She heard Sloan say something behind her, low and amused. She heard Reese laugh.
She sat down at the new table and opened her textbook again. Her hands were perfectly steady. She made sure of that. She had learned, over the past seven months, that hands gave things away if you let them.
She did not let them.
That night, alone in her room, she sat on the edge of her bed and untied the ribbon from her braid. She held it in both hands. Looked at it.
Her mother's name was Sandra. Sandra Callahan before she married, and Sandra Callahan still, because she kept her name, and her husband had said, "Of course. Of course you keep it. It suits you."
And she had laughed and said, "You're just saying that."
And he had said, "No, I genuinely mean it. Sandra Callahan sounds like someone who could take on the world."
She had taken on the world, in her own way. But that was a longer story.
The ribbon had been on her mother's dresser the morning of the accident. Sandra had set it aside specially. She had been planning to drive down to watch Mia's first competitive match, and she had wanted to do Mia's hair beforehand, the way she used to when Mia was little. A braid, with the navy ribbon at the end. Her lucky ritual.
She never made it.
The match never happened. And the ribbon sat on the dresser for 3 weeks before Mia could bring herself to pick it up. When she finally did, she tied it into her own hair, and she had not taken it off since. Not to wash it. Not to sleep. She simply retied it carefully every morning and kept going.
She set the ribbon on the nightstand. She brushed her teeth. She got into bed and lay there in the dark, listening to the sounds of the dormitory settling around her.
She had not cried since the funeral. She didn't know whether that was strength or damage. Some days she thought it was one. Some days, the other.
She pulled the blanket up and closed her eyes.
"Call me Sunday," Connie had said.
She would. She had 5 days until Sunday. She just had to get through them.
The situation with Reese might have stayed at that level. The low-grade social friction that you learn to navigate in any new place. The territorial posturing that usually fades when something more interesting comes along.
Except that Reese was not the kind of person who let things fade.
She understood that on the third day.