'll be okay.

Three words about Fiona. That's all it was. Just three words about my roommate who he apparently knew well enough to have an opinion about.

That's all it was.

I folded the note back up.

Put it in my pocket.

Told myself it meant nothing.

After class Liam walked out with me and immediately said "why are you smiling."

"I'm not smiling."

"You're doing the thing where you try not to smile."

"I'm not doing anything. Walk faster."

"Emily."

"Liam."

He looked at me sideways for three seconds then looked ahead again. "It's Ethan isn't it."

"Nothing happened."

"I didn't say anything happened. I said it's Ethan."

"Nothing happened," I said again.

Liam was quiet for a moment. Then he said, "Charlotte's been watching you since this morning."

I stopped walking.

"Not obviously," he said. "Just. The way she watches things. You're on her radar."

"Why am I on her radar. I haven't done anything."

"You don't have to do anything." He glanced back toward the classroom. "You just have to exist near him."

I stood there in the corridor.

People moved around us like water around rocks.

"I've been here two days," I said.

"I know," Liam said.

"Two days."

"I know Emily."

I looked at the ceiling.

"This school," I said.

"I know," he said. "Come on."

He started walking.

I followed him.

Behind me, from somewhere down the corridor, I felt something.

I turned around.

Charlotte was standing at the far end of the corridor. Thirty feet away. Looking directly at me. Still with that small pleasant smile.

She raised her hand.

A small wave. Almost friendly.

Then she turned and disappeared around the corner.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

Group chat.

New message from an anonymous account that hadn't been in the chat before.

One photo.

Of me.

Standing outside the classroom yesterday talking to Ethan.