“That sounds stupid.”
“It is.”
He looked down.
“I lost captain.”
“You went to state.”
“Teachers trusted you.”
“I kept thinking everybody was choosing you over me.”
Camryn stared.
“We weren’t competing.”
“I know that now.”
There it was.
Logan had spent an entire year fighting a contest only he believed existed.
Camryn’s success felt like evidence of his decline because he had tied leadership to being more important than everyone around him.
The rookie tax.
The bags.
The captain title.
The jacket.
Everything had been about hierarchy.
Camryn asked one final question.
“When you touched my jacket that day, did you think I was going to hit you?”
Logan nodded.
“Yes.”
“You wanted that?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“So I could say you were just as bad.”
Camryn looked away.
That admission hurt more than expected.
For months she had wondered whether she imagined the provocation.
She had not.
Still, Logan’s plan only worked because Camryn eventually made her own bad decision.
She understood that too.
“I regret pushing you.”
Logan looked surprised.
“You do?”
“Yes.”
“That doesn’t mean I regret defending myself after you started swinging.”
He nodded.
“I get it.”
Camryn stood.
“I accept your apology.”
Relief appeared.
Then she added, “We’re not friends.”
“I know.”
They never became friends.
Graduation arrived in June.
Summit Ridge filled the football stadium with families, balloons, flowers, and people complaining about the heat.
Renee cried before Camryn’s row even stood.
Jordan loudly denied crying while filming everything.
Noah attended because his older sister was graduating too.
Logan crossed the stage before Camryn.
There were cheers.
Nothing dramatic.
No humiliation.
No public punishment.
His consequences had already happened.
Camryn was glad.
A teenager could do harmful things without needing his entire life reduced to them.
Then Camryn’s name was called.
She crossed the stage.
Beneath her graduation gown, she wore the red shirt from the gym video.
The white varsity jacket was folded over Renee’s lap in the bleachers.
Camryn had considered wearing it.
Then decided the jacket no longer needed to prove anything.
She knew what she had earned.
That summer, she hung it in her bedroom beside her wrestling medals.
The large red S still looked exactly the same.
No stain.
No tear.