Taking a quick peek from under the cap’s visor to make sure she was in the right classroom, Mads let out a soft breath of relief at the sight of the room being empty. She didn’t really want to run into anyone before class began, it was already hard enough to deal with her surroundings during lunch time, not knowing when someone was going to try to get her attention and ask her questions she most definitely wasn’t ready to answer yet.

Walking to the back of the classroom and taking a seat on her usual spot, Mads almost jumped out of her skin as she finally lifted her eyes up to scan the room, spotting Shane standing on the doorway. She hadn’t heard him come in, not that it was very surprising with how little the boy most of the time wanted to be noticed, but to her Shane wasn’t usually like this.

Especially not with such a frown on his face as he was wearing right now, looking across the room directly at her.

Her first reaction was to avert her eyes, quickly turning them back down to her desk. Not that it really helped though, Mads could still feel Shane staring at her as she heard him now moving inside the classroom, a seat rattling a little before silence fell back into the room. He knew this wasn’t usual behavior for her, the bright haired young girl was usually almost as bright of a personality as her hair was, and the whole day so far Shane hadn’t seen any of that from her, but the exact opposite. She stayed by herself, didn’t even sit with her friends at lunch, was clearly in classes for pure obligation.

She heard the chairs rattling again, just assuming more people had come into the classroom and were taking their seats. The room remained surprisingly silent though, so to see who had made their way in this time, Mads quickly lifted her eyes up again, hoping to go back to hiding her face soon afterwards again so she could avoid any awkward conversations that were going to be shot in her way eventually at least by Kit when she made her way back to the dorms.

But instead, she was met with Shane standing right by her desk, his hand quickly picking the snapback from her head, exposing her blue short hair.

“Hey!”

This was the curse of being so short, as no matter how hard she tried to reach up from her seat to grab Luke’s snapback to herself, Mads couldn’t do it, Shane just barely holding it up an arm length over her head. In the midst of all of this she forgot why she had been wearing the thing today in the first place, just furiously focusing on getting it back, until her eyes met up with Shane’s, the boy wearing a mixture of worry and confusion on his face.

“…What happened to you?”

Mads stopped, things finally clicking in her head that Shane could actually finally see the black eye she was sporting. She slumped back into her seat, arms crossing over her chest as she stared back down to her desk again.

“Did someone… Hit you?”

“Why do you care?”

Her words were a barely audible mumble, but she could hear Shane inhale sharply, the boy clearly preparing for a reply. Mads glanced back up at him, green eyes narrowing a little at him, as she was already able to see the judgment on his face.

“Did this happen last night?”

There wasn’t really a point in denying it anymore, so she just nodded her head a little.

“I told you I didn’t want to go wandering the hallways alone after curfew, but you were too busy with whoever else you decided to hang out with.”

“And I told you, it was a club meeting.”

“Well, Jared told me a different story, so there.”

Shane looked at her, but didn’t have an answer. As much of a ladies man as Jared was, he still wasn’t a liar, and they both knew that.

“This place might be a prestigious expensive academy, but just like any school, it surely still does have bullies who don’t like exchange students.”

Mads stood up from her seat, finally being able to grab the snapback back from Shane, as the boy stood there silent. She shook her head.

“I needed you. And you weren’t there.”

The words barely made their way out of her mouth, the girl inhaling deeply as she was trying to hold back the tears that started to sting in the corners of her eyes.

“I’m sorry –”