The months following the Talent Show were a blurred haze of academic obsession. I had traded my dust rag for a highlighter, spending every spare second in the library or the furthest corner of the common room. The autumn leaves had long since turned to brittle skeletons, and a biting winter chill had settled over Eastwood High, matching the frost I had tried to grow over my own heart. I welcomed the cold. It felt honest. Unlike the warmth of the music room or the golden glow of the practice field, the winter did not promise things it could not deliver. It simply existed, harsh and uncompromising, much like the new version of myself I was meticulously crafting.
It had been nearly three months since Ryan had humiliated me on that stage. The image of him kissing the cellist still flashed behind my eyes when I closed them, bringing back that dull, throbbing headache that had become my constant companion. I was determined to be untouchable. If I did not let anyone in, no one could pull the rug out from under me again. I was building something sturdy out of silence and high grades. My victory in the debate competition alongside Carl had only solidified this new persona. People did not just see me as the new girl anymore. They saw me as the girl who could dismantle an argument with a single sentence, the girl who stood toe to toe with the school's academic titan and won.
But while I was trying to disappear behind my trophies and textbooks, the universe was plotting against my peace. It started with Arnold.
Arnold was a junior, a boy of sharp angles and nervous energy who sat a few rows away from me in our Creative Writing elective. I had been polite to him in that class, offering a pen when he lost his or nodding when he shared a particularly vulnerable poem during workshops. To me, it was just basic human decency. To him, it was apparently an invitation. One Tuesday evening, as the sun was dipping below the horizon and casting long, skeletal shadows across the grounds, he cornered me under the old oak tree near the library. It was the same spot where Carl and I had practiced our closing arguments, but the air now felt thick with a different, unwelcome tension.
To my horror, Arnold was not alone. Luke, his best friend, stood a few feet behind him like a silent, awkward pillar of emotional support. The sight of them made my stomach churn with a sudden, sharp irritation.
"Sadie, wait," Arnold stammered. His face was a patchwork of red blotches, and his hands were shoved deep into his pockets. "I... I cannot keep it in anymore. I have been trying to find the right time to tell you, especially after seeing how brilliant you were in the auditorium for the debate. Watching you up there, standing your ground... it made me sure of how I feel."
I stood there, clutching my heavy stack of textbooks against my chest like a shield. I could feel the cold wind biting at my ears. At first, I tried to be gentle. I did not want to be a monster, I just wanted to be left alone.
"Arnold, that is very kind of you," I said, my voice soft but firm. "I appreciate the compliment, but I am really just focused on my studies right now. I am not looking for anything else."
I started to step around him, but Arnold moved to block my path, his desperation growing. "I know I am not as cool as Mark or one of the popular guys in school, but I think you are the most amazing person here. I think you are the most interesting girl in this school, Sadie. Please, just one date? The winter formal is next week."
His persistence felt like a physical weight, a pressure against the walls I had worked so hard to build. The throb in my temples exploded. The sight of them, Arnold trembling with a hope he would not let go of and Luke watching the scene like a concerned chaperone, snapped my last thread of patience. All the betrayal I had felt from Ryan and the immense pressure of maintaining my perfect academic wall came rushing to the surface.
"Enough, Arnold!" I snapped. My voice cut through the quiet night air like a serrated blade. I saw Luke flinch in the background, his eyes widening in shock as he took a half step back. "Just look at yourself. Both of you! Do you honestly think this is going to happen? Do you think that just because I was polite to you in Creative Writing, I owe you a piece of my life?"
Arnold's mouth hung open, his expression shifting from hope to a raw, naked devastation. But I could not stop. The words were pouring out of me, cold and sharp as ice shards.
"We are not in the same league, Arnold. I am here to study. I am here to build a future, not to play house with someone who cannot even look me in the eye without stuttering. Do you think a debate champion has time for this? Just go away. Both of you. Leave me alone."
I turned on my heel and fled toward the girl's dorms, my heels clicking sharply against the frozen pavement. I did not look back to see Arnold's face or to see if Luke was comforting him. I did not care. In that moment, the cruelty felt like a victory. It felt like I had finally put a spike on the wall of my fortress.
I thought that was the end of it. I thought I could go back to my bunk bed and my silence as if nothing had happened. I was wrong. At Eastwood High, words traveled faster than the winter wind.
A week later, I was hanging out with Stacy, my movie buddy. We were in the common room, surrounded by the smell of laundry and the sound of distant laughter. But today, Stacy was not interested in talking about cinematography.
"Sadie, do you have any idea what is happening in the boy's hostel right now?" Stacy asked. She popped a piece of popcorn into her mouth, her eyes fixed on me with an intense, curious heat.
"I do not care about what happens in the boys's hostel, Stacy," I replied, flipping a page in my literature textbook. "I have a paper due on Monday."
"Well, they certainly care about you," she said, leaning in closer. "The Arnold Incident is legendary. It has been the talk of the cafeteria for three days. Word is that you shredded him in front of his best friend without even blinking. Between the way you crushed the seniors in the debate and the way you handled Arnold, they are calling you the Ice Queen, Sadie. It started as a whisper, but now it is everywhere."
I felt a chill that had nothing to do with the winter air. I had wanted to be left alone, but I had not realized that the price of solitude would be a crown of frost.
"The Ice Queen?" I repeated. The title felt heavy, a cold weight settling onto my shoulders.
"Yup," Stacy confirmed, her voice dropping to a whisper. "I literally had three guys ask me today if I knew the real Sadie, just to see if I would confirm you were as cold as the rumors say. You are famous for being heartless. Half the guys are terrified of you, and the other half think it is some kind of challenge."
I looked out the window at the gray, overcast sky. The reputation was out of my control now. I had tried to be invisible, but instead, I had become a monument of frost. I thought about Arnold's face and the way Luke had flinched. If they wanted an Ice Queen, I would give them one. It was better to be feared than to be broken. I closed my textbook and stood up, my expression as flat and unreadable as a frozen lake. I did not come here to be popular. I came here to survive, and if ice was the only way to keep the fire from burning me again, then I would embrace the cold.