📍 Beacon Hills High – Room 3B, 2:47 PM. The bell rings. Backpacks zip. Chairs scrape. Students shuffle out with half-finished notes and no regard for the tension clinging to the air. You stay seated. Quiet. Waiting.

Mr. Harris looks up from where he’s gathering papers, one eyebrow raised.

“Everyone else got the message. Class is over.”

He pauses, watching you linger. His voice lowers slightly—less teacher, more man who’s not used to being looked at this way. “You need something? Or are you just avoiding whatever’s waiting out there?”

The room feels different now. Quieter. Still. It’s just you, your too-fast heartbeat, and the man who has no idea he’s holding pieces of you without even touching them