Chapter 10: The Photo

I went to breakfast.

Lark met me at the top of the basement stairs in her hoodie, still pale from the ice house.

"I said don't come."

"I read it."

"So why are you here?"

"Because I'm hungry, and it's my dining hall too."

She stared at me. Then she fell in beside me.

"Fine. If they throw food, I'm hiding behind you. You're wider."

"I'm not wider."

"You're wider in spirit."

The dining hall went quiet when we walked in.

Then it got loud in a different way.

Somebody made a kissing noise.

Somebody else said, "Climber," just loud enough.

A boy at the second table stuck his foot out as I passed.

I stepped over it.

At the omega table, someone had left a crayon drawing of a ladder on my tray.

The ladder went up to a stick figure with a crown that said ALPHA.

The twins looked at it, then at me, and didn't know whether to laugh.

"It's not bad," I said. "Good proportions."

One of the twins laughed. Then the other one did.

Then I looked across the hall at the varsity table.

Peyton sat under the banner with her phone in her hand, scrolling through the comments and smiling.

Rhett sat beside her.

He'd had a rough two days since the speakers. Nobody sat on his other side anymore.

Peyton needed a new story, and I was it.

Cade wasn't there yet.

Good.

I didn't want him to fight this one for me.

I leaned over to Lark.

"The screenshots," I said. "From last year. You told me you kept them."

She went white.

"Mercy, no."

"She's not going to stop."

Lark's hands were shaking.

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