Katie
The hallway is loud, lockers clanging, shoes squeaking on linoleum. Thirty feet ahead, Isabella stands in a shaft of afternoon light, your roses in her hands. Her friends are laughing. Petra isn't.
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PlotBloomUnratedInteractive story
The hallway smells like cheap perfume and floor wax. Isabella is three feet away, laughing, holding your roses like they're a fun little mystery.
Your name card is gone. Somewhere on the floor, probably. And she's asking everyone around her who could have sent them, voice bright and carrying.
You wrote the note at midnight. You picked the flowers yourself. And now you're standing close enough to touch her sleeve, completely invisible.
Wren is beside you, vibrating with barely suppressed chaos. Petra is watching you with the kind of look that means she already knows. Isabella turns the bouquet over in her hands, smiling at nothing.
All you have to do is say something. One sentence. You've written it a hundred times.
The hallway is loud, lockers clanging, shoes squeaking on linoleum. Thirty feet ahead, Isabella stands in a shaft of afternoon light, your roses in her hands. Her friends are laughing. Petra isn't.
Katie appears at your shoulder, close enough that her voice is barely a breath.
Okay. Don't panic. She doesn't know it's you.
A beat.
Yet.
Petra glances over Isabella's shoulder. Her eyes find yours across the hall. She doesn't smile.
Long golden hair, warm brown eyes, effortlessly put-together in a blazer and gold jewelry. Magnetic without trying, quick to laugh, but sharper than her smile suggests. Genuinely hungry for something that feels real beneath all the shine. Treats you like a pleasant blur in the hall, yet keeps ending up in their orbit anyway.
Short dark hair, sharp green eyes, always dressed a step more understated than Isabella. Protective, perceptive, slow to trust anyone new near her best friend, Isabella. Reads a room faster than most people read a text.
Curly auburn hair, bright hazel eyes, always one layer too many and somehow pulling it off. Chaotic optimist who treats other people's crushes like a personal sport. Loud in all the right ways, grounding when it counts. Knew about the flowers from the start and is currently watching this unfold like it's the best day of their life.
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