A senior boy slapped a quiet girl in the school library in front of everyone… But her older brother had been sitting three tables behind him the entire time.
The library was dead quiet except for the sound of pages turning and pencils scratching on paper.
Maya sat at her usual table near the front, chemistry textbook open, trying to finish her homework before her shift at the bookstore. She kept her head down, brown hair falling like a curtain around her face.
“Move.”
She looked up to see Derek Hoffman towering over her table. Senior. Star quarterback. The kind of guy who thought the world owed him everything.
“I’m sorry?” Maya’s voice was barely a whisper.
“I said move. My girlfriend wants this table.”
Behind him, Jessica crossed her arms and smirked. “It has the best lighting for my Instagram stories.”
Maya glanced around the nearly empty library. “There are plenty of other tables—”
The slap came fast and hard, echoing through the silent space like a gunshot.
Maya’s head snapped to the side, her cheek burning. Her chemistry book slid off the table and hit the floor with a thud. Students at nearby tables froze, phones slowly rising to record.
“When I tell you to move, you move,” Derek snarled. “Nobody wants to look at your pathetic—”
A chair scraped against the floor.
The sound cut through Derek’s words like a blade. Every head in the library turned toward the back corner, where a young man was standing up from his table.
He’d been there the whole time. Sitting three tables behind Derek, partially hidden behind an open textbook. Watching. Waiting.
