Chapter 2

Sophie woke to the sensation first, before consciousness fully crystallized, a low, insistent throb between her legs that pulsed in time with her heartbeat. She stretched her small arms above her head, fingers curling toward the ceiling fan, her spine arching off the mattress in a way that made the worn cotton of her sleep shorts pull tight against her. The fabric shifted over her most sensitive place and she gasped, a soft, involuntary sound swallowed by the empty room.

Then the memories came. Not gradually. All at once, like a door flung open in a dark hallway. Mike’s voice in text. You’re exactly my type. The photo loading slowly in the chat, pixel by pixel, the image assembling itself into something she’d never seen before, something ruddy and flushed and glistening at the tip, wrapped in his large hand. Her own messages back, breathless and trembling and confessional. I’m wet. I think. I’m sorry. I know that’s weird.

Don’t apologize. That’s your body responding the way it’s supposed to.

She felt it then, a distinct, sharp twitch beneath her clit. Not the dull ache from last night but something more focused, more electric, a single point of sensation that sent a jolt through her lower belly and made her hips shift against the mattress of their own accord. Her breath caught. Her thighs pressed together beneath the tangled sheets and she felt the fabric drag against her, wet, she realized. Still wet. Or wet again. She didn’t know which.

She shook her head hard, the way someone shakes off a nightmare, or a bee, or the sensation of falling just before waking. Her hair was wet. No, her hair was dry. It was the rest of her that still felt damp, clammy with sleep and memory. She shook her head again, as though the motion might dislodge whatever had taken root overnight. As though thoughts could be rattled loose like sand from a shoe.

Stop. Stop. Stop.

Sophie pushed herself upright. Florida morning poured through the thin curtains in a hot, merciless flood, bleaching the faded flowers on her comforter almost white. Above her, the ceiling fan clicked with every rotation. Across the room, the algebra worksheet still glowed on the borrowed Chromebook, untouched. The milkshake cup from the night before sat on the nightstand, its remains dried into a sticky film along the plastic.

Her phone lay beside it, screen down. Exactly where she had left it. She reached for it with an unsteady hand. The case was warm from the sunlight and faintly tacky with the humidity that entered the old house through every crack and swollen frame. The screen lit beneath her thumb.

One notification. At first, she did not understand what she was seeing. No one texted Sophie. Her phone existed for three things: Debra checking in between shifts, Charlene reminding her to wash dishes, and automated calls from the school informing the house that Sophie had been late again. That was the full geography of people who noticed whether she appeared or disappeared.

But this was not a text. A blue banner crossed the lock screen beneath a white paper-plane icon.

Telegram

Her stomach dropped and lifted at once. She unlocked the phone, missed the sensor, tried again, then opened the message.

Mike: Good morning sweetie. Hope you slept well. How do you feel about sending me a picture of your school clothes today?

She read it twice. Then a third time. Sweetie. Not Sophie. A pet name. Something soft and intimate, belonging to the language of people in movies who kissed in kitchens and touched one another without flinching. The language of closeness she had always watched from somewhere outside it. Then the request.

A picture of your school clothes.

Heat climbed rapidly into her face, spreading from her cheeks to the bridge of her nose, down her throat, and across her chest. Her pulse seemed to beat everywhere at once. Beneath the embarrassment was something else. Something Mike had named the night before.

Arousal.

The word still felt borrowed, too adult and precise for a sensation Sophie had barely known how to recognize. Yet her body understood it before her mind did: the low warmth gathering inside her, the sudden sensitivity of skin beneath cotton, the strange restless awareness of herself.

Before this week, her body had been something she inhabited reluctantly. Something small, unfinished, examined by doctors and misunderstood by strangers. Now it seemed to be speaking. Quietly at first. Then with increasing insistence.

Sophie held the phone in both hands and stared at Mike’s message, caught between the desire to hide and the unfamiliar thrill of being asked to reveal herself.

She stared at the message. He wanted a picture of her. Not a posed photograph. Not something hidden or transformed. Her boring school clothes, all of her things that were old or second-hand, easy to overlook.

