Individual

Chapter 26

Julian was shaken awake by Ross, whose anxious face blocked his vision of everything else when he lifted his head. Julian rubbed his eyes and asked in a grumpy voice, “What is it?”

“It’s Brooklyn, mate,” Ross said, sounding impatient.

“I don’t care about her,” Julian said, dropping his head back down onto the desk.

It had taken him a ton of effort to find Briette Porter during lunch. Firstly, he had to ask Thomas to describe the girl to him, and he’d used that Instagram profile as a reference while he went around the whole school looking for her. He’d finally managed to talk to her while she was waiting for her friends outside the washroom, the only time she ever seemed to be alone.

Unlike himself, Briette had seemed to know who exactly he was, and her eyes shone as she gasped, “Julian? You want to talk to me?” Apparently, they had been in the same mathematics class for the past term.

Not that it mattered to Julian.

Julian hadn’t gotten much out of their short conversation, but Briette had admitted to taking the photos. She said simply that Brooklyn had tasked her to “keep Kay Nakagawa in check”, so she had been sticking to the girl for the past month or so. Until they had a falling out and Briette decided not to hang around her so obviously anymore.

“But, the other guy in the photo definitely has an exclusive relationship with Kay,” she said, and if Julian’s ears weren’t deceiving him, he could hear a hint of jealousy in her voice as she said that. “He even thinks she’s prettier than me!” Briette said, like it was something incomprehensible.

Julian had scratched the back of his head and muttered to himself, “That’s quite true…”

He said thanks to her and left, realising that there wasn’t much more he could get out of her. At least now he knew that Brooklyn was behind this once again, which he already suspected in the first place. All he could hope was that she wasn’t going to do anything to Kay further, because she was definitely capable of it.

However, he was too late preventing that from happening.

Ross lifted his head back up again. “She’s making a scene in the corridor. The year twelve corridor.”

Julian’s ears perked up at that and he sat up abruptly, and Ross nearly fell to the ground from the sudden movement. If Brooklyn was in the year twelve corridor, and it had something to do with her “solving his problem”... He glanced at Ross worriedly. “What’s she doing?”

“She just kicked Kay Nakagawa,” Noah said from the doorway, his hands in his pockets. “And from what I heard, they’re fighting because of you.”

“Bloody hell,” Julian muttered, and practically leaped over all the desks towards the door and sprinted out.

He skidded to a halt at the crowd that had extended all the way to the joining corridors. He squeezed through the crowd of anticipating students, his mere presence adding to the gossip going around. He vaguely heard someone murmur, “It’s Julian Mayhew. I guess he’s here to clean up his mess.”

Julian bit his bottom lip, knowing full well that if he got involved in the girls’ commotion, he would get into trouble as well. Even if it wasn’t by the school, his father was not going to let him off that easily. He’d already thought through that, but he needed to stop the cat fight before it got out of hand.

“Julian shouldn’t even like a gangster like you! He’s too good for you!” he heard Brooklyn shout, and caught sight of Maisie stepping on Kay’s knee as the latter laid on the floor.