You press your back against the lockers, the cold metal biting through your thin shirt. The pencil is somewhere on the floor—you don't remember dropping it. Your fingers are numb. Your chest is still tight, still raw, like someone scraped it clean from the inside out.

The fear is fading now, receding like a tide pulling back from shore, but it leaves something behind. A residue. A familiarity. A name you haven't spoken in years, whispered just at the edge of your awareness.

The counselor's office door swings open.

Max Mayfield steps out. Her eyes are red-rimmed, her jaw tight, her shoulders set in that particular way someone uses when they're trying not to fall apart. She stops dead when she sees you. Her gaze flicks from your pale face to your trembling fingers to the pencil lying abandoned on the floor.

Max doesn't look away. She's waiting—not with suspicion, not with judgment, just with the tired wariness of someone who's seen too much to believe in easy answers.