“Come with me.” She grabs my hand and pulls me out from behind the table.

“What about—”

“Don’t worry,” she says. “Nobody will touch it. Just come on.”

She tugs at my arm and leads me out of the hallway, which has descended into near silence as almost every head turns to watch us leave.

“What’s going on?” I ask. When I turn to face the students looking at me, they all turn their gazes away. Like catching my eye will spread some sort of a disease.

“Somebody sent an anonymous text to the whole school,” Priti says, when we’re outside in the deserted entrance hallway. “About … you.”

“What did it say?”

She takes a deep breath and ducks her head. For a moment I think she won’t answer, but after a minute she sighs and says, “That you’re a lesbian. Somebody sent around a text outing you, saying you’re dangerous, that the school shouldn’t have you here, that it’s against their Catholic ethos, that it’s not how an all-girls school should be run, that—”

“Stop.” I feel sick. Bile rises inside me. Who would write such hateful things about me? Who would out me like that? Who at this school even knew I was gay? I only ever told my sister and …

Flávia. She’s the only person who might have suspected the truth. But she wouldn’t tell anyone, would she? And if not her, who?

I slide down the wall behind me to the floor and bury my head in my hands. Everything suddenly clicks into place. The reason why nobody has been coming to my stall. Why everybody has been avoiding me like I’m the plague.

Priti sits down next to me. She snakes an arm around me until I’m cradled into her shoulder.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m so sorry.”

I shake my head. I remember how it felt to come out for the first time. What it felt like to make that decision. Fear and anxiety all wrapped together. But there was something else, too. That inkling of hope. And the joy when Priti accepted me for who I am. When she wrapped me up in her arms and told me so.

Now it feels like I’ve been stripped of all of that. Like I’ve been stripped of my choice. Of my identity, even. Like I’ve become passive in my own life.

“You were right about her.” I sit up and blink back my tears. I rub at my eyes like that’ll somehow make all of this stop. “About … Flávia.” Her name is stuck in my throat but I somehow manage to get it out. “She was all … wrong for me. And now … this.”

Priti blinks at me with wide eyes, her gaze roaming my face. Like she’s trying to take this all in.

“This …?” she asks.