Chapter 8: Chapter 8: The Lovesick Classmate

Chapter 8: The Lovesick Classmate

Lunch turned St. Alder Academy into a slow-moving current of uniforms, backpacks, sweat, and hunger.

Students streamed across campus in loose groups, drifting toward the cafeteria, the snack bar, the shaded benches, and anywhere else that promised food or air-conditioning. The heat had settled over Grayhaven with a sticky confidence that made the old brick paths shimmer. Even the cicadas sounded organized, like some invisible conductor had lifted a hand and ordered every tree to buzz in time.

Near the side path leading toward the cafeteria, a quiet boy walked alone with a paperback open in both hands. He had his head bent, his attention fixed on the page, and he almost missed the soft plastic slap of something falling from his pocket.

A cool voice called from behind him.

"You dropped your cafeteria card."

The boy stopped.

For one strange second, the sound felt like a draft of cold air slipping through the middle of summer. He turned around with his hand still half-raised around his book, and then forgot what he had meant to say.

Audra Sloane stood a few steps behind him, holding out the card between two fingers.

She looked exactly the way campus gossip always made her sound and somehow more real than any rumor could manage. Her uniform was simple, but on her it looked deliberate. Her hair caught the sunlight without looking styled for anyone’s approval. Her expression stayed calm, almost distant, and that distance only made the boy more aware that she was speaking to him.

"This is yours, right?" Audra asked.

The boy blinked, then grabbed for language like it had fallen out of his pocket too. "Yes, that’s mine. Thank you for picking it up, Audra."

"No problem. Be more careful with it."

Audra gave a small nod and continued past him.

The boy stood there for another moment, card in hand, staring after her with the dazed look of someone who had almost forgotten his own name over a cafeteria account balance.

Audra did not turn around.

By the time she reached the cafeteria, she had already tucked the exchange away, not because it mattered by itself, but because it confirmed something that had been bothering her since yesterday.

Inside, the lunch crowd had already thickened. Trays clattered against counters. Someone near the drink cooler laughed too loudly. The smell of fries, warm bread, tomato sauce, and disinfectant hung under the hum of the air-conditioning.

Audra chose a table by herself.

That was not unusual. People still looked, of course. They always looked. Some did it openly, some through quick glances over plastic forks and half-open milk cartons. Audra had learned years ago to treat attention as weather. It existed, it moved around her, and it did not require a response unless it became inconvenient.

She set down her tray and looked at the food in front of her.

The ordinary boy on the path had only exchanged two sentences with her, and he had nearly lost the ability to function. He was not especially strange for that. Most boys reacted in some version of the same way. Even the ones who tried to seem normal became slightly too careful, too stiff, too eager, or too loud.

Cyrus Calder had not.

That was the part she could not leave alone.

He did not react to her like that quiet boy. He did not try to impress her, did not soften because she apologized, did not become awkward over her attention, and did not seem flattered when she offered lunch. If anything, he looked tired of being approached.

No, it was more than tired.

He seemed annoyed.

Audra rested her fingers lightly against the edge of her tray.

Cyrus looked gloomy at first glance. He sat in the back, hid under his bangs, slept through half the school day, and moved like someone trying to be passed over. A boy like that should have been easier to read. He should have become nervous when she spoke to him, or pleased, or at least uncomfortable in the ordinary way.

Instead, he treated her attention like a problem.

Audra did not think that made him suspicious in any serious way.

She was only curious about why a boy like Cyrus Calder seemed to dislike girls like her.

That was a normal thing to wonder about, surely.

The food on her tray sat untouched. After a while, it cooled a little under the cafeteria air.

Audra watched the faint change, and for no clear reason, thought of her grandfather, who had gone off chasing material for his research on the Frostborn.

She wondered how much he had found.

Outside, under the shade of a large tree, Cyrus was dealing with a different kind of research problem.

"You like her that much?" he asked.

Owen Keats nodded with unbearable seriousness. "My friend likes her that much."

Cyrus held a drinkable yogurt he had bought from the snack bar, though by now it was less drinkable than it had been a minute ago. The plastic bottle had gone cold in his hand. A pale ring of frost had started gathering where his fingers rested, so he loosened his grip and let the bottle sit against his knee instead.

Owen did not notice. He was too busy looking devastated in advance.

