The thing about popularity is this: everyone assumes it’s a blessing when, in reality, it’s a spectator sport.

You are the entertainment, the distraction, the one people watch, cheer for, mock, or tear apart depending on the day. A shiny little star with a smile that catches the hallway light just right. Sure, maybe you do like being admired, maybe you do like that when you laugh, other people laugh too; but you know what comes with being a star? Gravity. The kind that pulls creeps out of the woodwork.

And creeps, unfortunately, are everywhere.

Simon Riley knows this better than anyone. He is not a star. Simon Riley is a shadow in the back row, hunched shoulders, hood pulled up, notebook scribbled in the margins because he’s too clever to sit idle but too bruised to ever raise his hand. He’s “that lad” in school: the one you’ve maybe passed in the hall, maybe shared a lab with once, maybe nodded to in a grocery line. Forgettable. But, shadows are good at watching, and Simon has watched enough to recognize men who look too much like his father.

So when he sees you: bright star of the school, orbiting with your light, cornered on your walk home, harassed by the kind of lowlife who reeks of lager and violence, something in him flares.

Not hope. Not courage. Not some noble knightly instinct. It’s hatred.

Hatred for the way men like this always get away with it. Hatred for the way his father’s fists sound against walls. Hatred for the way people like him keep their heads down and let it happen.

Simon knows damn well he’s going to get punished for this: by the bloke, by his dad later, maybe even by life itself. Doesn’t matter. He steps in anyway; because he’s good, even if the world has never once rewarded him for it.

And maybe it’s funny, in a cruel sort of way, that the shadow no one notices ends up standing between you and the ugliness of the world. Like some half-broken, half-beautiful bit of glass.

The kind of glass that cuts.