(Scene skips to when she visits Cyrus. Yurt sang while seeing alys, not jay. Everything else is different)
The door sighed open and the hospital hit me like cold linen: disinfectant sharp and citrus-clean, the faint copper tang of antiseptic, the constant, distant beeping of monitors like a slow, patient heart. Fluorescent light made the linoleum shine; in the corridor a trolley squeaked and someone laughed too loudly behind a curtain. The smell made my throat tighten. I stepped inside.
Mrs. Velasco saw me before anyone else. She was standing with her hands clasped, grief made brittle in the set of her jaw; the moment she recognized me relief rushed over her face like water.
"Jean! Thank you, Jean. For coming. It's been long since I last—" She started, voice shaking.
"Since you first saw me," I cut, and the words came out colder than I intended.
I moved past her.
I saw Cyrus then. He lay small on the wide bed…
Her first memory of me wasn't a smile; it was anger. My mind went back to that day: She had marched into the principal's office with her family when they filed the complaint against me, face hard with a mother's hurt. Now that same hurt softened into something else—worn relief, confusion, and the fragile hope that maybe she'd been wrong.
I saw Cyrus then. He lay small on the wide bed, a cervical collar rigid at his throat, white bandages wrapping his arms and ribs like a second skin. His once-limp hair was plastered to his forehead. Tubes disappeared beneath the blanket; a pulse monitor blinked pale green.
A sharp voice cut the room's muffled air.
"WHAT IS SHE DOING HERE?" Cassandra's shout ricocheted off the tile. She looked like a knife—tense, narrow-eyed, fists clenched at her sides.
"Cyrus asked to see her, Cas," Mr. Velasco said, trying to steady the hurricane beside him. He sounded older than his years, worn thin by worry.
Cassandra's jaw worked. She wanted to storm forward, but her anger stayed like a held breath. Only Cyrus's eyes, half-lidded and red-rimmed, watched me with exhaustion and something else—expectant waiting, or calculation, I couldn't tell.
"Jean…" he croaked. His voice was small. I looked at him, and for a second everything inside me wanted to answer. I let it go.
"Mam, I'm not here to visit Cyrus," I said. The words landed like a stone.
Mrs. Avery blinked, surprise opening her face.
"I'm here to tell a truth"
"You're lying again," Cassandra spat.
"First you seduced him, then you beat him into a coma, and now you want sympathy?"
I felt the room narrow to the space between us and her, to Cyrus' pale face.
"I never seduced him," I said, firm. My voice had an edge. "I never dated Cyrus. I never wanted him."
The memory of his persistence flared—calls I ignored, photos he'd doctored, the way he'd tried to make a private thing public until everyone believed a lie more than me.
Faces shifted. Some looked incredulous. Some looked tired. Cyrus watched as if I were a play and he already knew the ending.
"He proposed to me and I denied him," I said. "He—he spread lies. He edited photos as if we were together. He created something that wasn't true until nobody trusted me anymore. He tried to force me into something I didn't want."
Cassandra's face was a storm.
Cyrus's eyes narrowed; he managed a hoarse, "Liar."
I drew my phone out like evidence from a pocket. The screen reflected in Cassandra's pupils.
"These are our chats," I said and handed them over. "There's not a single 'I love you' from me."
She swiped through messages, her fingers quicker than her judgment. Her expression shifted—first surprise, then shame, then a reluctant softening.
"She's telling the truth," she whispered, the words barely audible like confession.
"Don't listen—" Cyrus started.
"Shut up," his father cut in, the single syllable a gavel.
Cassandra handed the phone back, fingers trembling.
"I'm sorry," she said, and it sounded like a verdict, or maybe an apology.
"It's not your fault," I told her. "It's not any of your fault."
Mrs. Avery's shoulders sagged and she crossed to me, hands covering her mouth.
"We're sorry," she said at once, as if apology could stitch everything back.
"For troubling you—" Mr. Avery added.
"Don't," I interrupted. "It's not your mistake."
I stepped closer to the bed. Cyrus's eyes flicked to my face; there was a temperature there I didn't want to measure.
"You should have left me alone," I said quietly.
Without warning his hand shot up like a viper and closed around my throat. His grip was less about strength than accusation—small, sudden, desperate. I tasted iron. Panic punched through me; someone grabbed Cyrus's wrist and hauled his hand away. I staggered back and sucked in air as if I'd been underwater.
"Let her go!" Cassandra muttered; her voice held something like guilt. "I'm sorry for what he did," she said to me.
"Don't apologize for him," I said, and smiled because the alternative would be to let the shaking show.
She mirrored it, awkward, uneasy.
She insisted on dropping me. I accepted because I'm getting late.
The sky outside was the tired blue of late afternoon. The drive home felt mechanical. When she parked and we said goodbye, she lingered, then leaned across and said softly,
"He deserved it,"
and the name of it—revenge, relief—made her look almost happy.
I couldn't judge. I smiled back because smiling kept the conversation simple and because we both needed something normal to close that strange day.
School was a different kind of heat. I ran across campus, breath fogging in my throat, and burst into the classroom. Heads snapped up; the room hummed with the residual electricity of whatever had happened without me. Ci-N sat sexy in a dress—someone had dressed him in a way that made him look sexy and glamorous at once. He looks like a girl now. Rakki, Alys and the others were already arranged like pieces on a board.
"Ci," I called.
Silence snapped. Eyes pinned to me. The noise died.
"Where were you, Jay?" Yuri asked. He sounded irritated but measured—the sort of friend who kept anger in custody because losing it would cost more than a scream.
"I'm late. I had urgent—" My voice faltered.
"The competition's over, Jay. We tried calling you. Freya changed the schedule," Ci-N explained, disappointment tapering pain; his tone was controlled, like ice trying not to crack.
I kept my head down, an island of stillness. I should've checked my phone even for a second. Maybe everything would be different then.
"Where have you been?" Keifer demanded.
"I—I went to the province. For something," I said
"Really? Today of all days?!" Keifer exploded. His face verb was bright red.
"You knew you had the competition and you walked off—what, for personal drama? Are you trying to ruin this for us?"
"Keifer, listen—"
"Ci-N couldn't continue because of you!" Keifer kept going, his voice climbing.
"I—"
I should have said Cyrus's name. I should have explained the hospital corridor, the smell, the hand at my throat, the texture of being suspected. But that would mean drawing a map of how tangled everything already was. I wasn't ready for that kind of exposure.
"I thought the contest was at one," I said in a small voice. It came out fragile, a torn piece of clothing. Tears pricked and stung at the back of my eyes, warm and steady. I blinked them back.
"What is more important than us? Section E?" Keifer leaned in, voice low and scolding.
The world narrowed to him, to their faces, to the one thing that mattered to them—loyalty, presence, reliability.
"I am important," I shouted, the sentence surprising me with its bluntness. "I mattered. I had problems—Cyrus. The boy I…beat so badly he's in a coma."
The words spilled out before I could frame them correctly. The room spun; every head turned toward me as if a light had popped on.
"I don't even know why I did it," I said, and now my voice was smaller than the confession.
"I didn't mean to be late for the contest." The pleading in it wasn't about missing a deadline; it was about keeping something whole that was fraying at the edges.
The pressure of their stares built until it became unbearable. Keifer's anger was a hot thing I couldn't shield myself from. It would have cracked me if I stayed. I stepped outside the classroom, the hallway a cool place of tiled anonymity, and let the tears come—quiet, unashamed, a private cleansing.
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I know I took so long for this chapter. I'm so sor. Few chapters just make me loose interest and I take time. This is one of it. I hope you understand.