Barb's voice is casual. Too casual. She's got her own books stacked to her chin, and she's not looking at Nancy when she says it, which is how you know she's paying attention to every microsecond of Nancy's reaction.

The hallway opens up around the next corner, and students surge past in clumps, a tide of denim and feathered hair. Someone's boom box is playing The Police, faint and tinny. Nancy's fingers tighten on the spine of her history textbook.

There's no judgment in it. Not really. It's the way Barb says everything—flat, direct, with a kind of wry fondness that means she's already guessed more than you've ever told her.

Nancy shakes her head. Barely. A millimeter of movement, but Barb catches it.

Nancy tucks the note into her sleeve, smooths the fabric down over it.

A beat. The hallway noise presses in around them. Barb's expression shifts—the teasing gone, replaced by something quieter, almost tender.

The bell rings then, sharp enough to make Nancy jump. Students surge around them in a wave, backpacks swinging, voices overlapping into a wall of sound.

At this, Nancy looks at you, just a flicker, so fast that anyone else would have missed it. Her grip on the books flexes, like she wants to say something else.

Nancy half-turns. One shoulder already angled down the hallway toward the girls' bathroom.

Nancy nods. The note is a warm weight against her wrist, tucked in the seam of her sleeve, and she's already walking, her pumps clicking on the linoleum, away from the noise and the fluorescent buzz and every pair of eyes she's pretending not to feel.