Nicole sat cross-legged on her bed, her laptop still open beside her, Dominique's borrowed lipstick faintly staining her coffee mug. The city hummed outside the window—horns, laughter, the low thrum of a train several streets away. She'd been flipping through a stack of old Polaroids when she reached for her phone and dialed Amory.
She wanted to ask him if he'd have dinner with her and Amanda the next night. Dominique had offered to get them into some absurdly exclusive place in SoHo, the kind of restaurant where bread came on marble and everyone pretended not to recognize B-list celebrities.
The phone barely rang once before it was picked up—not in Amory's usual, drawn-out murmur, but with an immediate, agitated snap:
"Listen—"
Nicole froze.
"[deep breath] I need you to fucking stop calling me — every… fucking… minute."
His voice was low, cracking at the edges, exhausted, like he hadn't slept and hadn't meant to answer but had anyway.
"You've been blowing up my phone for two straight days, and it's — it's harassment. You hear me? Harassment."
Nicole didn't speak. Her mouth was open, but the words stuck. She hadn't called him more than once all week.
There was a long pause. On the other end, she heard him grip the phone tighter—she could hear it, the shift of skin on plastic.
Then, suddenly, like a wind-up toy dropped into a philosophy seminar:
"John Locke... nailed it when he said: 'Every man has a property in his own person. This nobody has any right to but himself.'"
A beat.
A yawn.
"And David... Hume said—'There is an inconvenience which attends all abstruse reasoning...'"
He yawned again—mid-sentence—voice trailing, eyes likely half-closed wherever he was.
"'...'tis difficult for us to retain even that conviction…'"
Another pause. A dead, glassy silence.
"In other words," he slurred, "constant noise scrambles your f-fucking brain. My attention… my ability to think clearly—" he choked back another yawn, jaw tensing audibly, "—you're obliterating it with your incessant damn ringing."
Then his voice snapped, hard and high:
"No — listen — I am speaking, Heather, bitch! I don't want to hear whatever fucking rumour you want to spread."
Nicole's hand clenched around the phone. Her lips parted to say something, to interrupt—but he was still going, panting slightly now.
"Repeat — stop the calls." His voice was unraveling. "And shut the hell up... until I tell you... that I want to know."
There was one final, ragged yawn. Then, just before the line cut off, a single, drained whisper:
"That's... all."
Click.
The dial tone droned.
Nicole stared at the phone, her heart knocking once, twice.
He hadn't even known it was her.
Heather, thought Nicole, venom curling behind her ribs like smoke in her lungs.
She stared down at the phone still glowing with the call screen, Amory's name frozen in soft, ironic Helvetica. Her thumb hovered over it, trembling. Her mouth had gone dry. She could still hear his voice echoing in her ears—furious, disoriented, slurred with exhaustion and something darker: "Heather, bitch… I am speaking."
He hadn't known it was her.
He thought she was Heather.
A hot wave of something—anger, humiliation, something too tangled to name—rose in Nicole's chest. Her stomach turned. Her thoughts spiraled.
Of course.
Of course. Heather hadn't just not come to SoHo with them. Heather had smiled that cold, gleaming little smile when Nicole mentioned Stella. Heather had known something and said nothing. Heather had refused to come on their summer trip, said she needed to study—but all the while, she'd been planting little seeds, playing some quiet game with shadows and silence.
And now, it seemed, she'd spent her spring break blowing up Amory's phone.
Nicole could see it—Heather, perfectly put together, reclining in her parents' apartment on Beacon Hill or wherever they kept her, dialing again and again, whispering poison in that patient, knowing voice.
And Amory—drowsy, half-conscious, too used to being adored to question who was on the other end—had confused her for that.
Nicole stared at the window, the skyline all glitter and silence beyond the glass. Her chest ached, her skin burned with a slow, sick embarrassment, and somewhere under it all, like a hairline crack in ice:
He didn't know it was me.
He thought I was her.
Nicole didn't cry.
But her jaw set. Her shoulders lifted. And in her mind, she pictured Heather's face—and promised herself that the next time they spoke, she wouldn't smile.
It was second period. Philosophy.
The classroom was unusually quiet for a Monday. The windows were half-fogged from the stubborn spring chill outside. Heather, Amanda, and Nicole sat near the back—Heather poised as always, Amanda doodling idly on the margin of her notebook, Nicole stiff, shoulders drawn tight, pretending to read Montaigne.
Then—the door slammed open.
Amory stood in the doorway like a fever dream: blazer askew, lips cracked, dark shadows bruising the hollows beneath his eyes. His hair was disheveled, damp at the temples, and his tie was halfway undone like he'd forgotten how to finish dressing halfway through. He looked like a fallen angel who'd gotten into a bar fight with insomnia and lost.
He didn't glance at the teacher.
Didn't even acknowledge the classroom.
His eyes fixed on Heather.
"One would think," he began, his voice hoarse, each word ragged but deliberate, "Heather, that you had something more meaningful to do than to call me from the first minute of spring break to the last—ringing without pause for one whole week straight."
Students froze. The teacher opened their mouth to intervene, then thought better of it.
Amory stepped forward, swaying slightly. His whole body trembled, bones strung together by sheer willpower and caffeine. "My ears," he went on, "have learned your voice not as sound, but as torment."
Nicole's breath caught in her throat.
Amanda whispered, "Oh my god."
Amory's hands twitched at his sides. A bead of sweat slid down his temple. He was holding himself up now, leaning against the wall like it was the only thing keeping him upright. Still, his voice cut through the room, cracked and unrelenting.
"As Schopenhauer said—" he spit the name like it was ammunition, "—'Noise is the most impertinent of all interruptions, for it not only interrupts our thoughts but disperses them.' And disperse me, you did, Heather—like leaves in a storm."
