The teacher's voice had settled into that particular drone that meant he'd forgotten anyone was listening, a low tide of words washing over the room. Something about symbolism in *The Great Gatsby*, about the green light and what it stood for. Ryan's pen rested in his hand, unclicked, the point pressing a small dent into his notebook paper that he kept tracing with his thumb.

He'd been in worse classrooms. Chino had been all flickering fluorescents and desks carved with names he didn't know, teachers who looked through him like he was part of the furniture. This room had windows that actually opened, and the light that came through them was different — softer, saltier, like the air itself had been rinsed clean. He wasn't sure he trusted it.

The chalk dust floated in the pale stripes of sunlight, slow and aimless, and he watched it drift instead of the board. Somewhere behind him, a desk groaned as someone shifted their weight. A girl two rows over whispered something to her friend, and the friend laughed, a quick bright sound that died just as fast when the teacher glanced up.

Ryan didn't turn around. He didn't need to.

He knew exactly where Marissa was sitting. He'd known since he walked in, since he'd taken this desk in the back corner without really choosing it, his body finding the spot with the best view of the room and the quickest exit. Old habit. Old instinct. The kind of thing that had kept him alive in places where the wrong look could get you cornered after class.

She was three rows up and two seats over, her blonde hair catching the light in a way that made it look almost white at the edges. She hadn't looked at him once since he'd sat down, and that felt deliberate. Like she was giving him space. Or like she was afraid of what would happen if she let herself look.

The red mark on her arm had faded some, but it was still there. He could see it when she reached for her pen, the way the sleeve of her cardigan rode up just enough to show the shadow of it. Four fingerprints. A thumb and three fingers, pressed hard enough to leave a story he hadn't been told.

His jaw tightened.

"—and the green light, of course, represents Gatsby's hope," the teacher was saying, pacing slowly between the rows. "The unreachable dream. The thing he's spent his whole life reaching for, only to find that reaching for it was the point all along."

Ryan watched the chalk dust. He thought about green lights. He thought about red marks.

The teacher stopped beside a desk in the front row, tapping his knuckles on the wood. "But symbols aren't always grand. Sometimes they're small. A color. A gesture. A scar." He paused, letting the word hang. "Something that means more than what it is."

Ryan's pen clicked. He hadn't meant to do it, but the sound was loud in the quiet, and a few heads turned.

The teacher looked at him, eyebrows raised. "Mr. Atwood. You have something to add?"

Ryan's fingers went still on the pen. "No, sir."

The teacher studied him for a moment, something unreadable in his expression, then nodded and continued his slow circuit of the room. "The red at the end of the dock. The eyes of Doctor T.J. Eckleburg. The ash heap. Every symbol in this novel is pointing at the same thing — the distance between what we want and what we have."

Ryan's gaze drifted back to Marissa. She was looking at her book now, her head tilted down, but he caught the way her shoulders had hunched slightly, the way her hand was resting on the page without turning it. She was listening to the same words he was.

Distance between what we want and what we have.

He could feel the weight of her presence across the room like a pulled thread, something taut and invisible connecting them. He hadn't spoken to her since the night before, since the cigarette and the walk home, since she'd stood at her gate with the porch light making a halo of her hair and looked at him like he was something she hadn't expected to find.

Now she was here, in this too-bright room with the chalk dust and the droning teacher, and she was pretending he didn't exist.

Fine. He could do the same.

He turned his attention back to his notebook, to the small dent his pen had made, and tried to focus on the lecture. Something about the valley of ashes. Something about eyes that watched everything and saw nothing. The words slid past him, smooth and meaningless, while his awareness stayed locked on the girl three rows up, on the way she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, on the way her thumb traced the edge of her page like she was memorizing it.

He saw her glance at the clock on the wall. Saw her check her phone under the desk, quick and furtive, the screen lighting up her face for just a second. Saw her look toward the window, toward the light, toward anything that wasn't him.

Then the note came.

It was a small thing, a slip of paper folded into a neat square, and it appeared at the edge of his desk like it had materialized from the air. He didn't see where it came from, didn't see a hand retreating or a messenger passing it along the row. One moment his desk was empty, and the next there it was, pressing against his elbow like it had been waiting for him.

Ryan didn't move for a long moment. He stared at the paper, at the crisp fold, at the way the light caught the edge of it. Then, slowly, he reached out and covered it with his hand.