Cyrus had read about affection before. Not experienced it, exactly, but read about it. The definition in one of the books he had stolen from ordinary life was simple enough. Liking someone meant a sustained preference, a fondness, an enthusiasm directed toward a person, object, or idea.

That sounded clinical and useless, but it was still more information than Cyrus had personally gathered.

"Are you sure she likes your friend the same way?" Cyrus asked. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

Owen corrected him at once. "She likes my friend."

"Right, your friend," Cyrus said.

He did not bother making his voice innocent. Owen did not seem capable of hearing the difference right now.

Owen sat beside him under the tree, backpack against his shoes, shoulders slightly hunched. "They met in a game. My friend had pretty good equipment, and he was decent at playing, so they teamed up a lot. After a while, it felt like they were together without either person needing to say it directly."

Cyrus tilted the bottle slowly, watching the thickened yogurt slide against the plastic.

"Are games actually fun?" he asked, more to himself than to Owen.

Owen blinked. "Do you mean video games?"

"It isn’t important," Cyrus said.

He had not meant to ask. Games belonged to ordinary students with ordinary evenings, not to people who spent their nights working for tips and their mornings trying not to fall asleep in class. Still, the way Owen talked about it made the whole thing sound like another country.

A country where people had time to buy equipment, call strangers cute names, and ruin their own moods over delayed messages.

Cyrus tried again. "Did your friend and this girl ever actually confess to each other?"

Owen hesitated. "Probably not in those exact words."

That answer already sounded terrible.

Then Owen’s eyes warmed with memory, which made the answer worse before he even finished it. "But when we played together, it was really sweet. We called each other baby. I bought her gear and iced coffees a few times too."

Cyrus looked at the yogurt bottle in his hand.

It had become a soft slush.

He lifted it, took a slow sip, and let the cold cover the expression he did not want to make. "What did she do for your friend?"

"She called him baby."

"I mean did she do anything for him too?" Cyrus asked.

"She called him baby," Owen repeated, with the tragic conviction of a man defending his last surviving asset.

Cyrus lowered the bottle.

For a moment, the cicadas filled the silence between them.

Owen seemed to understand the problem at the same time Cyrus decided not to say it out loud. His shoulders sank. "She didn’t really do much else."

Cyrus drank another mouthful of yogurt slush and looked at Owen from the corner of his eye.

Owen was not bad-looking. He had a neat face, a serious manner, and the harmless steadiness of someone adults trusted automatically. He took notes. He helped classmates. He stopped before trying to enter a lounge because he assumed the place would card him. If that kind of person got tangled in a bad situation, it was probably because he assumed other people meant what they said.

Cyrus had seen that pattern in books too.

There were women who could make a boy run in circles with one sweet name and a carefully timed message. Owen had walked straight into that trap, though not all the way. At least he had enough survival instinct to ask someone else before paying for the next round of digital armor and overpriced coffee.

"So," Owen said, voice smaller now, "if someone you had been talking to suddenly stopped answering as much, what would you do?"

Cyrus thought about it seriously.

He could have said he would never be in that situation because women were trouble, which was true. He could have said that anyone who wanted money, attention, and cute names without a clear relationship was probably not worth the emotional cost, which also sounded true. He could have said Owen’s friend should uninstall the game and buy lunch instead.

None of those would help.

"I don’t know what I would do," Cyrus said at last. "I would probably ask her directly what relationship she thinks you have. Assuming everything by yourself is a bad habit."

Owen stared at him.

Cyrus added, "Your friend should ask. Not accuse. Just ask."

"That makes sense," Owen said slowly.

He looked like a person who had been handed a simple tool after trying to chew through a locked door.

Then he stood up.

Cyrus watched him sling his backpack over one shoulder. "You’re going now?"

"I should ask while I still have the nerve," Owen said.

That was more courage than Cyrus had expected from a boy who had recently used the word baby as legal evidence.

"I hope it goes well," Cyrus said.

Owen nodded once and headed back toward the main building with a grim sense of purpose.

Cyrus stayed under the tree.

The shade was not enough. Heat pressed through the leaves, wrapped around his shoulders, and made the air feel too thick to breathe. He finished the yogurt slowly, pleased that it had turned into something closer to frozen dessert than a drink.

