[Serena’s POV]
* Columbia University, Fall 2015 *
The auditorium hums with expectation. Three hundred seats, most of them filled. I spot the recruiters in the third row—Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, McKinsey. The firms that could change everything. The ones that don't usually look twice at scholarship girls unless those girls are extraordinary.
I'm going to be extraordinary tonight.
My presentation is loaded, rehearsed until I could recite it in my sleep. Forty-seven slides of meticulously researched economic policy analysis. Every source triple-checked. Every argument bulletproof. I've spent six weeks on this. Six weeks of sixteen-hour days, of sacrificing sleep and meals and anything resembling a social life.
But it'll be worth it. After tonight, I won't just be the scholarship girl who works twice as hard. I'll be the one they remember.
Professor Mitchell introduces me. My name echoes through the space, and I walk to the podium with my heart hammering but my spine straight. The stage lights are hot. Blinding. I can't see individual faces past the first few rows, which helps.
I click to the first slide.
The image that appears on the screen behind me isn't my carefully crafted title card.
It's a cat. A meme cat. With impact font: "I CAN HAZ ECONOMIC POLICY?"
Laughter ripples through the audience. Confused, uncertain laughter.
My brain stutters, trying to process. This isn't—this can't be—
I click again. Desperate. Needing this to be a technical glitch.
The next slide: another meme. SpongeBob SquarePants mocking text. "eCoNoMiC iNcEnTiVeS."
The laughter grows. Louder. Meaner.
My hands shake as I click through slide after slide. Each one worse than the last. Fake statistics claiming "100% of economists agree pizza is a vegetable." Charts with axes labeled "stonks" and "not stonks." An image of Monopoly money with the caption "Serena Vale's understanding of fiscal policy."
The humiliation is a living thing. It crawls up my throat, wraps around my lungs, squeezes until I can't breathe. I'm frozen at the podium, watching my entire future incinerate in real-time while three hundred people laugh at me.
Someone in the back yells, "Best presentation ever!"
More laughter. Applause, even. Like this is entertainment. Like I'm a joke they paid admission to see.
My eyes find Professor Mitchell. He looks horrified, already standing, moving toward the stage. But it's too late. The damage is complete.
And that's when I see him.
Caspian Rothwell. Sixth row, slightly left of center.
He's not laughing. That's the first thing I notice. While the guys around him are howling—Jason Park literally wiping tears from his eyes, Marcus Chen doubled over—Caspian sits perfectly still. His face is careful. Neutral.
Our eyes meet across the darkness of the auditorium.
I watch something flicker across his expression. Guilt, maybe. Or pity. Either way, it's worse than if he were laughing too.
Because I know. In that instant, with the certainty of someone who's studied him for two years, I know he knew this was going to happen.
The knowledge detonates in my chest.
"Ms. Vale." Professor Mitchell has reached the podium, his hand gentle on my shoulder. "Let's take a break. Technical difficulties."
But everyone knows. There are no technical difficulties. Just a girl who was stupid enough to leave her laptop unattended. Stupid enough to trust that in a place like Columbia, people wouldn't sabotage each other's futures for a laugh.
I walk off stage. Don't run, though everything in me screams to run. My vision tunnels. The exit sign glows like salvation.
Behind me, I hear Professor Mitchell's voice: "That's enough. Show's over."
But it's not over. It'll never be over. Every recruiter just watched me fall apart. Every firm just saw that I'm not extraordinary—I'm a target. Someone people mock. Someone who doesn't belong.
The hallway is blessedly empty. I make it to the bathroom before the first sob rips out of me. Bite it back. Force it down. Crying won't undo this. Won't give me back the six weeks I wasted. Won't erase the image of Caspian sitting there, watching me burn, doing nothing.
The door opens. I freeze, praying whoever it is will leave.
"Serena."
His voice. Of course it's him.
"Get out." The words scrape my throat raw.
"I'm sorry. I'm so—"
"Get. Out."
But he doesn't leave. I hear his footsteps, careful and hesitant. When I turn from the sink, he's there. Close enough that I can see his face properly. The guilt isn't pretend. It's etched into every line, every careful breath.
"I didn't know they were going to—" he starts.
"Liar."
The word stops him cold.
"You were there." My voice shakes but doesn't break. "When they planned it. Weren’t you?"
"I didn't—" He runs a hand through his hair, and I hate that even now, even in this moment, part of me notices how he looks. Stricken. Young. Almost as destroyed as I feel. "I didn't think they'd actually do it. I thought it was just talk."
"But you didn't stop them." The truth of it settles between us like something toxic. "You didn't warn me."
"No." The admission is barely a whisper. "I didn't."
"Why?"
The question hangs in the sterile bathroom air. Fluorescent lights humming overhead. Water dripping from a faulty faucet. The sounds of my destruction.
"Because I'm a coward." His voice cracks on the word. "Because stopping them would have meant—I don't know—admitting I cared if you got hurt. And I couldn't—"
"You couldn't let people know you see me as human." I finish his sentence, and watch him flinch like I've struck him. "That your greatest rival might actually be a person who can bleed."
"That's not—"
"Yes. It is." The certainty of it makes me cruel. Makes me want him to hurt the way I'm hurting. "You sat there with your friends and watched them plan to destroy me. Then you sat in that audience and watched it happen. You didn't laugh, congratulations. But you didn't do a goddamn thing to stop it either."
He's pale now. Shaking slightly. "I know. I know, and I'm—"
"Sorry?" The word tastes like poison. "You're sorry. Well, that fixes everything, doesn't it? That erases the fact that every recruiter just watched me crash and burn. That my presentation—the one I sacrificed everything for—is now a joke people will tell for years."
"Serena—"
"Do you know what the worst part is?" My voice drops to something deadly quiet. "It's not even the humiliation. It's that I actually thought—" I stop.
Swallow. Force myself to finish. "I actually thought you were better than them. That underneath all the rivalry, all the fighting, you had some kind of honor. That you respected the competition even if you didn't respect me."
"I do respect you—"
"No. You don't." Each word is precise. Surgical. "Because if you did, you would have warned me. Would have given me a chance to protect myself. But you didn't. You chose them over basic human decency. You chose your reputation, your friendships, your comfort over doing the right thing."
The silence that follows is suffocating.
"I'll never forgive you for this." I meet his eyes, let him see every ounce of hurt I'm feeling. "Not the prank. They're assholes, fine. But you? You watched me burn and did nothing. That's not rivalry. That's cruelty. And I will never, ever forgive you for it."
Something in his face breaks. Completely. Like I've reached inside and torn something essential out.
"Serena, please—"
"Get out."
This time, he listens.
The door closes behind him with a soft click, and I'm alone with the wreckage of my future. With the knowledge that Caspian Rothwell, the boy I've spent two years fighting and—god help me—secretly wanting, just proved that I never knew him at all.
That the person I thought I saw beneath the rivalry was a fantasy. A lie I told myself to make the wanting hurt less.
I look at myself in the mirror. See my own face, pale and tear-streaked and destroyed.
And I make a promise to that reflection: never again. Never again will I trust him. Never again will I let him close enough to wound me.
From this moment forward, Caspian Rothwell is the enemy.
Nothing more. Nothing less.
Just the enemy.