The teacher was still talking, his voice a distant hum. The room was still warm, still heavy with the scent of coffee and old paper. But Ryan's world had narrowed to the square of paper under his palm, warm from someone's hand, light as a breath.

He slid it toward him, keeping it under the cover of his notebook, and unfolded it with fingers that were steadier than he felt.

The handwriting was neat, almost perfect, the letters small and careful. He read it once, then again, the words sinking in slow.

The Harbor is having a party Friday. My mom's making me go. Please be there.

His heart was doing something uncomfortable in his chest. He pressed his thumb to the paper, feeling the faint indentation of the pen, the way the ink had soaked into the fibers. She'd written this during class. She'd written this while the teacher talked about symbols and distance, while she pretended not to see him.

He looked up.

She was watching him.

Her cornflower-blue eyes were fixed on him across the room, steady and unblinking, and there was something in them that made his breath catch. A plea. A question. A hope she was afraid to voice out loud. She was asking him to show up. To be there. To prove that the moment on the street last night hadn't been a fluke, that he was real, that he would come when she called.

The red mark on her arm caught the light as she shifted, a shadow of her mother's hand that she was trying so hard to hide.

Ryan folded the note once, twice, tucking it into his jacket pocket where it pressed against his chest like a second heartbeat. Then he gave her a single nod.

Her shoulders dropped a fraction, the tension bleeding out of them, and she turned back to her book. But he saw it. He saw the way her hand trembled slightly as she reached for her pen, the way she tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the way the corner of her mouth lifted just a little, like she was holding back a smile.

He looked down at his notebook, at the dent his pen had made, and felt the weight of the note in his pocket like a promise he'd already made.

Friday. The Harbor. A party he hadn't been invited to, full of people he didn't know, in a world that had made it clear he didn't belong.

He was going anyway.

The teacher was still talking, something about the green light and the unreachable dream, but Ryan wasn't listening anymore. He was thinking about red marks and folded notes and the way Marissa had looked at him like he was the only person in the room who could see her.

He was thinking about the distance between what you want and what you have, and how sometimes the only way to close it is to cross the line anyway.

His hand drifted to his pocket, fingers brushing the edge of the folded paper. The warmth of it, the weight of it, the promise of it.

The bell rang.

Chairs scraped against linoleum, voices rose in a sudden chorus of movement and noise. Ryan stayed where he was, watching the room empty around him, watching Marissa gather her books with careful, deliberate movements. She didn't look at him again, but she didn't need to. The note in his pocket said everything.

He waited until she was gone, until the room was empty except for the teacher packing up his papers and the chalk dust still drifting in the pale stripes of sunlight. Then he stood, slid his notebook into his bag, and walked out into the hallway.

The noise hit him first — a wall of voices and footsteps and slamming lockers. The smell of perfume and sweat and the faint chemical tang of cleaning products. He moved through it without really seeing it, his hand still pressed to the note in his pocket, his mind already somewhere else.

Friday. The Harbor. A party full of people who would look at him and see a kid from Chino, a juvie case, a project. He could already picture it — the judgment in their eyes, the whispers behind their hands, the way they'd close ranks around Marissa and shut him out.

But she'd asked him to be there. She'd written it down, folded it, slid it across his desk with trembling hands and a plea in her eyes that he couldn't ignore even if he wanted to.

And he didn't want to.

Seth appeared at his elbow, materializing out of the crowd with a laptop bag slung over one shoulder and a half-eaten granola bar in his hand. "There you are. I was starting to think you'd been eaten by the vultures."

Ryan glanced at him. "Vultures?"

"The popular kids. They circle. They pick at the weak." Seth took a bite of the granola bar, chewing thoughtfully. "You look like you've seen a ghost. Or possibly a cheerleader. The symptoms are similar."

Ryan shook his head. "It's nothing."

Seth raised an eyebrow, his gaze flicking down to Ryan's jacket pocket, where the note was still burning a hole. "Right. Nothing. That's why you've got that look on your face."

"What look?"

"The look that says you're about to do something stupid." Seth's voice was light, but his eyes were serious. "I've seen it before. It's the same look I get right before I say something I regret."

Ryan didn't answer. He could feel the note against his chest, warm and insistent, a secret he wasn't ready to share.

Friday. The Harbor.

He was going to be there.