There was something terrible and magnificent in the way he spoke—unraveled and somehow still articulate, still reaching for elegance even as he frayed at the edges.
"I can't think. I can't dream. I can't remember my own name when I walk into a room."
He turned halfway to the class, eyes wild and glassy, then back to Heather, whose face had gone pale but unreadable.
"I don't want to hear your concoctions about her," he said, quieter now, voice shaking, brittle. "I don't want to hear whatever lies you've made up."
Then, almost a growl:
"You've called enough. You've rung me dry. So shut your f—king mouth, Heather. Just shut it."
Silence thundered in the room.
Half the class was in awe that Amory could still quote Schopenhauer in this state. The other half was aghast that, somehow, despite everything—he still looked hot. Disheveled. Devastated. Iconic.
Anthony, Cary, and Albert stood in the back, frozen in horror.
"We should get him to the nurse," Cary whispered.
Anthony nodded. "Like... now."
Albert muttered, "Or a priest."
And across the room, Nicole sat very still, her hand curled tightly around her pen, watching the boy who had kissed her, burned her, and now—stood unraveling before them all, beautiful and broken in public, rage stitched together with genius.
Heather's composure, so carefully constructed in every hallway glance and whispered insinuation, cracked like porcelain under heat. Her lips trembled. Then, without warning, tears streamed down her cheeks, and her voice broke open in a sob that startled even her.
"I was just trying to warn you," she cried, face flushed, shoulders shaking. "I don't lie, Amory. I just tell you the truth—ugly truths. Someone has to."
The room tensed, collectively leaning forward like a page turning.
Amory didn't flinch.
"Oh, really?" he said, venom sliding across his tongue like velvet. He took a slow, deliberate step forward, eyes narrowing. "And what will your best friend Nicole say if I tell her you once told me she has bad-smelling breath?"
Heather gasped. Amanda's eyes widened. Nicole, sitting stiffly behind her desk, didn't move—just blinked slowly, as if trying to slow down time.
Amory turned slightly toward the class again, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his trembling hand. His voice deepened into a strange, ragged theatricality, wild and focused all at once.
"John Locke says—'There cannot be greater rudeness than to interrupt another in the current of his discourse.'" He paused for dramatic effect, then turned his eyes to the teacher. "And Kant—Kant reminds us that, 'All our knowledge begins with the senses, proceeds then to the understanding, and ends with reason.'"
The philosophy teacher's brow furrowed with concern, but there was a flicker of pride there too, like a parent watching their child deliver a monologue during a fever dream. If Amory hadn't looked like he was five minutes from collapse, he might've gotten a round of applause.
"Okay," Anthony said, stepping forward, voice low and urgent, "we're going to the nurse right now."
"Seriously, man," added Cary, gripping Amory's arm gently. "You're, like, sweating from your hair."
Albert was already halfway to the door. "This is above our pay grade."
Even the teacher took a cautious step forward. "Amory… I think that's enough for today. You need rest. Or hydration. Or a sedative."
But Amory tore his arm away.
"I don't fucking care who she goes to bed with," he snapped at Heather, who was still sobbing, her mascara streaking like melted armor.
And then—because no public meltdown is complete without dragging Enlightenment thinkers into the dirt—he charged forward with a new torrent:
"Kant held a strict moral stance on sexuality: 'From the mere principle of morality we can see that sexual enjoyment divorced from marriage is contrary to the dignity of humanity… The sexual instinct is counter to the moral law if indulged without a binding union.'" He gasped for breath. "And Hume—Hume viewed sexual passion as a natural human impulse: 'There is the greatest difference between the calm and peaceable pleasures of morality, and those of the animal passions.'"
It was impressive, in a way that made people uncomfortable.
The teacher opened his mouth, closed it, then finally said, "Amory, please. Go to the nurse."
Cary leaned toward Anthony. "Didn't the literature teacher tell him to leave class to go to the nurse? Not to come here to quote philosophers and implode?"
Anthony nodded, deadpan. "Yep. But here we are. Kant and chaos."
Amory set his eyes on Heather.
"Don't you even sleep, Heather?" he demanded, the sarcasm bitter and too loud. "You, like, telephoned me all night, all day, nonstop for seven days. I swear—it was as bad as a concentration camp—at least they were allowed to sleep!"
Gasps erupted in the room—half horror, half disbelief. The teacher took a sharp step forward, mouth opening in protest.
Amory, oblivious or uncaring, pressed on, sweat still gleaming down his temple, eyes fever-bright.
"I don't know what grudge you've got between you and Miss Stella Kings," he snarled, "but I assure you—telephoning me is not going to help with your problems."
He staggered slightly, gripping the edge of a desk to steady himself.
"I do assure you," he continued, voice now strained and shaking, "that I have not seen her for four years and seven months, and we have not exchanged a single word in that interval."
Heather sat frozen in her chair, tear-streaked and silent, her hands trembling in her lap.
Nicole's heart was thudding. She could feel everyone's eyes shifting back and forth—between her, between Heather, and Amory, who stood there unraveling in beautiful, spectacular, unrepentant ruin.
The teacher stepped in, firm this time. "Amory. Enough."
Amory swayed slightly but didn't resist as Cary and Anthony finally reached him, each taking an arm.
Albert, behind them, muttered under his breath, "Someone please tranquilize him before he starts quoting Rousseau."
And as they guided Amory slowly, reluctantly, toward the door, Nicole looked at Heather—whose expression had collapsed into something Nicole hadn't seen before: not cruelty, not superiority, but something raw. Almost scared.
Nicole didn't speak.
Because, in that moment, there was nothing left to say that could match the damage already done.