Chapter 4

Two days. That was how long it took for the internet to decide who I was.

The stalker. The unhinged ex. A grainy photo of me outside Caleb's door at 2:00 AM, passed around campus with captions that made my stomach turn.

I hadn't left Mateo's apartment since. I sat on his sofa with my knees pulled to my chest, staring at a muted television.

"Are you the crazy stalker girl?"

I flinched.

A girl stood in the hallway with a backpack hanging off one shoulder, home from a week at her grandmother's. She had dark eyes I recognized instantly and looked about eleven. Her phone glowed in her hand. On the screen was my tear-streaked face, frozen mid-scream.

My throat closed. I shrank into the cushions. Anything I said would only prove her right.

"Sofi." Mateo stepped out of the kitchen with a dish towel over his shoulder. "Phone down."

"But everyone's saying—"

"Look up there."

He pointed at the wall above the television. A massive poster of Lionel Messi hung there, arms raised, a stadium roaring behind him.

"Remember what they said about him?" Mateo asked quietly. "When he was your age?"

Sofi's frown wavered. "That he was too small. Too weak."

"And?"

"And he became the best in the world."

"Don't believe everything on a screen." He tapped her nose. "Now say hello properly."

Sofi studied me for a long moment. Then she slid the phone into her pocket. "Sorry. I'm Sofi."

"Lena," I managed.

"You can sit next to me at dinner," she said, like a queen granting a pardon. Then she disappeared down the hall.

I let out a shaky breath. "Thank you."

"She's a good kid." Mateo shrugged, but his eyes stayed on me. "The world's loud right now. You don't have to listen."

An hour later, it got louder. My phone buzzed on the coffee table. University Administration.

"Miss Davis," Dean Evans said, his voice stripped of all warmth. "The committee has reached its decision."

"The investigation into my painting—"

"There is nothing left to investigate. Last night, someone entered the gallery and slashed Still Water to ribbons."

The floor tilted. The lake. The ultramarine. The last place my mother had ever held my hand.

"No," I whispered.

"The door was opened with a keycard. Yours."

"I lost that card months ago. I left it at Caleb's apartment. He said he'd find it—"

"It was never reported missing, Miss Davis. In light of the stalking allegations, the committee sees no reason to look further. You are expelled for vandalism, effective today. Do not return to campus."

"Please, just check the cameras—"

The line went dead. My phone slid from my fingers and landed on the rug with a soft thud. It was such a small sound for the end of everything.

I didn't argue. I didn't call back. I'd run out of voice.

"Lena?" Mateo called from the kitchen. "Could you grab my wallet from the glovebox? And your boxes are still in the trunk."

"Okay," I said, to no one.

The parking garage felt like a tomb. I hauled my last box of supplies out of the trunk, then walked around to the passenger door and opened the glovebox.

The wallet was there. So was a thick envelope. It slid out and spilled across the seat.

I should have shoved it back, but a highlighted line caught my eye.

Patient: Mateo Duarte. Complete tear, anterior cruciate ligament. Surgery recommended immediately.

The date was last November. The week of last fall's Westbrook game.

I remembered Caleb laughing about it in his kitchen, tossing a ball from hand to hand. I sent him a message. He won't forget it.

I had laughed along. God help me, I had laughed.

Beneath the scan was a letter from a football academy in Spain. Pending the scout's evaluation, we are prepared to offer Mateo a place and a contract for the coming season.

A contract. A home for Sofi. A way out for his whole family.

My hands started to shake.

Mateo wasn't just playing through pain. He was playing on a knee that could give out at any second, with a scout in the stands and everything he loved on the line. And he'd still sprinted past every defender on that pitch as if nothing hurt.

He'd stolen that goal on a ruined knee. Then a stranger kissed him in front of two thousand people, and he went with it.

I tucked the papers back exactly as I'd found them. I closed the glovebox gently, as if it might wake.

Upstairs, the apartment was quiet. Sofi's door was shut. Mateo's voice drifted from the kitchen, low and easy as he talked to someone on the phone. He sounded like a boy with nothing to hide.

I slipped into the spare room, set the box down, and didn't unpack it.

Instead, I pulled out a roll of cheap butcher paper and unrolled it across the hardwood. Brown, rough, blank.

I knelt in front of it with a pencil in my hand and nothing in my head.

I sobbed until the paper blurred, until my chest ached, until the whole apartment seemed to hold its breath around me.