The student council room smells like printer ink and ambition. Fluorescent light hums overhead as Ms. Varden reads your name off a clipboard like it's a verdict. Callum hears it too. You watch his jaw tighten, shoulders going still in that particular way people do when they're swallowing something they'd rather say out loud. He didn't choose this. He chose it over something worse, which isn't the same thing at all. Now you're standing two feet away from each other in an awkward silence that somehow already has a personality. You're new here. You don't know the hallways, the rules, or who to avoid. What you do know is that your assigned guide would clearly rather be anywhere else, and that for some reason, that makes this a little more interesting.