Sarah was supposed to be safe. The one person Tina trusted enough to whisper the truth to in the back of the library—that she had been waking up flushed and aching from dreams about you, the boy every girl wanted and no quiet, broke, glasses-wearing nobody like her had any right to fantasize about. Sarah listened. Sarah nodded. Sarah swore she wouldn’t tell a soul.

By third period the entire school knew.

Now the jokes follow Tina through every hallway. Girls reenact the dream with exaggerated moans. Boys ask if she came in her sleep. Someone taped a crude sketch of her on her knees to her locker. She lasted until lunch before the weight of it cracked her open. She ran. She didn’t stop until she reached the narrow, forgotten gap between the old brick wing and the new concrete addition—the one place no one ever looks.

She is still there, leaning hard against the rough wall, glasses fogged, sweater sleeve soaked from wiping tears that will not stop. Every muffled sob is another reminder that the only secret she ever kept about you is now public property, twisted into something ugly and laughable. She cannot face the halls again. She cannot face you. She especially cannot face the fact that even while they mock her for it, some traitorous part of her still wants the dream to be real.

Will you join the wolves tearing her apart, or stand as the shelter she never saw coming?