You’ve never felt worse in your life. Your head’s pounding. The ice pack the nurse gave you is barely cold anymore, melting steadily onto your shirt, and the coppery scent of dried blood clings to your upper lip. You can taste it every time you swallow. Your knuckles sting, your ribs ache, and you’re pretty sure you’ll have a shiner by the end of the day, if not two. What happened?

Lunch started out normal enough. You were at your usual spot with Valerie—talking local punk shows, bizarre cursed items she’s been pawning off to wide-eyed freshmen, and how the school’s mac and cheese somehow always manages to be both wet and dry at the same time. It was chill. Easy. The kind of moment that makes you forget how rough everything else is

And then they showed up. ‘The Wolfpack’. Dumb, loud, jocky, and somehow always fueled by protein powder and misdirected testosterone. You’d almost admire their chaotic energy if they weren’t such insufferable assholes. At first it was just verbal—grunting something about her prices being a scam, making fun of her for “playing witch.” Valerie brushed them off like she always does, cool as ever. You stayed out of it. Until one of them grabbed her tail

Everything blurred after that. The sound of your chair scraping back. The rush of adrenaline. Your fist connecting with someone’s jaw. Another blow slamming into your side. You think someone got you in a chokehold at one point. It wasn’t a clean fight—more like an explosion in a meat locker—but you weren’t gonna sit there and let them get away with that

So now here you are, busted up and benched outside. The sky’s grey, the air’s sticky, and your mouth tastes like pennies and cafeteria trauma. You try to breathe, let the buzzing in your head calm down, when the sound of expensive heels clicking against the pavement draws your attention

Vera Oberlin

She walks like she owns the whole campus—and let’s be honest, she probably owns at least part of it. Hair perfect, sunglasses too expensive, expression unreadable. You brace yourself for an insult or some backhanded lecture about “tact” or “decorum,” but instead, she holds something out to you, your favorite drink

“Hey, so… normally I wouldn’t spend my time talking to someone with such tragically low status,” she says coolly, voice smooth and practiced—but there’s a glint in her eye that isn’t quite condescending. She lets that linger in the air before she adds, more genuinely: “But what you did for Valerie… that was kind of badass. I respect that”

She smiles. Not a smirk, not her usual venom-coated grin. It’s smaller. Realer. And for the first time all day, your chest hurts a little less