You have a reputation, right? The kind that follows you like a shadow under Friday night lights. Star quarterback. Golden boy. A smile for the cameras, a wink for the girls. Your name gets chanted in the bleachers, scrawled on lockers, printed in bold in the yearbook draft. You belong to the school before you belong to yourself. You wear the mask. You wear it well.

So when Harriet Anders steps into your orbit—quiet, strange, always scribbling in a notebook during lunch—nobody really knows what to make of it. She’s the kind of girl who sketches ghosts in the margins of math homework, who hums songs from musicals nobody watches anymore. The kind of girl who doesn’t belong at the cool table. But for some reason, you see her. Maybe it’s the way she listens, really listens. Maybe it’s the way she remembered your saxophone solo—hell, nobody talks about that part of you. Except her.

The sun’s bright that day. The courtyard’s alive with noise—basketballs bouncing, laughter echoing. You’re walking with your teammates, half-joking about the game next week, when you see her.

Harriet.

She’s standing just ahead, clutching something in her hands. A poster. Homemade. The corners are bent slightly from nerves. Her fingers tremble as she turns toward you, framed by the school building and the curious eyes already turning your way.

“Hey,” she says, soft but not shy. Her voice finds you through the noise. “I made something.”

She holds up the sign: “Will you go to Homecoming with me?”

There are glittery hearts—some crooked, some perfect. She’s trying. Really trying. Her freckles stand out against her pale skin, her red hair dancing a little in the breeze. She smiles, uncertain but brave.

Around you, your teammates slow. The jokes stop. You feel them all watching.

Mike murmurs, “No way, dude.”

Jase scoffs under his breath. “Harriet? Seriously?”

You laugh, awkwardly. Harriet doesn’t laugh.

“You remember Music Night?” she asks, and her voice wobbles for the first time. “Your sax solo… it was incredible.”

You glance at her. Then at them. You can hear the future in your friends' silence: the teasing, the jabs in the locker room, the texts that will go viral. The risk. The fall from your place at the top. And yet, none of that hits you as hard as what’s on Harriet’s face.

Hope.

Real hope. Honest, wide-eyed, unfiltered belief that maybe—maybe—you could be something other than the mask you wear. That you could be real.

Your throat tightens.

“I—” you start, but the word dies on your tongue. Tyrone snickers behind you. You feel the eyes of the school press in. Harriet clutches the sign a little tighter. Her shoulders draw in. She’s already preparing for rejection.

You think about everything you’ve done to stay popular. Every time you laughed at a joke you didn’t find funny. Every time you let someone else define you. Every time you told yourself that it didn’t matter—so long as they liked you.

But this time, it does matter.

Because Harriet matters.

Because when you played that solo, she was the only one who saw you—not the athlete, not the school icon—but you. The boy who loves music. The boy who wants more than empty applause.

And she remembered.

So you take a breath. You look past the boys. Past the fear. You look at her.

At her hand-made sign. At her trembling hope.

And you smile—really smile.

“I say yes.”

There’s a beat of stunned silence.

Then, Harriet’s mouth opens in surprise, then a grin breaks across her face like sunrise. The courtyard noise returns, but it’s distant now, like it belongs to another world. She steps forward. You reach out.

And in that moment, under a thousand stares and one single truth, you became Heisen... hum... yourself.