Lena's POV
The permanent marker screams at me before I even reach my locker.
WHORE.
Black letters, thick and deliberate, spreading across the metal like a disease.
My feet stop moving. The hallway noise doesn't stop—conversations, laughter, locker slams—but there's a quality to it now, a hush underneath the chaos, like everyone's holding their breath to see what I'll do.
I force myself to keep walking, to act like the word isn't burning into my retinas, like my hands aren't shaking as I reach for the combination lock.
The silence spreads outward from me like ripples, and by the time I'm standing directly in front of my locker, the hallway has gone so quiet I can hear my own heartbeat.
"Lena!" Priya's voice cuts through the suffocating stillness, and she's running toward me, her face pale, eyes wide with panic. "Lena, have you seen the pictures flying around?"
She's breathless when she reaches me, gripping my arm hard enough to bruise.
I look at her, confused, trying to process what she's saying through the fog of humiliation. "No, what pictures? What happened?" My voice comes out steadier than I feel, which is something.
Priya glances around, notices the eyes on us, the phones being lifted.
She leans in closer, her voice dropping to an urgent whisper. "Remain calm. I heard Trent and Evan got into a fight yesterday because Trent is spreading rumors about you being with the boys, and also he told Evan that you have the virginity exchange app on your phone."
The words hit me like a physical blow. My stomach drops so fast I think I might be sick right here in the hallway. "What? How did he know that?"
The question comes out too loud, and I see heads turn, see people lean in to hear better.
"Shh!" Priya hisses, and she's already grabbing my phone from my bag, her fingers moving fast across the screen. "We need to delete the app ASAP. We need to prove Trent wrong, okay?"
She's not asking. She's telling me what we're going to do, what we have to do, and I'm nodding even though my brain feels like it's short-circuiting.
I watch her thumb move, watch the app icon disappear from my screen, and my hands are shaking so badly I have to clasp them together to keep them still. "What about the pictures? How did he get them? What if—" I can't finish the sentence because the implications are too enormous, too terrifying.
Priya's eyes flick over my shoulder, and her expression hardens. "Lena, don't look back. Just come with me."
She grabs my hand and starts pulling me down the hallway.
I'm confused, my mind racing with questions I can't articulate, but I follow her anyway because Priya knows something I don't and her urgency is infectious.
We're almost to the corner, almost to some kind of safety, when someone steps directly into our path.
A phone is shoved in my face so close I have to jerk back to focus. The screen shows screenshots—on it, services offered, rates, and availability are written on it.
The words swim together, obscene and impossible and undeniably there.
The laughter starts immediately. Pointing. More phones lifting to capture my reaction, to document this moment for whatever viral hell they're planning to put me through.
The crowd materializes around us like we've summoned it, pressing in, cutting off escape routes.
"We heard you want to sell your virginity!" someone yells from the back, and the words echo off the lockers, bouncing around my skull. "How much for an hour?"
I start trembling. Not just my hands now but my whole body, shaking so hard my teeth chatter.
Priya's arm comes around me, holding me upright, keeping me from collapsing into the human circle that's formed around us like we're some kind of spectacle, some kind of entertainment.
"Can you tell us your rate?" Another voice, male, gleeful with cruelty. "Can I get a discount for buying in bulk?"
The laughter gets louder. Someone makes a crude gesture. More phones. More pictures. I can't breathe.
The hallway is spinning, faces blurring together into one massive judgmental entity, and I can't tell who's laughing and who's just watching and who might actually feel bad for me because it all sounds the same—this roar of humiliation that's drowning me.
Priya is yelling now, pushing people back, trying to fight them off with her small frame and her righteous anger, but there are too many of them and they're pressing closer, asking more questions, making more comments, and I think I might actually die right here in this hallway from the weight of their collective condemnation.
"That's enough!" The voice cuts through everything—deep, authoritative, adult.
Principal Morrison appears at the edge of the crowd, and the students scatter like roaches when the light turns on.
He's breathing hard, his face red with anger, and he's looking at me with something that might be sympathy or might be disappointment. I can't tell anymore. "Miss Hart, Miss Kapoor, my office. Now."
Priya keeps her arm around me as we walk. My legs feel like they might give out at any moment, but I make them work, make them carry me past the remaining students, past their whispers and their stares, past my vandalized locker that seems to glow with accusation.
Morrison's office door is already open. When we step inside, I see them—Noah and Evan, sitting in chairs against the wall, looking like they've been through their own personal war.
Evan has a cut above his eyebrow that he hasn't bothered to clean. They both look at me when I enter, and the expressions on their faces are so complicated I can't begin to parse them.
Priya guides me to a chair and makes me sit. I sink into it, grateful for something solid beneath me, something that isn't spinning.
She leans down, her mouth close to my ear, and whispers two words that sound like a lifeline and a lie all at once. "Deny it. I'll be outside."
Then she's gone, and I'm alone with Morrison and the Mercer brothers and the accusation hanging in the air like smoke.