Chapter 4 First Morning

Avery's POV

The alarm went off at 4:30 and I was already awake.

I'd been awake since 2:00, staring at the ceiling of a room that wasn't mine. Listening to a house settle around me that belonged to someone else. The mattress was better than anything I'd slept on in years. That almost made it worse.

I dressed in the dark. I grabbed my laptop. I went looking for the kitchen.

The east wing connected to the main house through a hallway lined with framed photos. Jaxon at what looked like fourteen. Then sixteen. Then last year, each one bigger and more sure than the last. Trophies on a side table. A jersey in a shadow box. The whole hallway was a shrine to one person's future.

I kept walking.

The kitchen was big and gray, early light coming through the window over the sink. I found the coffee. I found the mugs. I had the machine running before I'd fully decided to make it. I sat at the island, opened my laptop, and pulled up the app I'd been building since junior year. Three years of late nights and stolen lunch periods.

The video had four hundred thousand views now. I'd checked at 2:00 before I made myself stop.

I focused on the code instead.

The kitchen stayed quiet for twenty minutes. Then footsteps came down the back stairs, heavy and unhurried. Jaxon walked in wearing training shorts and a gray shirt with the sleeves cut off. Hair pushed back. Not expecting anyone.

He stopped when he saw me.

"It's 4:50."

"I said 4:30."

He looked at the coffee machine like it had personally offended him. I'd used his mug, I realized. The big one with the crack in the handle, sitting on the drying rack. I'd grabbed it without thinking.

I wrapped both hands around it and didn't move.

He got a different mug. He poured his coffee. He leaned on the counter across the island. Neither of us said anything for a moment. Outside, a bird started up somewhere in the garden.

"You're always up this early?"

"When I have work to do."

He glanced at my screen. I tilted it slightly without thinking. He didn't push.

"The video's still going."

"I know."

"Madison does this. Picks someone at the start of every year." He drank his coffee. "It usually blows over."

"Great." I looked back at my screen. "Very comforting."

He was quiet a second. "I wasn't trying to comfort you."

"I know that too."

"You always this easy to talk to before six a.m.?"

"You always this good at making an entrance nobody asked for?"

He almost laughed. It surprised both of us, I think. He covered it fast, pushing off the counter and grabbing a protein bar from the pantry.

"I have practice."

"I have work."

"We keep saying that like it explains anything."

"It doesn't have to explain anything. It's just true."

He headed for the east wing without another word. I listened to his footsteps fade past all those photos of himself.

I looked back at my code.

The scene logic had a bug in the third branch, the one where the player chose silence over confrontation. The game was supposed to count that as valid. Instead it kept looping the player back to the start, like silence was never a real option at all.

I found the error. I fixed it. I ran it again.

This time it held.

My mother came down at 6:30, already dressed and put together, the way she always was before anyone else was up. She made toast. She kissed the top of my head. She went to find Mrs. Ryder to go over the day.

I packed up, got my bag, walked to the front door to wait for the car.

Jaxon came down at 6:50, backpack over one shoulder, keys in his hand.

He looked at me standing there. Said nothing. I said nothing back.

Two people with nothing in common except an address, waiting for the morning to start.

The school gates came into view and my stomach dropped before I could stop it. People were already gathered near the entrance. Phones out before the car even stopped. Someone pointed. Someone else pulled up a screen. Even from inside the car I could see it was the video, my face, being shown to the person next to them like a joke worth sharing again.

Jaxon saw it too. I watched his jaw tighten.

He got out first. The crowd shifted toward him right away. Names called out. Hands raised. The whole machine of his world closing around him before he'd taken three steps. He moved into it without looking back.

I got out on my side and walked through the gate alone.

The whispers started before I even reached the main building. Not loud. Just the particular quiet that meant everyone was watching to see what I'd do. I kept my eyes forward and my pace steady. I made it to my locker without stopping.

Someone had taped a printout to the door. My face mid-crumble. SHED printed underneath in block letters.

I peeled it off. I folded it once. I dropped it in the bin by the water fountain.

Madison was leaning against the lockers down the row with two of her girls, watching. She smiled when I looked up.

I looked away first. Not because she'd won. Because I wasn't giving her the reaction she'd come here to collect.

First period was AP Computer Science. I sat in the back and opened my IDE. I kept working through the branch logic while Mr. Calloway went over material I already knew. Nobody sat next to me. The seat on my left stayed empty, the way it always had. I'd made peace with that a long time ago, or told myself I had.

The code was running clean by the time the bell rang. That was what I took into the rest of the day.