Page 15 of Breaking Isolde
He picks at his plate, clearly wishing he’d chosen another table.
I eat in silence, letting the institutional food go cold on my tray while I scan the room. There’s a pattern to the chaos: girls in tight formation, boys in loose packs, the outcasts huddled at the periphery, pretending not to notice the pecking order. The air hums with gossip, some of it whispered but most of it launched like hand grenades at anyone vulnerable enough to react.
Every few minutes, a new insult hits me from a different vector. Some are subtle—an arched eyebrow, a cough behind a hand, a smirk followed by a not-so-quiet “just like her sister.” Others are bolder: a boy at the next table pantomimes drowning, holding his nose and flailing until his friends crack up. A girl with purple hair takes a selfie and aims her phone so the lens catches me in the background. Her caption, which I catch as she types, reads: “#nexttogobyebye.”
I don’t react. I take notes.
I watch every face, every sneer, every gesture. I memorize the ones who look at me with hunger, the ones who look at me with pity, the ones who look at me and immediately look away. I map the topography of cruelty, carving it into my brain so I can burn it down later.
By the time I finish eating, my jaw is so tight that it hurts to unclench. My hands have left half-moons in the plastic of the tray. I stand, dump my food in the trash, and walk out without looking back.
Except for a single glance up at the platform.
Rhett is watching. He raises his glass to me, a slow, deliberate motion, then sets it down and resumes his conversation with Bam. The message is clear:I’m in his territory now. And he doesn’t intend to make this easy.
I walk back to Archer House with my head high, but my stomach is a knot of acid and ice.
I get why my roommates don’t eat in the dining hall.
I get it, and I hate it, and I can’t wait to see what happens when the Feral Boys finally decide to make their move.
Sleep is a joke. Even when I manage two or three hours, my dreams are a replay of last night: the sneering faces, the drowning pantomimes, the scrape of chair legs and smirks. I wake at 5:18, fully alert and exhausted. My phone is at 9% because somehow my charger didn’t work. Stupid kinked chord. I stare at the cracked ceiling and think about how nothing here ever works the way it should.
I make tea, scald my tongue, and kill the next hour pretending to study for the only class that matters today: Environmental Science. It’s one of Casey’s old favorites, which is probably why I picked it. Maybe some sick part of me wanted to be near whatever part of her survived the wreck.
The room is three buildings over, tucked between the old chapel and the greenhouses. By the time I get there, the hall is already buzzing with bodies. Most of the seats are claimed, everyone with their assigned spots like we’re children. I find my name on the posted chart: Greenwood, I.—second row, dead center.
Of course.
I wedge myself between two girls whose entire existence seems to revolve around pretending I don’t exist. They don’t even flinchwhen my bag scrapes their knees. I slide into the chair, adjust to the cold plastic, and scan the rest of the room. No sign of the Feral Boys, thank fuck. Maybe they can’t be bothered with intro-level sciences.
On the desk, someone’s carved a message in shaky ballpoint:SUICIDE SLUT. The S’s are jagged, the L nearly gouges through the top layer. For a second, I stare at the words. My hands start to sweat. I trace the letters with my pinky, wondering which of Casey’s classmates did the carving.
I’m so focused on the words that I almost miss the professor’s entrance. She’s a tiny woman with a voice that could sandpaper a blackboard. Within thirty seconds, she’s already running through the syllabus at a clip that makes me wish I’d brought a recorder.
“Collapsing ecosystems, thermodynamics, population cycles—if you’re looking for hand-holding, you’re in the wrong course. In the wild, nothing survives unless it fights for its own niche. That’s the only rule that matters here.”
A slow ripple of laughter. Someone in the back says, “Sounds like Westpoint,” but the professor doesn’t acknowledge it.
She talks about carrying capacity, the point at which a population explodes and then crashes from its own weight. All I can think about is the desk and the way my sister’s name would have looked on the roster a year ago.
I remember Casey’s voice: “You’d love Dr. K. She doesn’t put up with any bullshit. She reminds me of Mom, if Mom was shorter and angry about trees instead of men.”
That was before the phone calls stopped and the texts got weirdly formal. Before she sent a single, cryptic“I’m sorry,”and then disappeared.
A jolt of laughter pulls me out of the memory. The girl next to me is sketching something in the margin of her notebook. I risk a glance: it’s a stick figure with X’s for eyes, floating above a wavy blue line.
Subtle.
The professor calls my name. “Greenwood.”
I lift my head. Every eye in the room is on me.
“Can you tell the class what a keystone species is?”
I could do this in my sleep. I clamp down on the urge to stutter and say, “A keystone species is one whose impact on its ecosystem is disproportionately large compared to its actual abundance.”
Dr. K nods, once. “Give me an example.”
