Shards of Memory [English - Under Revision]

Chapter 6: Dreamscapes and Dance Floors

Skylane

The sound of skin meeting skin was smaller than it should've been. Not a movie slap—no echoing crack, no slow-motion gasp. Just a sharp, precise *snap* that bit the quiet and vanished.

Blaise jerked up like a drowning boy breaking the surface. His chair skidded an inch; his hand shot out, catching the desk before the whole thing went over. For half a heartbeat his eyes were huge, unmoored, black pooled wide like he belonged to the night and not this fluorescent room. Then the world found its corners again and his gaze hooked into mine, too direct, too much.

Heat flared across my palm. Heat flushed up my neck. My heart forgot its choreography.

Oh no.

I had just slapped Blaise Pollington.

"I—" The apology snagged on my tongue.

He blinked. Once. Slow. Then the mask slid down—blank, bored, a boy inconvenienced by existence. He dragged his hand over his jaw as if erasing a dream. "Great," he said to nobody, voice hoarse at the edges. "Perfect."

He leaned back. Closed his eyes. And I did the terrible, self-preserving thing: I grabbed my bag like it was a life vest and bolted.

The hallway widened and blurred. Locker doors clicked like teeth. I wasn't crying—my body didn't have the paperwork for that—but panic ran laps in my chest, stupid and blue, like a bird flinging itself against glass.

I took a left too fast and collided with a solid person.

"Hey—whoa." Hands caught my shoulders, steadying. Ryder's face swam into focus, eyebrows yanked up under the fringe. "You okay? You look—" He searched for a word that wasn't *wrecked*. "—pale."

"Probably from sprinting," I lied, breath hitching. Truth: I had just slapped the school's most notorious boy awake from a nightmare he didn't invite me into.

"Why were you sprinting?"

"Hungry." I pasted on a grin that squeaked. "Canteen run."

He looked at me in that way he does when he's counting the lies to see if they add up. "We were *waiting* for you there. I got worried."

"Aww." I nudged his shoulder. "Don't stress. Black belt. Deadly elbows. I'm a whole weapon."

"Better safe than sorry," he muttered, but his mouth softened.

"Come on." I tugged his sleeve. "I'm starving."

"All you think about is food," he said, ruffling my bun with exactly the right amount of disrespect.

"Food is life."

"I thought your phone was your life."

I weighed my hands in the air like scales. "Okay, both. Food and phone. One for blood sugar, one for oxygen."

"You're hopeless," he said, but his shoulder brushed mine as we fell into step, and the teasing felt less like noise and more like a rope he'd tossed me in case I needed to climb out of something.

We took the long way—past the courtyard where fountains threw light at the sky, past a row of first-years tripping over the concept of quiet line, past a noticeboard papered with posters for intramurals and a poetry slam I'd promised to emcee. The whole time I tried not to think about the way Blaise had looked in those first two seconds, stripped of performance: startled, young, scared.

It was easier to think about pasta.

It was easier to think about anything.

Blaise