I make a little noise of disbelief. “Please, please tell me you’re joking.”

“I assure you I’m quite serious.”

“Oh my god,” I say. Shake my head. “The worst thing—I mean, there are literally so many worst-case scenarios I don’t even know where to—”

“Like what?”

“Um.” I pretend to think hard for an answer. “Like, getting expelled?”

“I highly doubt they would expel us. We’re the best students they have,” Henry says. States it, just like that, as if it’s an indisputable fact.

My heart snags on the we, the casual compliment in those words, but I push on.

“No? They could also involve the police, throw us into jail—”

“A few of my dad’s friends are lawyers,” he says breezily. “Amongst the best in the country. Even if the evidence was stacked up against us, we’d still win the case.”

I twist around so fast my shoes squeak against the polished floor. “See, this is why I can’t stand people like you,” I seethe, jabbing a finger in his direction. “You think that just because you’re all smart and wealthy and attractive you can just do whatever the hell you want—”

“Wait.” Something shifts in the black depths of his eyes. “You think I’m attractive?”

“Oh, come on, don’t act like that’s such a huge revelation,” I snap. “I’m pretty sure even the guys in our year level think so. I mean, really, when we had those diving lessons last year, everyone in the stands was straight-up gawking at you as if they’d never seen a shirtless guy before, and later, when you did that photoshoot for the school magazine, and they made you wear that ridiculous suit—I couldn’t even—you just...” I trail off, suddenly all too aware of the heat in my cheeks, the anger curled in my chest that no longer feels like anger, but something else.

Something worse.

“Just—whatever.” I clear my throat. “Anyway. What was I saying?”

Henry cocks his head to the side, a slow smile spreading across his lips. “You were telling me how much you hate me.”

I bite my tongue, quickly avert my gaze. Try to will the strange feeling in my stomach away. Eventually, when I decide it’s safe to look at him again without my skin bursting into flames, he says, “Do you feel better now?”

“Huh?”

“You tend to stop being so scared when you’re angry,” he explains.

Confusion bubbles inside me. “How—how do you know that?”

“I notice,” he says simply.

Another statement. Another phrase thrown into the air for me to decipher. But I can’t wrap my head around it. What does he mean, he notices? And how could he be aware of something about me that I wasn’t even aware of myself? It just doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t make sense, because no one notices—

A sudden chill snakes down my spine, crawls along my legs, my wrists. A thousand pinpricks of ice. I go cold all over—painfully, unnaturally cold—and I understand what this means, at least.