The cafeteria at Manhattan Elite Prep was a massive, glass-domed atrium. It looked more like a five-star restaurant than a high school lunchroom.
Elia walked in, carrying a plastic tray with a dry sandwich and an apple.
She found an empty table in the far corner, near the trash cans. She sat down and took a bite of the apple.
Across the room, at the center VIP table, Geri was furiously typing on her phone.
Suddenly, a synchronized chorus of notification chimes echoed across the cafeteria.
Hundreds of phones buzzed at the exact same second.
Elia chewed her apple slowly. She watched as students pulled out their phones.
Within ten seconds, the ambient noise in the cafeteria completely died.
Then, the whispers started.
Heads snapped up. Eyes darted across the room, locking onto Elia sitting in the corner.
At the VIP table, Brenda Kowalski stood up. She held her phone high in the air.
"Listen to this!" Brenda shouted, her voice carrying over the noise. "Anonymous post on the school forum! 'The Truth About the Trash in Class 10.'"
Brenda cleared her throat and began reading loudly.
"'Elia Chapman isn't just a dropout. She was expelled from three different schools in the rust belt for violent assault. And how did a broke orphan afford the tuition here? Word is, she has an older sponsor. A sugar daddy who likes them young and dirty.'"
The cafeteria erupted.
Loud jeers, whistles, and disgusted groans filled the air.
"Whore!" someone yelled from the back.
"Go back to the streets!" another voice chimed in.
Elia sat perfectly still. She didn't stop chewing her apple. Her face betrayed absolutely nothing. But beneath the table, her stomach clenched, a cold, hard knot forming in her gut.
Geri sat at her table, delicately sipping a sparkling water, a serene, victorious smile on her face.
Three boys from the football team stood up. They wanted to impress Geri.
They grabbed their open cartons of chocolate milk and swaggered over to Elia's table.
The cafeteria quieted down, watching the confrontation.
The lead boy, a massive linebacker with a cruel smirk, stopped in front of Elia.
"Looks like your sugar daddy forgot to buy you a decent lunch," the boy sneered.
He tipped his carton forward.
The thick, brown milk poured out, splashing directly onto Elia's tray, soaking her sandwich, and splattering across the front of her black hoodie.
The boys burst into loud, obnoxious laughter.
"Oops," the boy mocked. "My hand slipped."
Elia looked down at the brown liquid dripping from her clothes onto her jeans. The cold wetness seeped through to her skin.
She slowly placed the apple on the ruined tray.
She reached out and picked up the dull metal butter knife resting next to her plate. It wasn't sharp, but in the hands of someone who understood human anatomy, it didn't need to be.
She stood up.
The boy puffed out his chest, stepping closer to intimidate her. "What are you gonna do, trash?"
Elia moved faster than the human eye could track.
Her left hand shot out, grabbing the front of the boy's heavy varsity jacket. With a violent, twisting motion, she used his own forward momentum against him.
She slammed him face-down onto the hard plastic table.
CRASH.
The table groaned under his weight. The boy let out a shocked gasp, the breath knocked out of his lungs.
Before his two friends could even react, Elia drove her knee into the small of his back, pinning him down.
Her right hand came down.
She pressed the blunt, rounded edge of the butter knife directly against the boy's throat, slotting it perfectly against the fragile cartilage of his windpipe.
The cafeteria went dead silent. The laughter was choked off instantly.
The boy under her froze. He could feel the heavy, unforgiving pressure of the metal digging into his airway. He started trembling violently.
"Let him go!" one of his friends yelled, taking a step forward.
Elia didn't look at the friend. She pressed the knife a millimeter deeper into the boy's skin.
"Take another step," Elia whispered, her voice carrying clearly in the silent room. "And I'll show you exactly how much pressure it takes for a blunt blade to crush a trachea."
The friend froze, his eyes wide with terror.
Elia leaned down, her lips inches from the pinned boy's ear.
"If you ever come near me again," she said, her voice devoid of any emotion, "I won't stop at just cutting off your air."
She released his jacket and stepped back.
The boy scrambled off the table, gasping for air, clutching his neck. He backed away from her as if she were a demon.
Elia dropped the knife onto the tray. It landed with a loud clatter.
She looked across the room, directly at Geri.
Geri's face was chalk-white. The victorious smile was gone, replaced by genuine, visceral fear.
Elia picked up her canvas bag. She walked out of the cafeteria, leaving a path of terrified silence in her wake.
She walked into the nearest empty bathroom and locked the door.
She pulled off her ruined hoodie, throwing it into the trash. She stood in her white T-shirt, staring at her cold, dead eyes in the mirror.
Physical violence was a temporary fix.
She pulled her phone from her pocket. Her thumbs hovered over the screen.
It was time to burn the forum to the ground.
