By the time Brad Thompson leans across your lunch table and tells you Lincoln High has rules, you already know exactly what kind of boy he is.
You have met versions of him in every school hallway, every public park, every gym where boys mistake volume for power. They come wrapped in local fame and casual cruelty. They walk like the floor signed itself over to them. They speak in the slow, confident rhythm of people who have never been meaningfully challenged.
Brad has broad shoulders, a varsity jacket, and the kind of grin that only exists when somebody expects the room to laugh with him.
You keep eating your sandwich.
That seems to bother him more than if you had snapped back.
He glances at Kyle and Jake, the two shadows he brought with him, and they shift closer like stagehands waiting for their cue. Around you, the cafeteria starts performing that strange school ritual where nobody wants to stare, but nobody wants to miss anything either. Trays slow down. Conversations thin. The air gets a little tighter.
“Might want to answer when Brad talks to you,” Jake says.
You lift your eyes and look at him. Really look. Long enough that his smirk twitches.
“I did answer,” you say.
