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Part One — The Noise You Make When You’re Trying Not to Care

Regina George didn’t do noise.

She did control.

Her mornings were quiet , just the taps her heels made and the sound of Gretchen nervously talking about something she’d read on Twitter. The chaos of the school halls didn’t touch her. It parted for her.

Except today, the noise didn’t part. It crashed.

Because someone, some long-haired disaster with chipped black nail polish and a stick of eyeliner he clearly borrowed from a Hot Topic sale bin decided to blast punk music through the cafeteria speakers.

The feedback squealed, students groaned, and Regina George’s iced latte trembled on the table.

“Who the hell is that?” she said, voice calm but sharp enough to slice through Gretchen’s babbling.

“That’s, um, Rodrick Heffley,” Gretchen whispered. “He’s, like, in that one band? Loaded Diper?”

“Löded Diper,” Karen corrected, proud of herself for remembering the umlaut.

Regina blinked. “That sounds like a disease.”

Across the room, Rodrick was grinning like he’d just won a war. He was standing on a cafeteria chair, guitar slung over his shoulder, the principal shouting at him while he kept strumming anyway.

Regina hated him immediately.

Or maybe it was something worse something she didn’t have a name for yet.

———

Later, in the hallway, he almost ran straight into her.

“Watch it,” she snapped.

“Relax, Barbie,” he said with a lazy grin, brushing past her shoulder. “Your crown’s still on.”

Regina froze.

No one talked to her like that.

She turned slowly, lip gloss catching the light like a warning. “You must have a death wish.”

Rodrick smirked, not looking back. “Guess we’ll find out.”

And just like that, the hall felt smaller , tighter like the universe had leaned in and whispered, this is going to be fun.

———

By lunch, everyone was talking about it … the hallway thing.

Apparently, someone caught the whole encounter on Snapchat. By fifth period, there were edits of Regina and Rodrick arguing, with slow-motion zoom-ins and romantic pop songs layered over them.

Regina wanted to throw her phone across the room.

She didn’t. Of course not. Regina George didn’t lose composure over a boy who probably hadn’t done laundry since 2012. But she did scroll through the comments.

“Enemies to lovers arc fr.”

“He called her Barbie?? I’m crying.”

“Wait they’d actually be so hot together tho.”

She slammed her phone face down. “People are so stupid.”

“Totally,” Gretchen agreed immediately, even though she’d been liking all the posts.

⸻

After school, Regina caught sight of him again behind the gym, sitting on the curb with a drumstick between his teeth and a notebook on his knee.

She should’ve kept walking. She knew she should’ve. But curiosity was a disease, and Regina George never liked not knowing things.

“Planning another public disturbance?” she asked, stepping closer, arms crossed.

Rodrick didn’t look up. “Planning to mind your own business anytime soon?”

She smirked. “I don’t have to. You made yourself everyone’s business.”

He finally looked up, squinting against the sun. His hair fell into his eyes in that effortlessly messy way that clearly wasn’t effortless. “You got a problem with me, Queen Bee?”

“I have a problem with idiots who think chaos is a personality.”

He laughed a low, unbothered sound that made her blood heat up for reasons she didn’t want to analyze.

“Well, I’ve got a problem with people who think control is one.”

Regina blinked, caught off guard. For half a second, it felt like he’d seen straight through her, and she hated that.

“Careful,” she said, tilting her head, voice sugar-sweet. “People who talk back to me don’t usually make it to the end of the semester.”

“Guess I like my odds.”

He went back to scribbling in his notebook, which should’ve been her cue to leave but she stood there, pretending she wasn’t trying to read what he was writing.

Rodrick glanced up again. “You done staring, or are you trying to figure out how to put me on your Burn Book?”

Regina smiled, slow and dangerous. “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not important enough.”

She turned and walked off before he could say anything else. But even as her heels clicked down the sidewalk, her pulse stayed annoyingly loud.

⸻

That night, she dreamed of noise.

Of drums echoing down the hallway.

Of a laugh she couldn’t shut out no matter how hard she tried.

When she woke up, she told herself it didn’t mean anything.

It was just a sound.

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