Chapter 6 #2
Penny pulls the bag of chips from her backpack, tears it open, and pushes it to the middle of the table.
“Because you’re the first person at this school who’s looked at me like I’m a human being instead of a freak show.
And because I’ve watched boys like Jon Pennington get away with this shit my entire life, and I’m fucking tired of it. ”
She holds my gaze. I hold hers. Something passes between us that doesn’t need words—a pact, or a promise, or just two girls in a library recognizing each other.
I take a chip. She takes one too. We sit together and let the music scream for us, and the silence underneath it is the most comfortable thing I’ve felt all day.
When the bell rings, Penny pulls the earbud out and the armor drops from her face.
“For real, Cat. How are you doing?”
I consider the question with the seriousness it deserves. “Relieved,” I say. “That’s the honest answer. I should have ended it weeks ago. I stayed because he was safe, and it turns out ‘safe’ was just a different word for ‘hasn’t escalated yet.’”
Penny nods. She slings her bag over her shoulder and loops her arm through mine as we walk to class, like it’s something we’ve been doing for years instead of days. Her shoulder bumps mine. Steady. Warm. Present.
“You know what the best part of today is?” she says.
“Enlighten me.”
“You’re free. Jon Pennington no longer has a single claim on your time, your energy, or your extremely questionable taste in men.”
I snort. “My taste in men is fine.”
“Honey, you dated Jon Pennington and you’re sexually attracted to Kaiden Monaghan. Your taste in men is a crime scene.”
I shove her. She cackles. For ten seconds, the world is just this—a girl and her friend walking to class, laughing about something stupid. Normal. The kind of normal I haven’t had in so long I’d forgotten what it tastes like.
The second photo drops at sixth period, and it’s worse than the first.
The family shot was manageable. Explainable. A group photo at a book launch—Kaiden’s hand on my hip was inappropriate, sure, but it could be rationalized. Spun. Dismissed as proximity and camera angles. This one can’t be dismissed.
It’s from the garden. Kaiden and me by the window, the golden light from inside falling across us like a filter designed by the devil himself.
His hand is on the small of my back. I’m looking up at him.
He’s looking down at me. Our faces are close enough that from the photographer’s angle, it’s impossible to tell whether we’ve just kissed or are about to.
We didn’t kiss. But the photo doesn’t know that. And neither does anyone who sees it.
Penny shows me in an empty classroom, holding her phone at arm’s length like the screen might detonate.
“It’s on GlossX,” she says. “Anonymous account. Caption says—”
“Don’t read it to me.”
She reads it anyway. “‘Edgewood’s Ice Princess with her new King. Guess Pennington got replaced.’”
I stare at the photo. At my own face. At the way I’m looking at Kaiden Monaghan like he’s the only person in the room, which—in that moment, in the garden, with his hand on my back and his breath on my ear—he was.
“Anonymous?” I ask.
“Technically. But Cat, who else has access to photos from your mother’s private party? Who else would have a photographer’s candid shot of you two in the garden?”
She doesn’t say his name. She doesn’t have to.
The betrayal is swift and surgical. Not because I trusted him—I didn’t.
But because of the book launch. The real conversation about my mother’s novel.
The way he’d said “I’ll read it” and I’d almost believed him.
The way his hand had felt on the small of my back—warm, steady, possessive in a way that made my whole body hum.
The way I’d whispered “no” when he asked if I wanted him to move it, and meant it.
And now that moment—that private, confusing, electric moment—is pinned to the internet like a butterfly under glass for every student at Edgewood Prep to dissect.
You know better. You always know better. You always fucking know better, and you let him in anyway.
By the time I step into the hallway, the photo has metastasized.
It’s in group texts, on Instagram stories, whispered about in clusters that go conspicuously silent when I walk past. The particular, gleeful cruelty of teenagers who’ve been handed someone else’s private moment and are feasting on it like vultures on a carcass.
I know Jon is in the hallway before I see him. I know the way you know a storm is coming—by the drop in pressure, the displacement of air, the way bodies drift toward the walls to create space. A stage.
He grabs my arm and slams me against the lockers.
The metal is cold through my blazer. The combination lock digs into my spine.
His face is inches from mine—flushed, mottled, the careful Pennington facade completely stripped away.
