The girl being called out finally lifted her eyes.
She looked once—calmly, steadily—at the classmate who was frowning and glaring at her, as if the person being complained about were someone else entirely.
Seeing that Ginevra Volkova was at last truly looking at her, Jayna's mouth started spinning like a top. Words came out in a rapid-fire stream.
"That's more like it. When someone talks to you, you're supposed to look at them. It's called manners. I know you're number one in the year and all, but you still need to work on basic politeness. Think about it—we've been deskmates for five days. Five. Do you know what that means? I used to manage to become great friends with my deskmate in just one day! We'd skip class together, sneak to the convenience store, copy each other's homework a bit… but you? You are not friendly at all."
Not friendly.
Not friendly in the slightest.
It was the first time anyone had ever used that word on her.
Ginevra listened to the soft stream of complaints coming from the naturally curly-haired girl beside her and, inwardly, dismissed most of it.
As far as she was concerned, she'd behaved with perfect restraint. She hadn't caused her desk partner any trouble whatsoever. If this was what the other girl called a "lack of friendliness," then the "friendly relationship" she was describing—skipping classes, running off to the corner shop, copying homework—was something Ginevra would never, under any circumstances, participate in.
"So?"
She asked the question quietly.
A glance at her wristwatch told her that there were three minutes left before French class. The first ten minutes would, by routine, be spent on dictation of the thirty phrasal verbs assigned yesterday.
"So…?"
The counter-question threw Jayna for a second. Her brain stalled.
She hadn't actually expected a response. Still, the fact that Ginevra had been listening made her secretly, absurdly pleased.
"So," she said, regrouping at once, "we should get along from now on. You know, look out for each other. And, while we're at it… maybe you could let me peek during the French dictation next period?"
"I have nothing to say to that."
With that verdict, Ginevra turned away and refused to spare another glance for her undisciplined seatmate.
In all her years of school, she had never encountered anyone quite this lazy, this uninterested in learning.
Her memories were mostly of high-pressure classrooms where everyone was competing with everyone, and she herself was the benchmark other people pointed to. No one around her wasted time on idle chatter, much less openly slept through lessons.
But this new transfer student?
This Jayna?
Almost every class found her draped over her desk—either napping or sneaking snacks out of her drawer.
And now she had the audacity to try and drag her into these habits.
The thought made Ginevra's pen bite into the page.
She was halfway through writing "matelas" when the nib dug so hard that it nearly snapped.
Yes. That was exactly it.
This girl really did seem to think the desk was a mattress and the classroom a bedroom.
"Ginevra—hey, Ginevra. Ginny. Gin. River girl—hey—"
Jayna's voice, pitched low, buzzed in her ear like an insistent mosquito. She called every variation on the name she could think of, hoping that her heartfelt little speech from earlier might move the top student in their grade and convince her to lend a hand.
But by the time the teacher went around collecting the dictation sheets, Ginevra still hadn't so much as angled her paper her way.
The disaster awaiting her in French class was now very clear.
Their French teacher was also their homeroom teacher, Ms. Harper. She had swapped periods with the math teacher and used the mid-morning break to go through the dictations.
Normally, the second the bell rang, Jayna evaporated from the classroom, but today she sat rooted to her chair, cold sweat gathering at her temples.
She kept feeling—maybe it was paranoia—that Ms. Harper's gentle eyes were, every now and then, slicing in her direction with unusual sharpness.
The fifteen-minute break slipped by at alarming speed.
When the bell rang again, Ms. Harper tapped the stack of papers against the podium, aligning them neatly.
"Everyone," she said, "I've finished marking your dictations."
"I repeated the instructions several times yesterday: today we were testing yesterday's list of phrasal verbs. Some people, however, chose to treat those instructions as if they were air. Getting one or two wrong, fine, that's understandable. But thirty items and you only spelled five correctly? What is that supposed to mean, Ms. Stevens? Do you want to explain that to me?"
At once, every head in the room turned toward the second seat from the left in the last row.
Dead. She was dead.
The girl who could doze through entire lessons without being caught—the one whose acting skills were legendary when it came to feigned attentiveness—now stood up with a face so miserable she looked on the verge of tears.
Ms. Harper frowned slightly at the sight. "Did I say something wrong?" she asked.
"No, Ms. Harper, you're absolutely right," Jayna said, lowering her eyes. Her brows drew together in a picture of fragile sorrow as she cast a small, mournful glance at herself, and then—more pointedly—at her expressionless deskmate. "The problem is me. My brain's slow, and I seem to just… irritate people. It's not like I want to be like this…"
"What's going on?" Ms. Harper's tone gentled, but only slightly.
"I really do want to study well," Jayna said, shaking her head, the words soft and slow. "But I can't really keep up in class. So I thought I'd ask Ginevra for help after, since she's so good at everything. I'm just… afraid of bothering her."
Ginevra, whose name had just been thrown into the center of things, turned her head, gaze icy on the girl playing the victim at her side.
She had to fight the urge to stand up and list, one by one, all the times this so-called poor student had slept, eaten, or daydreamed her way through class.
Ms. Harper, of course, knew why Jayna had been placed here. Students like her falling behind was only natural. But if things continued on this trajectory, she was going to become dead weight dragging the whole class average down. What she needed was a role model. Someone to keep an eye on her.
"Ginevra," she said, turning to the girl by the window, "I think if Jayna genuinely wants to ask you for help, and if you have the time, it would be good if you could tutor her a bit. You're seatmates, after all. Helping each other is what classmates do. Is that all right?"
