3. Penelope #3
“I’m so sick of your attitude, Penny.” His voice has dropped.
Low. The register from the closet. The one that makes my stomach flip and my skin tighten and my breath catch in a way I can’t control.
“We all get it. Perfect Penny with the perfect life and the perfect family. You’re above all of us with our fucked up pasts and our broken homes. ”
“Stop it, Xander.” But my voice has gone thin. Breathy. My body is betraying me—leaning into his grip instead of away from it, my hands flat against his chest where they should be pushing and instead are just… there. Feeling his heartbeat. Which is fast. As fast as mine.
His fingers tighten on my hips. His mouth is close to my ear. “But you know what I think?” Low. Dangerous. The voice that made me put my hands on a wall and do whatever he told me. “I think you liked getting dirty with me that night. I think you liked it when I didn’t ask permission.”
My hand connects with his face before my brain gives the order. The slap echoes through the empty classroom like a gunshot. His head snaps to the side. The red print of my palm blooms across his cheek.
“Get the fuck away from me.” My voice is shaking.
My whole body is shaking—not from fear. From the violence of wanting someone and hating them simultaneously, two forces pulling in opposite directions, tearing me apart at the seam.
“I don’t know who you are anymore, Xander. Where did that sweet boy I knew go?”
He straightens. Looks at me. The mask slides back into place—smooth, cold, the Lucian face. But for one second before it seals, I see what’s underneath. Agony. The agony of a boy who just did the thing he hates most—used his body to intimidate someone he loves—and knows exactly what it makes him.
“He’s fucking dead.”
He storms out. The door bangs against the wall. I stand in the empty classroom and listen to his footsteps recede and then there’s a crash—his fist, a locker, the sound of metal denting under knuckles that were already shredded from last week’s fight.
I crumble. Knees give out. Floor. The cold tile of an Edgewood Prep classroom pressing against my legs through my knee socks. My hands over my face. The tears coming now—ugly, gasping, the kind I only allow when I’m alone.
He wasn’t wrong. He wasn’t wrong about any of it.
I did like it. I liked the way he took control, the way his voice went dark, the way his hands gripped me like I was the only solid thing in his world.
I liked it and that makes me sick because liking it doesn’t erase the fact that he didn’t ask and I didn’t say yes and my first time was a closet floor and Plan B money thrown at me in a car.
Am I as fucked up as he is? Are we both broken in the same places, reaching for each other with the same jagged edges?
The door opens. I flinch. Iz.
He doesn’t say anything at first. Just takes in the scene—me on the floor, tears, the red handprint probably still visible on my palm.
He closes the door softly. Sits down in one of the desk chairs.
Not next to me. Close enough to reach but far enough to give me space.
The distance of a person who understands that sometimes what a crying girl needs is not a hug but the knowledge that someone is sitting with her in the dark.
“Shit,” he says softly. “You okay?”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re on the floor of a classroom crying, Penny. You’re not fine.”
A wet laugh escapes me. “Fair point.”
“Xander?”
“Who else.”
Iz sighs. Runs his hand over his face. “I watched him drag you in here. I was hoping he was apologizing. But then I heard the locker get a new face job, so.”
“It didn’t go well.”
“No shit.” He pauses. “This is bad, Penny. He’s spiraling. The fighting, the way he’s treating you, the shit he said at the pool house—he’s taking his mom’s death harder than any of us expected, and he’s channeling it into destruction.”
“He was the one who found her, Iz. In the closet. Hanging. He doesn’t talk about it, but I know.”
“I know too. We all know. And we’re all trying to reach him and he keeps slamming the door.
” He leans forward. Elbows on his knees.
The posture of a boy carrying the weight of a friend group that’s fracturing.
“But Penny—and I’m saying this as his best friend—fuck him.
Fuck Xander. You cannot keep putting him first and forgetting about yourself.
I know what you went through with the Penningtons.
I know it didn’t end when you left that basement.
And you deserve someone who’s showing up for you, not tearing you apart. ”
“It’s not that simple.”
“It is that simple. It’s the execution that’s complicated.” The bell rings. Iz stands. Extends his hand. “Come on. I’ll walk you to class.”
I take his hand. He pulls me up—easy, gentle, the care of a boy who is six-two and strong enough to bench press a person but touches like he’s handling glass.
He doesn’t let go of my hand. Tucks it into the crook of his arm instead, old-fashioned, almost courtly, and we walk out of the classroom and into the hallway together.
Nobody bats an eye. Iz Walsh walking a girl to class is not unusual—Iz Walsh is the kind of person who walks everyone everywhere because his emotional intelligence comes with a built-in chivalry setting. But as we pass the bank of lockers near the science wing, I feel the temperature change.
Xander.
He’s leaning against the wall. Fresh blood on his knuckles.
His eyes find Iz’s hand on my arm and the expression that crosses his face is not anger.
It’s something more primal—the territorial fury of an animal watching another animal near something it considers its own.
His jaw sets. His fists clench. I can feel the violence building in him from ten feet away, broadcasting on a frequency that makes the other students give him a wider berth without knowing why.
Iz sees it too. Of course he does. And what Iz does next is not accidental.
He leans down. Close to my ear. His lips nearly touching, his breath warm on my neck. And he says, loud enough for Xander to hear across the hallway: “Don’t even look at him, babe. Don’t give him that satisfaction. Stand tall. I got you.”
Babe.
The word lands in the hallway like a grenade.
Iz has never called me babe. Iz calls everyone “dude” and “man” and occasionally “sweetheart” when he’s being sincere.
“Babe” is a performance. A flag planted in Xander’s line of sight.
A message that says: “You walked away from her. Someone else is here now.”
I glance at Xander as we pass. I can’t help it. His eyes are locked on Iz’s hand on my arm. On Iz’s mouth near my ear. On the distance between Iz’s body and mine, which is approximately zero. If looks could kill, Iz and I would be murdered a thousand times over, buried, exhumed, and murdered again.
Iz’s arm tightens around mine. A squeeze. Reassurance that is also, unmistakably, a performance for an audience of one.
I hold my head high. We pass Xander. We don’t stop. I don’t need Xander anymore. I can do this without him. The sentence feels like a lie. But I’m getting good at lies. I’ve been practicing every day, in every mirror, with every smile.
Maybe if I say it enough times, it’ll become true.