His breath is hot and sour, and his hand is wrapped around my upper arm tight enough that I know there will be bruises shaped like his fingerprints by tonight.
“You lied to me.” His voice is low. Trembling. “You’ve been seeing him this whole time. Look at this photo, Catherine. Look at it and tell me that’s nothing.”
He shoves his phone in my face. The garden photo fills the screen. My own expression stares back at me—open, unguarded, looking at Kaiden like he’s something I want. Because in that moment, he was. And that’s the part that makes me sick.
“That was taken at my mother’s party,” I say. My voice is level. My shoulder blades grind against the locker. I don’t fight the grip. I go still. I know how to go still. “Which you refused to attend. We broke up three hours ago, Jon. Let go of my arm.”
“We broke up because of him!”
“We broke up because you slapped me across the face in front of the entire school. Let. Go. Of my arm.”
His fist hits the locker beside my head. The sound is enormous—metallic, reverberating, the kind of sound that makes everyone in a hallway flinch at the same time. A freshman girl drops her books. Two seniors backpedal against the opposite wall.
“You think this is over?” he hisses. “You think you can just walk away from me and into Monaghan’s bed and there aren’t consequences?”
Penny appears. I don’t see where she comes from—she just materializes beside me like she’s been waiting for this exact moment, her body angling between Jon and me with the deliberate positioning of a person who has thought about how she’d stand in this exact situation.
“Step back, Pennington.” Her voice is ice. “Now.”
He rounds on her. Gets in her face. The height difference is absurd—Jon has eight inches on Penny—but she doesn’t flinch.
Doesn’t blink. Plants her feet and stares up at him with the expression of a girl who decided a long time ago that she’s done being intimidated by boys who confuse size with power.
“Stay out of this, Penny. This is between me and my girlfriend.”
“Your ex-girlfriend. Who you’ve already assaulted once today.
In front of approximately ninety witnesses and at least twelve phone cameras.
” Penny tilts her head. “So either you walk away right now, or I call the police, your father’s office, and the Edgewood Prep disciplinary board—in that order—and let them sort out which of your many crimes to charge you with first.”
I step between them. Place both hands flat against Jon’s chest and push. He stumbles—not because I’m strong enough to move him, but because he doesn’t expect it. Nobody expects the quiet girl to push. Nobody expects the ice princess to shove back.
“This is over,” I say. “We are over. You don’t get to touch me. You don’t get to threaten my friends. You don’t get to stand in this hallway and perform ownership over a person who never belonged to you. Walk away, Jon. While walking is still an option.”
He stares at me. I stare back. The calculation is visible behind his eyes—audience, consequence, pride, the Pennington name, the cameras still recording.
Then something in him hardens. Calcifies.
His chin lifts. He straightens his blazer with a practiced tug that’s supposed to look composed and instead looks unhinged.
“This isn’t over, Catherine.” His voice is quiet now. Controlled again. The mask snapping back into place with a click I can almost hear. “You’re going to realize the mistake you’ve made, and when you come crawling back—”
“I don’t crawl.”
He holds my gaze for one more second. Then he turns and walks out, shoving through the double doors at the end of the hallway hard enough to slam them against the wall.
The hallway exhales. I slide down the locker to the floor. Knees to chest. Arms around my shins. The position is automatic—muscle memory, survival posture, the same way I folded into myself in a closet with a gun in my hands while a man’s footsteps got closer and closer.
Penny sits down beside me. Shoulder to shoulder on the cold stone floor. She doesn’t speak. Doesn’t ask if I’m okay. Just sits there, solid and warm and present, while the last of the students file away and the hallway goes empty and quiet.
“I’m going to head home,” I say eventually. “Only study hall left.”
“I’ll walk you to your car.”
“Penny, you don’t have to—”
“I know I don’t have to. I want to. That’s the difference between me and every other person in this school, Cat. I actually want to be here.”
She stands. Pulls me up. Loops her arm through mine, and we walk down the emptying hallway together, our footsteps echoing off the stone like a drumbeat.
She keeps her body slightly in front of mine—not obviously, not protectively enough to feel patronizing, but enough that if Jon came back around the corner, he’d hit her first.
I notice. I file it. And the thing in my chest that has been clenched tight since the dining hall loosens, just slightly, because someone is walking between me and the door.
We get to the parking lot and I stop.