But Mike did not see her that way. He had called her elegant. Told her she was exactly his type. Spoken as though nothing about her body required explanation or apology.

Her thumbs hovered above the keyboard. She typed, erased it, then tried again.

Sophie: I just woke up. I still need to shower.

She pressed send. Only afterward did the sentence seem to change. Five plain words. A practical detail about getting ready for school. Yet beneath them ran another meaning, one Sophie had not consciously intended but immediately understood.

She had told him she was about to be undressed. Alone. The realization sent heat rushing through her face. She pressed the phone against her chest and stared at the ceiling fan as it clicked through another slow rotation.

Stop.

The typing indicator appeared.

Mike: Mmm. Good morning to you too. Don’t let me keep you. Go get ready for school. The picture can wait until you’re dressed. I’m a patient man.

Sophie exhaled. He was not pushing. That should have settled her. Instead, his patience felt almost more intimate than pressure would have. He always seemed to know when to move closer and when to step back, as though he were following instructions written somewhere Sophie could not see.

She swung her legs from the bed. Her feet met the cool floor, and a shiver passed through her. She gathered a towel and crossed the hallway.

Debra’s door was closed. She had worked late and was still sleeping. Charlene’s room stood open, the bed untouched, or continued to look so tossed around, that Sophie could not tell whether she had come home at all. The house held its usual morning silence.

Sophie entered the bathroom and locked the door. Steam gathered quickly, clouding the mirror and softening the cramped room around her. She stepped beneath the shower and let warm water run over her narrow shoulders, down her chest and stomach.

For several moments, she did nothing. She stood with her eyes closed, listening to the rush of water and the imagined cadence of Mike’s voice through text.

There’s nothing wrong with you.

You’re exactly my type.

The words had followed her into the morning.

She turned the water colder and washed quickly, forcing herself back into the familiar sequence: shampoo, soap, rinse. Ordinary actions. A body made ordinary through routine. When she stepped out, the towel wrapped around her from chest to knees, swallowing her small frame.

She wiped a clear patch in the fogged mirror. A pale face appeared first. Wet brown hair clung to her cheeks and neck. Beneath it was the same body she had always known, small, slight, unfinished in all the places other girls seemed complete.

Mike’s word returned.

Elegant.

It still did not feel like hers.

In her bedroom, Sophie dressed carefully. Plain cotton underwear. A beige bra that served more as habit than support. Khaki trousers that gathered around her ankles. A forest-green polo shirt bearing her middle school’s crest, the smallest available size and still loose across her shoulders. A shirt she had worn for recitals but kept wearing because things in her life could never serve one purpose.

She studied herself in the mirror behind the door. She looked like a middle-school student. Sometimes even younger. That fact had once made photographs unbearable. Today, Mike was waiting for one.

Sophie picked up her phone.

Sophie: okay. I’m dressed, here’s my outfit.

She stood before the mirror and angled the camera until her full body fit inside the frame: damp hair, green polo, khaki trousers, feet planted close together. She looked small. Young. Ordinary. Perhaps elegant, if she borrowed his eyes. Before doubt could stop her, Sophie pressed send.

The reply came almost immediately.

Mike: Beautiful. You clean up nicely, Sophie. I love the green on you. It makes your skin look like porcelain.

Heat spread from her cheeks down her throat, disappearing beneath the collar of her polo.

Porcelain.

No one had ever used that word for her.

She was pale. Too pale. The kind of pale that burned beneath the Florida sun instead of tanning. At school, people had called her ghost, vampire, and worse, not because the insults were original, but because they were close enough to the truth to cling.

Mike made the same feature sound deliberate. Precious. Something to admire rather than correct.

Sophie: thank you. it’s just my school clothes. nothing special

Mike: You’re special, Sophie. Trust me.

She bit her lip. In the mirror, a smile had appeared without permission, small, uncertain, impossible to suppress. She looked away from her reflection and back at the screen.

Mike: Have a good day at school. Study for that test. And think about me when you can. I’ll be thinking about you.

