Avery #2
When she finally turns to head back into the room, she finds me standing in the doorway. She freezes, her face draining of color as she realizes I’ve heard the truth behind the "Queen Bee" facade.
“I…didn’t plan to listen,” I cut in. “I heard someone shouting and—” I clear my throat, not wanting to admit I eavesdropped.
"He's right, you know," she says, her voice breaking as the mask finally shatters.
She looks down at her trembling hands. "I'm just an investment to them.
If I don't pay off, they'll just... sell the stock.
I spent my whole life being a monster so I wouldn't have to be a victim, but it doesn't matter. I'm still in the cage."
She doesn't cry, but the look in her eyes is worse. It’s the look of someone who has realized their own worth is tied to a GPA.
I get it now, the reason she’s always so competitive, so bitter, so fragile.
The anger I’ve carried for her for years feels like it’s dissolving, replaced by a cold, hard clarity.
I don't see the girl who spilled coffee on my notes or the girl who tried to steal my thesis.
I see a girl who has been screaming for help from inside a gilded cage, and I'm the only one who can hear her.
"I spent my life thinking you were just a spoiled brat who wanted everything,” I say.
“But you’re just desperate to survive. My mom and I...
we’re poor. We’ve always been poor. But at least when I go home, she loves me because I’m her daughter, not because I’m #1 in the class.
She doesn't treat me like a business deal. "
Harper looks at me, her blue eyes searching mine, a raw, aching vulnerability between us that feels more intimate than the sitcom or the study session.
"You're lucky, then," she whispers.
The air between us vibrates with a new kind of tension—one that isn't about hate, but about two different kinds of survival.
"And he's wrong," I say, stepping closer. "You're not an asset, Harper. You're a person. You’re not defined by your GPA."
She looks up at me, her blue eyes glassy with unshed tears, but she turns her face away before I can see it. “I don’t need a pep talk from you, Avery.”
She brushes past me, getting into the room, trying to slip her mask back on. But it’s too late. I know how affected she is by her dad’s disapproval. Under all the snark and meanness, she’s just a nineteen-year-old girl who wants to be seen.
Harper goes back to organizing my notes, turning her back to me like the conversation never happened.
And for the first time, I don't want to make her crawl. I want to pull her out of the wreckage.
The room is silent for the rest of the evening, but it’s a vibrating, restless kind of quiet. Harper is hunched over her desk, her back a rigid line of faux productivity. I know she isn't actually reading the Constitutional Law brief in front of her; she’s been on the same page for twenty minutes.
She’s trying to rebuild her walls, stone by stone, but I can still see the tremor in her hands every time she reaches for a highlighter.
"I'm going to the communal kitchen to grab a snack," I announce, mostly to give her a moment to breathe without me watching her.
"Fine," she mutters, not turning around.
When I return ten minutes later, the room is empty. The bathroom door is shut, and I can hear the shower running—a long, steaming retreat where she can finally let the mask drop. I move toward my bed, but my foot kicks something solid tucked just under the edge of Harper’s duvet.
It’s a leather-bound book. It must have slid out when she was frantically pulling her laptop earlier.
I know I should leave it. I know that after the conversation in the hallway, I owe her some semblance of privacy.
But the "detective" in me—the girl who survived high school by staying three steps ahead of everyone—can’t resist. I pick it up, expecting a diary filled with more "Price family" neuroses.
I open it, and my breath hitches.
It’s not a diary. It’s a sketchbook. And it isn't filled with legal diagrams or architecture.
It’s filled with me.
I flip through the pages, my heart climbing into my throat.
There’s a charcoal sketch of me in the library, a lock of hair falling over my face.
There’s a quick pencil drawing of me laughing at the sitcom, my head tilted back.
On the next page, a more detailed study of my eyes, capturing a look of frustration I didn't even know I wore.
The drawings are raw, intimate, and—most shockingly—beautiful.
They aren't the work of a hater. They are the work of someone who has spent a long time observing every curve of my face with something bordering on reverence.
