SOPHIE
I hear it before I understand it, which is how most bad news works.
I'm at my locker Wednesday morning, third period, when Priya Malhotra—junior, dance team, not someone who has ever spoken to me in four years of overlapping hallways—stops two lockers down and says to her friend, low but not low enough, "Wait, did you see what Tyler's got? He showed me at practice."
"The thing with the old picture?"
"Yeah. It's actually kind of brutal."
They both laugh, quick and uncomfortable, the kind of laugh people do when they know something's wrong but don't want to be the one who says so, and then they're gone around the corner before I can make myself ask what picture.
I already know. I don't know how I know, but my stomach knows before my brain catches up.
I find River at his locker
