Mira sat in the back of the computer lab, head down, hoodie up, fingers gliding across the keyboard like raindrops. Outside, Brackley's campus gleamed under soft spring light — cherry trees blooming, students scattered across the lawn with phones and iced coffees.
Inside, the air was colder.
Sharper.
Rika had noticed her again.
Noticed how Mira didn't flinch, didn't beg for approval, didn't participate in the social choreography of the elite. She existed outside of their rules — too quiet, too still.
That made her dangerous.
Or worse… boring.
And Rika Delacroix hated boring girls.
It started with the photo.
Monday morning. A Polaroid image, taped to Mira's locker.
Her, hunched over her laptop in the lounge. Unaware. Candid. Her bangs masking her face.
The caption written beneath it in red Sharpie:
"Another freak in the system."
By noon, it was on the anonymous student forum. Someone had added glitch effects and paired it with the caption: "She's definitely hacking us. Should we be worried?"
Josh Mendez reposted it with a laughing emoji.
Mara made a Snapchat filter: "Mouse Mode Activated."
By lunch, the jokes escalated.
"Careful," a girl said, clutching her phone as Mira walked by. "She'll steal your password with her mind."
"Are you in the CIA or something?" a guy smirked. "You watching us, Mira Mouse?"
"Maybe she's got cameras in the bathrooms."
"Maybe she's the next school shooter."
Laughter. Always laughter.
Mira said nothing.
She kept her eyes low. Her steps steady. Her ears open.
Every time her name — or nickname — was said within range of her phone, her voice-recognition app logged it. Time, speaker, sentiment rating. She tracked keywords. Catalogued insults. Measured changes in tone.
She saw the exact moment the bullying turned from passive mockery to active targeting.
It was Thursday, 11:17 a.m., right after third period.
Josh bumped into her in the hallway. Not accidentally.
She staggered back, her sketchbook slipping from her hand. Pages fluttered across the floor.
One of them skidded toward Rika.
A soft graphite portrait of a girl submerged — mouth open, eyes wide, hair drifting like ink. Familiar. Too familiar.
Rika's gaze sharpened.
The memory pulled at something deep. Something she'd spent a year burying.
She crushed the page beneath her shoe.
"Well," she said with a smile, "someone's feeling artsy."
Josh crouched, picked up a second page — a scribbled figure with a crown made of thorns, surrounded by words in Japanese. He squinted.
"What's this? A poem? Gotta say, Mouse, your taste is depressing."
He tore it clean down the middle.
Mira didn't move.
Just watched.
Recorded.
By the time Mira returned to her dorm that evening, someone had scrawled on her door with eyeliner:
"Where were you last spring?"
She stared at it for a moment too long.
Not because it hurt.
Because someone, somewhere, was starting to remember.
And that made her timeline... move faster.
Later that night, at precisely 2:36 a.m., her program finished scraping the group chat threads tied to Josh's private sports team Discord.
She stared at the recovered archive: dozens of images, blurred faces, buried messages. Even deleted content.
Her fingers hovered over one line.
"She cried like a little girl. I should've posted the full video."
Mira didn't blink.
She added the screenshot to a folder labeled "J_Mendez_Reversal."
Then opened her webcam.
Recorded a single message:
"You laughed first. Let's see if you cry last."