Every instinct in Ginevra's body screamed no.
But with the entire class watching, and with the teacher's eyes on her, there was no polite way to refuse.
She nodded, the motion small and stiff.
Out of the corner of her eye she caught it: the slight curve of Jayna's lips, the flash of a sly little smile.
By the time the last period of the day finally ended, the classroom emptied in a rush.
It was strange.
The reason Jayna had scraped her way into the city's top school in the first place was that its first and second-year students weren't required to attend evening self-study sessions. She had decided she could tolerate the days as long as her evenings were her own.
Most of her classmates, on the other hand, treated dismissal as the starting gun for a second race, sprinting off to cram school or private tutors.
Normally, she was the first one out the door, bag slung over one shoulder, humming whatever song was stuck in her head.
But today, she lingered.
"Hey, Jayna, why aren't you leaving?"
Calista had stuffed the last of her books into her bag. She straightened up, surprised to see her friend still lounging at her desk instead of halfway down the hall.
"Is it that weird for me to stay?" Jayna asked, twirling a pen between her fingers, leaning back in her chair as if she had all the time in the world.
"Yes," Calista said bluntly. "You're usually the first one to vanish."
The reminder jogged her memory.
It was true. Normally she flew out of here the moment the bell rang.
Today was… different.
For no reason other than this: Ginevra was on duty, and she was still here.
Jayna's gaze drifted toward the front of the room, where Ginevra was wiping the blackboard with smooth, methodical strokes. She spoke without taking her eyes off her.
"You should go ahead," she told Calista. "Don't you have tutoring today?"
"You promised you'd come see the place with me," Calista protested. Her brows drew together, genuine disappointment in her voice. "We said we'd pick a cram school together and sign up. Do you know how long it took me to talk you into studying seriously, even just a little bit?"
Jayna winced. She was suddenly very interested in rearranging the pens in her pencil case.
"I am going to go," she said. "Just not today. It's not like the cram school's going to get up and run away. Besides, Ms. Harper said I'm not allowed to leave until I've learned the remaining twenty-five phrasal verbs."
"Tell me you got them wrong on purpose," Calista said, eyes narrowing.
Her stare fixed on Jayna's slightly evasive gaze and she sighed. "Thought so. So you're staying behind now… to actually learn them?"
"Of course," Jayna said with great dignity. "Why else would I be here?"
Calista stared at her for a long moment, then let her eyes flick toward the front of the room, where Ginevra was tidying the class library shelves with efficient movements.
Then back to the girl pretending to copy vocabulary in the back row.
"You don't seriously expect her to teach you, do you?" she asked slowly.
"Weren't you in French?" Jayna replied. "Ms. Harper said Ginevra has to teach me until I've got them down."
She couldn't help the little laugh that bubbled up.
She honestly wasn't sure whether the girl who had disliked her from day one would really sit down and help her. Half of her was looking forward to finding out.
Calista, on the other hand, was dubious.
She knew Ginevra's reputation.
"This is a terrible idea," she muttered. "You're looking for trouble. If you really don't understand the words, I can teach you. Don't come crying to me later when she freezes you into an icicle."
"Shut up. As if that's going to happen," Jayna scoffed, bristling.
Her voice jumped a shade higher than she intended, cutting through the quiet.
At the front, Ginevra paused in the act of stacking books.
She glanced over, their eyes locking for a brief few seconds before she lowered her gaze again and went back to work.
Those few seconds were enough to make heat climb into Jayna's ears.
"Okay, okay, just go," she hissed at Calista, pushing her toward the door. "I'll go with you next time."
Despite Calista's reluctance to leave her in the lion's den, she eventually let herself be hustled out.
The classroom fell quiet in an instant.
September's evening light pooled warm and soft along the windowsills, a blush of red like the first shy flush on a girl's cheeks.
From the back doorway, Jayna watched Ginevra close the windows one by one.
The twilight painted a faint pink across her too-pale face. Her ponytail, usually severe and precise, had come a little undone, strands of hair escaping in the breeze.
She looked… different like this. Less forbidding. Human.
Jayna smiled without quite realizing it and walked over to help with the last few panes.
Ginevra turned at the sound of the latch.
"Why are you smiling?" she asked.
She didn't understand this girl at all.
Someone who clearly hated studying, stubbornly staying behind to "learn" vocabulary? It was wildly out of character.
"Because you look good," Jayna answered, with no hesitation at all.
Ginevra rewarded her with a superb eye-roll, but that only made her smile wider.
"Ms. Harper said I can't leave until I've memorized those phrasal verbs," Jayna added. "And I'm a very obedient student. I always do what the teacher says. You promised you'd teach me."
Ginevra's face did not shift, not by so much as a millimeter.
She continued packing her bag, sliding books into place, zipping compartments, as if the chattering girl did not exist.
The silence stretched.
Jayna's earlier confidence began to fray around the edges.
She hadn't stayed all this time just to be abandoned, had she?
"Ginevra," she said, moving closer, "you can't just go back on your word. You said you'd teach me."
Her hand lifted, reaching for Ginevra's sleeve.
But Ginevra moved faster than she looked capable of.
She dodged sideways in one smooth step, surprising Jayna with the speed of it, and in the same motion plucked the black pen from Jayna's own hand.
The cold tip of the pen landed firmly against the center of Jayna's forehead, pushing her head back and holding her there, creating a small, unbridgeable distance between them.
"Don't touch me," she said.