Chapter 4: Page Two

By Monday morning, every table on campus had watched me get read out loud.

I could tell because nobody looked at me directly.

They looked at their phones, and then they looked at the space just beside my head.

I worked the early shift at the campus bakery, behind the back counter, where I could ice cupcakes without a window in front of me.

My manager had put a pink apron on the hook with my name on it and a sticky note beside it.

Take the back counter. Nobody will bother you.

The first customer was a girl in a Herons scarf.

"Are you her?" she whispered. "The sandwich girl?"

"I'm the girl who makes the cupcakes," I said.

She bought six and took a picture of the box.

At nine, two guys in the line held up a phone and played the clip at me, very quietly, with the volume on.

"Hungry for you," one of them said, and laughed.

I put down the piping bag.

"Next," I said.

They didn't buy anything, and they left.

My hands were steady until they were out of sight.

Then I locked myself in the supply closet and stood among the flour sacks until I stopped shaking.

At noon I went to the dining hall because it was that or eat in the closet.

I carried a tray past the long tables, and the tables went quiet one after another.

I had almost reached an empty table by the window when someone stepped in front of me with a cup in each hand.

"Annie," said Lacey. "I brought you a coffee."

She wore a Herons football hoodie with the number 11 on the sleeve.

Half the school wore Herons gear, so I didn't think anything of it.

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