My New Stepbrother

rgent to be. He texted me twice-just "Can we talk?"-but I deleted both messages without responding. I threw myself into being the perfect invisible student. I ate lunch alone in the libra

force. He raised his hand in a small wave, and my heart did something complicated in my chest. "See?" Sophia's voice was poison in my ear. "He's being nice because he has to be. Don't read into it." The game started, and I tried to focus on the action instead of the way Adrian moved on the court-fluid, powerful, completely in control. But every time he scored, every time the crowd chanted his name, I felt myself being pulled deeper into something I couldn't control. Westbridge was up by twelve at halftime when disaster struck. I was coming out of the bathroom when I ran into someone coming around the corner. Literally ran into them, hard enough to send both of us stumbling. "I'm so sorry, I wasn't-" I looked up and froze. It was a girl from my AP History class, someone I'd barely spoken to but who'd always seemed nice enough. Now she was staring at me with undisguised hostility. "You're Maya Chen," she said. It wasn't a question. "Yes?" "You need to stay away from Adrian Cross." The words hit me like a slap. "Excuse me?" "You heard me." Two more girls appeared beside her, forming a semicircle that effectively trapped me against the wall. "Everyone knows you're trying to get your claws into him. But he's with Sophia, and he's way out of your league." "I'm not trying to-" "Please. You think we don't see the way you look at him? The way you follow him around?" "I don't follow him around!" "No? Then explain why you're suddenly in all his favorite spots. The library corner where he studies, the coffee shop off campus, even AP Lit-which everyone knows you only took because he's in it." Heat flooded my cheeks. "That's not-" "Look, I get it," the first girl continued, her voice dripping with fake sympathy. "You won the lottery when your mom married his dad. But don't mistake charity for anything else. Adrian's just being nice because he has to live with you." There was that word again. Charity. "He doesn't even see you as a real person," one of the others added. "You're just the poor girl his family took pity on. Do yourself a favor and remember that." They walked away, leaving me pressed against the bathroom wall with my cheeks burning and my hands shaking. I wanted to run. Wanted to call Mom and beg her to take me home, away from this school where everyone saw me as exactly what I was-an outsider who didn't belong. Instead, I walked back to my seat and pretended to watch the second half of the game. Adrian was on fire in the third quarter, scoring basket after basket with an intensity that seemed almost angry. Every shot was perfect, every move calculated. The crowd was going insane. But something was wrong. I could see it in the set of his shoulders, the way he kept glancing u