Sophie: okay. I will. thank you Mike

Mike: You keep thanking me. One day you’ll understand that you’re the one doing me the favour.

Sophie read that twice.

She did not know what favour she was doing him. She had only sent a photograph. Only answered his questions. Only gave him pieces of herself that had never seemed valuable before he asked for them.

She locked the phone and tucked it into her backpack. For a moment, she remained in the centre of her bedroom, surrounded by the quiet house and the strange afterglow of being admired. Outside, the Florida sun had already turned the driveway white with heat.

She shouldered her backpack, grabbed her keys, and left. The bus stop was three blocks away. By the end of the first block, sweat prickled beneath her collar. The morning air was thick and wet, the kind of heat that made breathing feel less like drawing in air than swallowing water. Her backpack dragged against her narrow shoulders, oversized on her body and heavy with textbooks.

She thought about Mike with every step.

Exactly my type.

Nothing wrong with you.

Good girl.

The words moved through her in rhythm with her feet.

The bus arrived in a groan of brakes and diesel. Sophie climbed aboard, showed her student card to the driver, and found an empty seat near the back. It was always empty. No one had chosen to sit beside her in years.

During freshman year, a girl named Ashley had once been forced to share Sophie’s seat on a crowded field trip. She had spent the entire ride leaning into the aisle, keeping as much distance between them as possible, as though Sophie’s strangeness might spread through contact.

Sophie slid into the seat and put in her earbuds.

Outside the window, Florida passed in fragments: strip malls, palm trees, chain-link fences, drainage ditches crowded with cattails.

She thought about the photograph. A mirror selfie in school clothes. Nothing revealing. Nothing other girls did not post every day without consequence. It should have felt insignificant.

Instead, it felt like the first step onto a road she could not see clearly, a road made of praise, photographs, and questions that always seemed harmless until after she answered them. Her phone buzzed in her pocket.

Sophie glanced toward the driver’s mirror, then slipped the device beneath the level of the seat in front of her. The screen lit her hands. Another message from Mike.

Mike: Hey. Random question. What are you doing for lunch today?

Sophie bent over the phone, shielding the screen with her body.

Sophie: I usually eat in the library by myself. Why?

His answer came quickly.

Mike: Just wondering. Would you like to text me while you eat? I have some free time around noon.

Something tightened beneath her ribs. Every day, she carried her lunch into the library and disappeared between the shelves. No one asked where she sat. No one noticed whether she ate. Lunch was simply another stretch of time to endure alone. Now someone wanted to be there with her. Not physically, but close enough to fill the silence.

Sophie: I’d like that. I’ll text you when I get there.

Mike: Perfect. Have a good morning, sweetie. Don’t forget to study.

She locked the phone and pressed it against her thigh. The bus shuddered beneath her, its vibrations travelling through the worn plastic seat. Sophie closed her eyes and let the unfamiliar restlessness inside her remain where it was. Not here. Not now. But perhaps soon.

She did not know what soon meant. She barely understood what any of this meant. She knew only that someone was paying attention to her with a steadiness she had never experienced before. The attention felt wonderful. That was what made it dangerous.

First period was American History. Mr. Castellano spoke about the Missouri Compromise in a voice so flat it seemed capable of sedating the entire room. Sophie sat at her usual desk in the third row, near the aisle and the door, close to an exit she had never once needed but always preferred to see.

Her notebook lay open. Her pen rested in her hand. The page remained blank. Mike occupied her mind without effort. He was not a thought she deliberately returned to; he had become something beneath thought, like a song repeating so quietly that everything else began to move to its rhythm. Mr. Castellano’s voice faded.

Sweetie.

Good girl.

Exactly my type.

The words slipped between dates and territories, softening the edges of the classroom.

Tyler, the sophomore seated in front of her, shifted in his chair. His shoulders stretched the fabric of his T-shirt, and the movement stirred an unwanted memory from one of Mike’s photographs. Sophie pressed her knees together beneath the desk and stared harder at the board.