Samira's POV
I had spent the entire bus ride home constructing a very firm, very logical internal monologue about how I was not going to check my phone the second I walked through the door.
That resolve lasted all of five minutes.
I dropped my bag by the door with a heavy thud, kicked off my sneakers until they hit the baseboard, and retreated straight upstairs. I moved with the kind of hurried purpose usually reserved for a looming deadline, but I had nothing important to do. I just needed a sanctuary where the air didn't feel quite so thick with expectation.
School had been an exercise in sensory overload. It wasn't the volume, it was the weight of it. Too many lingering glances that felt like sticky fingerprints, and too many moments that were being stretched and pulled to mean some
