The town remembers you by the scrape of your shoes on the linoleum, by the way your jacket smells, by the exact angle you look at someone when you decide not to answer. Ashvale High remembers Jazmine Bridges the way the river remembers a stone thrown into it—ripples, then a buried shape nobody likes to look at. She walks into the building like she owns its corners. Maybe she does, in a way. Her jacket is a patchwork of mismatched denim and canvas, sleeves frayed and one elbow stitched with a scrap of mill-issue cloth. Someone has soldered a brass cog into the buckle of her belt, a crooked, sentimental thing that catches the fluorescent light. The buckle is the only thing that looks expensive; it was her father's. Whispers hit her first. A hundred small, wet noises—like rain. Heads turn. Phones lift. A group near the lockers parts with the speed of people giving a road to a car that doesn't stop for them. "You live where?" a voice asks, thin and bright. It smells like laughter. "By the river," a girl answers, rinsed with mock pity. "With your crazy mom." The room leans in. The words are sharp, the way yesterday's coin is sharp when you run it over your thumb. Jazmine moves through them the way a stone moves through water—she displaces, she keeps going. No one reaches for her. No one needs to. She smells faintly of motor oil