Everything is ready. Tomorrow they finally pay.
Underneath, Ethan had replied:
7:30. Don’t back out now.
I stopped breathing.
ONE YEAR EARLIER, ETHAN HAD WALKED INTO WILLOWCREST HIGH SCHOOL STILL LOOKING LIKE A CHILD
That is the version of him I remember most painfully.
Fourteen.
Hair always falling into his eyes.
Rounder face.
A little soft around the middle.
Still willing to hug me in the kitchen.
Still shouting upstairs:
“Mom, where are my socks?”
As though I had been appointed national director of missing laundry.
Freshman year should have been ordinary.
Instead, Ethan became entertainment.
It started with a photograph.
Someone took a picture of him bending over to pick up his backpack in the cafeteria.
By lunch, the image had been edited.
His body exaggerated.
A caption added.
Then posted to a private student account called Willowcrest Unfiltered.
By dinner, forty-three students had liked it.
By Friday, there were three more.
His haircut.
His shoes.
The lunch I packed.
Someone photographed the note I sometimes wrote on his napkin:
Good luck on your chemistry quiz. Love, Mom.
They posted it with:
BRO STILL GETS LOVE NOTES FROM MOMMY 💀
Ethan stopped letting me pack lunch after that.
I thought he was becoming independent.
I didn’t know he was protecting himself.
SOPHIE HARPER MADE IT WORSE
She wasn’t the leader.
That distinction mattered later.
At the time, I didn’t care.
Sophie was pretty.
Smart.
Quiet around adults.
She sat near Ethan in English.
He liked her.
I knew because he once spent twenty minutes deciding whether to buy her a cheap silver bookmark after she mentioned loving fantasy novels.
“Too much?” he asked.
“It’s eight dollars.”
“That’s not what I mean.”
I smiled.
“No. It’s thoughtful.”
He gave it to her.
The next day, Mason found out.
At lunch, he held up Ethan’s bookmark in front of half the cafeteria.
Apparently Sophie had shown one friend.
That friend told another.
Soon everyone knew.
Mason asked loudly:
“Did Bennett propose marriage with a bookmark?”
People laughed.
Then he turned to Sophie.
“Careful. He’ll start writing your initials on trees.”
And Sophie—
laughed too.
Ethan heard her.
