Silent Hearts, Golden Lies

"Next!"

The registrar didn't even look up.

Elara stepped forward, her transfer documents clutched so tight the edges bent. The woman behind the desk had a coffee stain on her collar and reading glasses perched so low on her nose they were basically falling off her face. She stamped something, flipped a page, stamped again.

"Name?"

"E..." Elara opened her mouth. Nothing came out. Just air. Just the familiar, humiliating wall of nothing.

The woman looked up facing her gaze at Elara finally.

"Name, sweetheart. I don't have all morning."

Someone behind Elara in the line snorted. She didn't turn around. She pulled out her phone instead, already open to a note she'd typed at 5 AM that morning.

Elara Vance. Senior. Transfer from Westbrook High.

She slid the phone across the counter.

The registrar stared at it like Elara had handed her a fish.

"You can't talk?"

More noise from the line behind her. Elara felt her neck go hot.

"She's mute," someone said. A girl's voice, bored. "Just process her, Mrs. Flora. You're holding up the whole line."

The registrar processed her.

Elara took her timetable, her locker number, and her dignity, what was left of it, and walked away without looking at whoever had spoken. She didn't want to see pity. She'd had enough pity to last three lifetimes.

St. Jude's International Academy was beautiful in the way that places built to make you feel small are always beautiful. High ceilings. Marble floors that clicked under every shoe. Lockers that were actually clean. The kind of school that had a fountain in the courtyard and called it "the Atrium."

Elara had looked it up the night before. Founded 1987. Ranked third in the country. Dress code strictly enforced. Annual fees that would have made her old school principal faint.

Her father had insisted on St. Jude's. Beatrice had agreed, which meant there was something in it for Beatrice. Elara just hadn't figured out what yet.

She found her locker on the second floor. 247. The combination worked on the third try. Inside, someone had left a sticker, a small yellow smiley face, right at eye level.

Elara peeled it off. She didn't need smiling things watching her.

She was pressing her chemistry textbook into the locker when she heard them.

Three girls. Walking like the hallway was a runway and the other students were extras hired to fill the background. The one in the middle was tall, blonde, wearing her uniform like it had been tailored for her specifically, which Elara suspected, it probably had. Her blazer sat differently from everyone else's. Crisper. Custom.

"Is that her?" One of the other girls, shorter, dark-haired, spoke quietly. But not quietly enough.

"The transfer? Obviously." The blonde one didn't lower her voice at all. "Look at the uniform. It's from the budget package."

Elara looked down at her own blazer. It was fine. It was clean. It was just not tailored.

"Chloe, that's kind of mean," the third girl