• •
  The final bell had been gone for nearly an hour.

Most of the school was empty now, the corridors that were usually packed with students reduced to an uncomfortable silence. The occasional sound of a door closing echoed somewhere in the distance, followed by the muffled voices of teachers finishing up for the day.

Gabi walked slowly down the corridor, her schoolbag hanging from one shoulder.

She still couldn’t quite believe she was here.

After-school detention.

Gabi.

She had never been the kind of student who got detention. She barely spoke loudly enough to get noticed in class, never got into arguments with teachers, and usually kept her head down and did what she was supposed to.

Yet somehow, she’d managed to end up with an hour of detention.

She stopped outside the classroom written on the slip she’d been given and stared at the door for a second.

Brilliant.

Taking a quiet breath, she pushed it open.

The room was almost empty.

Almost.

Four boys were sitting near the back of the classroom.

Gabi immediately recognised them.

Everyone did.

They were the rugby boys.

The group that seemed to know everyone in the school. They were always together at lunch, always surrounded by people, and constantly being talked about. They were the boys teachers seemed to recognise instantly and students seemed to orbit around.

Gabi had never spoken to any of them.

She’d barely even been in the same conversation as them.

Her eyes flicked over the four of them before she quickly looked away.

One boy was leaning back in his chair, spinning a pen between his fingers. Another was quietly laughing at something on his phone. The third had his arms folded across his chest, looking completely uninterested in being there.

And then there was Aaron Sullivan.

Gabi knew who he was.

Pretty much everyone did.

Seventeen years old. One of the best rugby players in the school. Not just good for the school—good for his age group.

There had been talk about him being called up to Ireland’s under-20 setup when he turned eighteen next year. Teachers mentioned his rugby career like it was already something inevitable, and whenever there was a match, people seemed to know the result before the final whistle.

He was sitting in the middle of the group, his school shirt slightly untucked.

He looked completely at home despite being stuck in detention.

Gabi hesitated in the doorway.

None of them looked up.

Good.

She quietly walked to one of the empty desks near the front of the room and sat down.

She placed her bag beside her feet and pulled out her pencil case, trying to make as little noise as possible.

The teacher supervising detention sat at the desk at the front, typing something on a laptop.

“Phones away,” she said without looking up.

There was a chorus of groans from the back.

Gabi kept her eyes on the blank page in front of her.

She could feel the boys behind her talking quietly.

She couldn’t hear everything, only fragments.

“…told you…”

“That’s not even what happened.”

“Shut up.”

A quiet laugh followed.

Gabi tried not to listen.

She wasn’t interested.

At least, that’s what she told herself.

She opened her notebook and started drawing tiny shapes in the corner of the page, occasionally glancing at the clock.