Chapter 4: Nobody Touches Her

By first period Wednesday, the photo of my mother had four hundred likes.

I walked into the main hall with my chin up and my face blank.

Everyone was looking at their phones. Then everyone was looking at me.

Someone had printed the picture and taped it to my locker.

A black marker arrow pointed at my mother's name badge.

I peeled it off slowly.

A boy I had never spoken to made a mopping motion with an invisible mop. His friends laughed.

Teagan Whitmer came down the hall with two girls behind her and her phone already raised.

"Maisy," she said, bright as a bell. "I'm so sorry about the post."

"Sure you are."

"I didn't know your mom would be offended. She does such honest work."

"Take it down," I said.

"It's art."

"Take it down, Teagan."

"Or what?" She stepped close. Her perfume smelled like expensive pears. "Tell me, scholarship. What do you have that I can't buy?"

I opened my mouth.

I had a hundred things to say, and I'd been saving them for months. My hands were tight around the paper.

A hand came over my shoulder and took the phone out of Teagan's grip.

It was Drake.

He had come from nowhere. He stood close behind me, close enough that I felt the heat of his chest through my sweater.

"Drake," Teagan said, laughing. "Give it back."

He did not give it back.

He held her phone up between two fingers and opened the post. He looked at it for one second.

Then he deleted it.

The whole hallway watched him.

He deleted the photo, and then six more posts about me, one after another, with his thumb.

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