The shower stops.
I should put it back. I should run. But I’m frozen, staring at a page where she’s captured the exact moment I looked at her in the cafeteria. Underneath the sketch, in tiny, cramped handwriting, are the words: How can something that hurts so much look so bright?
The bathroom door creaks open. Harper walks out, enveloped in a cloud of steam and wearing a silk robe. She stops dead the second she sees the book in my hands.
"Give it back," she says. Her voice isn't the "Queen Bee" snarl. It’s a low, panicked plea.
I don't. I stand up, the book open to the portrait of me laughing. "Harper... what is this? Why have you been drawing me for years?"
"It’s nothing! It’s just... art practice," she says, lunging for the book.
I step back, holding it out of her reach. "You don't draw a 'nobody' with this much detail. You don't spend hours shading the way someone’s eyes look when they’re angry unless you’re obsessed with them. Are you stalking me?"
“No.” Harper looks scared, her blue eyes wavering. It’s like I’ve exposed a part of her that she doesn’t want seen.
“Then, what?” I look at her, the pieces of the last five days—the defense in the cafeteria, the "sitcom" laughter, the way she looked at my mouth—finally clicking into a terrifying, gorgeous picture. “Don’t tell me you…like me?”
It’s so improbable that I want to laugh as soon as the words are out of my mouth. Harper is my bully. My nightmare. My rival. She spent years hating me, making me high school life hell. Besides, Harper doesn’t even like girls. She’s as straight as a ruler.
But when I look up, my doubts become more pronounced. Harper stops moving. She stands in the center of the room, her damp hair clinging to her neck, her chest heaving. The silence is thick enough to drown in. Her silence, her weird gesture makes me question every action of hers.
“You…do like me.” I exhale, not able to believe this. “Since when? I thought you only liked boys.”
When Harper looks up, her eyes flash hurt. “I don’t like boys at all,” she admits. “I…” She blushes, turning her face away. A few days ago, I’d feel so much satisfaction at watching her squirm, but right now, I feel awful.
“But…you dated all those boys in school. I thought you hated me because I was a lesbian, and you thought I was weak and abnormal.”
“I—” She chokes on her voice, and more facts click into place. Oh god, I was so stupid. I never thought Harper Price was a lesbian. Never thought she did all this because she hated me for having what she couldn’t—the freedom to be herself.
“The bullying…it was because you were trying to hide your sexuality?” God, this is so messed up, but I’m eating it up. “You thought if you tormented me, your attraction to girls would go away?”
I see tears gathering in Harper’s eyes. She sniffs, brushing them away hurriedly, mortified to be crying in front of the girl she’s been bullying for years.
“It’s none of your business,” she says in a low voice, lunging for the sketchbook.
I pull it out of her reach, but she loses balance and falls, pushing me onto the bed, her body landing on top of mine.
Her wet, blonde hair spills over my face, as she clings to my shoulders, our bodies pressing together.
“Tell me the truth, Harper,” I say, holding onto her waist and not letting her go. “I deserve to know. Because right now, I can’t understand your obsession with me.”
She exhales, her eyes so vulnerable that I feel she might break.
“You win,” she says finally. “I…I’m a lesbian. Happy?”
She pulls out of my grasp, but I hold her hand, pulling her back to sit on my bed.
“Let me go,” she says. “I have laundry to fold.”
“You can do that later.”
“God, you must love this. Seeing Harper Price fall.” Harper throws her face into her hands, as if she’s ashamed. I want to gloat, but this is too pitiful, even for me.
“Harper, being homosexual is not a crime.” I squeeze her hand tighter, wondering why the hell I’m comforting my bully. Of course, deep inside, I know the answer.
“It is, if you’re a Price.” She looks at me, her composure shattering. “I’m supposed to marry Marcus. I’m not supposed to want... this. I’m not supposed to want you.”
Her final words catch me by surprise. She pauses, realizing what she has revealed.