HANA'S POV
I should leave it alone. Niki told me to, and for once in my life, I know exactly what the sensible thing to do is. I should go back to my notes, memorize the rest of the chemistry mechanisms, pretend the girls in the hallway never said anything, and let the rumor disappear into the same place every other cruel thing eventually disappears when I refuse to give it my attention. Except there is a difference between ignoring an insult and ignoring a question that has been quietly haunting me for years.
By the time I make it halfway back to my classroom, I realize I am no longer thinking about my exam at all. I'm thinking about the girl's face when she said it. I'm thinking about how confidently she spoke, how certain she seemed that I wouldn't know what she was talking about. People don't invent details that specific out of thin air. Rumors need a beginning, even if everything after the beginning becomes distorted by whispers and assumptions. And if there is a beginning, I need to know where it came from.
So I turn around. I walk back through the hallway with my books pressed against my chest and my jaw clenched so tightly it hurts, following the path the girls took until I find them near the stairwell, sitting together with their phones out and their textbooks abandoned beside them.
They look up when I approach, and the tallest one immediately rolls her eyes. "What now?" she asks.
I stop in front of them. "Who told you?"
They exchange glances. One of them snorts. "Told us what?"
"About my family." My voice is steadier than I feel. "Who told you that I'm not my parents' daughter?"
The tallest girl leans back against the wall, crossing her arms. "Why? What are you going to do with the information?"
I hesitate. Then, because desperation apparently makes me capable of negotiations I would normally consider humiliating, I say, "I'll give you my notes." Their expressions change immediately. "All of them. Chemistry, calculus, biology. The ones I've been making all week."
They stare at me. "You mean your actual notes?"
"Yes." I swallow. "They're organized. You know they are. You can use them to study for the exams instead of wasting time rewriting everything yourselves."
The girl beside her looks interested despite herself. "You'll really give them to us?"
"If you tell me who told you."
A silence settles between us. Then one of them looks at the others, lowers her voice, and says, almost casually, "Aera." My stomach drops so suddenly that I actually forget to breathe. "Your cousin." She shrugs, as though she has just given me the name of someone who borrowed a pen. "She paid us to tell you."
For several seconds, I don't understand the sentence. I hear the words individually, but they refuse to form meaning. Aera. Paid. Us. Tell you. My cousin. The same girl who walks around the estate with that carefully innocent smile, who pretends she doesn't know what anyone is talking about whenever something ugly happens, who has spent years acting as though she is simply misunderstood.
I stare at them. "She paid you?"
"Yeah." The girl looks almost bored now. "She said we should bring it up around you. She wanted you to hear it."
My fingers tighten around my books until the edges dig painfully into my palms. Something inside me twists. Not because Aera is capable of being cruel—I have known that for years—but because this isn't careless cruelty. This is deliberate. Calculated. She didn't say something in anger. She didn't lose her temper. She found three girls at my school, gave them money, and instructed them to take a rumor that had apparently been whispered somewhere in my family and place it directly into my hands like a blade.
