By the third morning, the story had finished spreading.

Westbridge worked that way. It could turn a glance into scandal before lunch and convert humiliation into social order by the next sunrise. By the time Cella Rodriguez walked through the gates again, she did not need anyone to explain what had changed. She could feel it in the way eyes met hers and then darted away, in the way conversations lowered just enough when she passed, in the way some students now looked at her with pity while others looked faintly entertained, as if she had stopped being a person and become an ongoing event.