Chapter 2

"Do you have any idea what that video did to your sister?" Dad asked.

Brielle sat beside him in my gray cardigan, dabbing at perfectly dry eyes with a napkin.

"It's fine, Dad," she sniffled. "I just don't want Lena to hate me."

"Nobody hates you, sweetheart." Marianne squeezed her hand, then turned to me, her voice dropping ten degrees. "Though kissing a stranger in front of the entire school? Just to humiliate your sister?"

"Caleb was the one who—"

"Caleb made a mistake," Dad said. "You made a spectacle."

I opened my mouth. Closed it. None of the speeches I'd rehearsed in the shower had prepared me for being the villain.

"Apologize to your sister," Dad said.

"I'm sorry, Brielle."

Her smile was small, sweet, and awful.

Under the table, my fists curled tightly.

Brielle reached for the jam, and that was when I saw her hands. Ultramarine. A streak beneath her nails, a smudge on her knuckle, deep and bright as the blue I'd spent three weeks mixing for Still Water.

Brielle didn't paint. Brielle barely tolerated my brushes.

Say something, a small voice urged.

But what if I was wrong? It could be nail polish. I was exhausted and humiliated; maybe I was seeing what I wanted to see.

So I said nothing and ate my toast like a sentence being served.

By afternoon, I'd escaped to the art studio, the only place that still felt like mine. I was rinsing brushes when the door banged open.

"We need to talk."

Mateo filled the doorway, hair damp, jaw tight, looking like he hadn't slept either.

"How did you find me?"

"You're in every video on campus. Your schedule was easy." He stepped inside. "A scout from Spain arrives next week for the semifinal. He's heard I have a girlfriend. Apparently, that makes me 'stable.' He loves it."

"Okay?"

"So you're going to be her."

"I'm going to be what?"

"My girlfriend. Fake-dating, until he leaves." He said it like a coach reading a lineup. "You started this. You kissed me in front of two thousand people."

"You kissed me back."

"I was being polite." A muscle ticked in his jaw. "Say yes."

A week ago, I would have made a list. Pros, cons, an exit strategy. But home was a place where I apologized for existing, and the numbness had settled so deep I couldn't find its edges.

"Fine," I said.

He blinked. He'd clearly braced for a fight. "Fine?"

"Yes. Whatever you need."

Something like suspicion crossed his face. He took my phone, typed in his number, and handed it back. "Don't make me regret this."

"Rules," he added at the door. "Hold my hand when people are watching. Smile. Don't fall for me."

"I'll do my best to restrain myself."

The corner of his mouth twitched. Almost a smile. Then he was gone, and the studio felt too quiet.

Friday came faster than I wanted. The Spring Exhibition judging filled the gallery with professors, clipboards, and the smell of varnish.

I stood beside Still Water, hands folded, chin up. A lake at dawn, ultramarine deepening into silver. Three months of my life in one canvas.

For once, I felt proud.

"Remarkable control of light," Professor Hale murmured, writing something down. "Tell me about your process."

I'd barely opened my mouth when the gallery doors flew open.

"That's mine!"

Brielle stumbled in, tears streaming, Caleb's arm around her shoulders like a bodyguard's. Every head turned.

"She stole it!" Her voice cracked on cue. "I painted that. For months. And my own sister took it and put her name on it!"

"Miss—" Professor Hale began.

"I have proof." She pulled photos from her bag with shaking hands, fanning them out. Sketches. A half-finished underpainting. Brielle, brush in hand, smiling beside my canvas.

"I was there," Caleb said. "Brielle painted it. Lena's just jealous."

Whispers rippled through the gallery, quick and hungry. Phones lifted again.

"Is it true?" Professor Hale asked me.

No. The word was right there. I knew where every brushstroke lived. I could have named them all.

But the stares pressed in like hands. My throat closed. The room tilted, and the whispers blurred into a roar, the same roar from the stadium, swallowing me whole.

"Lena?" someone said.

I couldn't answer. My lungs wouldn't work. My hands were shaking, my vision narrowing to a pinprick of light.

So I ran.

I shoved through the doors and down the hall and into the last bathroom stall, locking it with fingers that wouldn't stop trembling. I pressed my forehead to the cold metal and counted breaths the way I counted everything. In. Out. In.

Outside the stall, heels clicked past and someone laughed. Maybe at me. Maybe not.

My phone buzzed in my pocket.

An email from the Art Department. Subject line: Immediate Notice.

I read it once. Then again, because I always check my work twice.

Effective immediately, you are suspended pending an investigation into academic theft.