That part was useful.

When the bottle was empty, he lay back on the grass and looked up through the leaves.

It was so hot that he felt like he might melt into the ground.

Friday afternoon ended with English class.

Daphne Whitlock stood at the front of the room in a fitted teacher’s dress and a light cardigan that somehow made the school’s old classroom look less tired. She spoke in a calm, beautiful voice, guiding the class through the last points on the board while the students around Cyrus slowly lost the will to pretend they were listening.

The weekend was too close.

Pens tapped. Shoes shifted. Someone kept checking the clock with the hopeless subtlety of a criminal in a security camera. Even Owen, who usually tried to be respectful, had not fully recovered from whatever had happened after lunch. He took notes, but his handwriting had the emotional stability of a bad weather report.

Cyrus noticed, then decided not to ask.

Daphne noticed more than most teachers would have. Her gaze moved over the class, pausing where restlessness gathered. She did not snap at anyone. She did not need to. Her voice stayed even, and somehow that made the room settle for another few minutes.

When the bell was close enough to feel, she assigned the weekend work.

The final bell rang almost exactly as she finished.

The room loosened at once. Chairs dragged back. Students packed bags with the energy of people escaping a minor sentence. Cyrus moved slower, mostly because standing too quickly after sleeping through parts of the day made him feel like his bones had been installed wrong.

Daphne returned to the faculty office after class.

From the window, she watched the students spill out below her, most of them already grown or close enough to think they were. They moved in pairs and clusters, loud with weekend plans, complaints, flirting, and freedom they did not yet know how to value.

Her expression softened for a moment.

Then she sighed without making a sound.

Outside the school gate, Cyrus found Owen walking behind him.

Cyrus did not ask about lunch. If Owen wanted to talk, he would talk. If he did not, Cyrus had no reason to pry into someone else’s romantic damage, especially when Cyrus’s own evening already belonged to work, rent anxiety, and the careful management of customer attention.

Still, Owen looked disappointed enough that Cyrus could guess the general result.

The two of them walked in silence along the sidewalk beyond St. Alder’s front drive. The pavement threw heat back through Cyrus’s shoes. Cars moved past in uneven waves, and the crosswalk light at the next corner blinked down with mechanical indifference.

Cyrus was beginning to wonder whether Owen happened to live this way too when Owen spoke.

"Cyrus, do you have time later?"

Cyrus glanced over. "What do you need?"

Owen opened his mouth, then noticed an elderly woman ahead of them moving slowly across the crosswalk with a cloth grocery bag in one hand. The light had already started blinking.

Without finishing his question, Owen hurried forward.

He reached her before Cyrus could decide whether to follow, said something politely, and offered his arm. The woman accepted after a small moment of surprise. Owen guided her across the rest of the road, keeping himself on the traffic side, then waited until she was safely on the curb before stepping back.

Cyrus watched him.

He had known Owen was a decent person. The notes, the homework help, the way he answered questions without making Cyrus feel stupid, and even yesterday’s technically law-abiding concern outside the lounge had all pointed the same way.

Seeing it happen out in the world made the impression clearer.

Owen Keats was a good person.

No wonder some woman online had managed to turn him into an unpaid emotional support wallet.

He was too sincere for his own safety.

Owen returned after saying goodbye to the elderly woman, smiling with the clean relief of someone who had completed a small duty and expected nothing from it.

"I was going to ask if you wanted to play games later," Owen said.

Cyrus looked at him for a second. "Is your friend all right now?"

Owen’s smile faded, but it did not disappear completely. "She said we’re friends. I guess that means I gained a friend, so it isn’t exactly a bad thing."

That was one way to survive humiliation.

Cyrus nodded. "I have something to do tonight, so I don’t really have time."

Owen accepted it without pushing. "That works for me."

A small breeze moved along the sidewalk then, weak but welcome. It lifted the hair near Cyrus’s cheek and shifted the strands covering his ear. For a second, the stud in his earlobe caught the light.

Owen’s eyes flicked toward it.

Cyrus noticed, of course. He always noticed.

He did not move to hide it this time.

"You can still stop by the lounge if you want," Cyrus said.

Owen blinked. "I thought I couldn’t go in."

"You can sit in the non-bar section before it gets late," Cyrus said. "They sell milk too."