Emily Returns
Theo did not say Emily’s name.
That was the first thing Sienna noticed.
People who had nothing to hide usually repeated a name when they were surprised by it.
Your sister is Emily?
Emily who?
I knew an Emily once.
Theo said nothing.
His face simply emptied.
Cass Vale looked between him and the photograph, her amusement bending into unease. “Theo?”
He blinked as if her voice had come from underwater.
Sienna reached again. “Give it back.”
Theo’s hand remained closed around the paper.
She rose too quickly. Pain shot through her knees, but anger held her upright. She stepped toward him and took the photograph by its edge.
For a second they both held it.
His fingers resisted.
Her eyes lifted to his.
“Let go,” she said.
He did.
The photograph came free with a small tremor.
Sienna pressed it to her chest.
Behind Theo, the hallway had stopped pretending this was ordinary. The five students shifted their weight. The older ones watching from farther down the lockers had gone still. The copper-haired girl with earbuds near the water fountain stared with one hand at her mouth.
Cass tried to recover the room.
“She’s making something up,” she said lightly. “People do that when they want attention.”
Theo turned on her so fast Cass stepped back.
“Don’t,” he said.
One word.
Flat.
It broke the group’s rhythm.
Cass’s mouth tightened. “Don’t what?”
“Don’t talk about her.”
“About who?”
Theo’s jaw worked.
He still would not say it.
Sienna heard the cowardice in the silence and hated him more for it.
“Emily,” she said for him. “Her name was Emily.”
Theo flinched.
A tiny movement.
Enough.
Sienna took one step closer. “You knew her.”
The hall waited.
Fluorescent tubes hummed above them like an insect trapped in glass.
Theo looked down at Sienna’s torn backpack, the pencil broken clean in two, the blood at her elbow. The authority he had worn moments earlier now looked like a costume left on the wrong body.
“Yes,” he said.
Cass’s face changed.
Not shock.
Calculation.
“How?” Sienna asked.
Theo swallowed. His lower lip moved against the pale scar.
“Not here.”
Sienna almost laughed.
That was what adults and powerful students always said when truth appeared in public.
Not here.
Not now.
Not like this.
That meant they wanted walls.
Control.
A smaller audience.
Sienna lifted the photograph. “She died here. So yes. Here.”
A teacher appeared at the far end of the corridor, saw the ring of students, and began walking faster. Mr. Pell, assistant dean. Pressed shirt. Soft hands. Eyes that moved toward trouble and then immediately toward liability.
“What is happening?” he demanded.
No one answered at first.
Then Cass pointed at Sienna. “She tripped and started screaming at everyone.”
Sienna turned slowly.
“I was shoved.”
Mr. Pell looked at the phones held low, the books on the floor, Theo’s pale face.
“Everyone to class,” he said.
Nobody moved.
Theo looked at Mr. Pell.
“She said Emily Blake was her sister,” he said.
Mr. Pell’s expression tightened so briefly a less wounded person might have missed it.
Sienna did not miss it.
May you like
The assistant dean knew the name too.
And like Theo, he wished he had not heard it in a hallway.
