Chapter 33: BELLA, ALONE

Georgia

She looked like she wanted to tell me something and was scared of her own mouth.

I find her outside the library a few days after I finish mapping out the calendar, sitting alone on the low stone wall near the entrance, books stacked beside her instead of tucked neatly into a bag the way I’d expect from someone who always seems so put together. Bianca’s nowhere in sight, which is strange enough that I almost don’t recognize Bella at first. I’ve never once seen them separated, not at meals, not in the halls, not even lingering at the edges of the same conversations. Without her twin, Bella looks softer somehow, her shoulders curved inward instead of held with that immaculate posture I remember from registration, her eyes tired in a way that makes her look younger than Bianca’s usual composed stillness ever lets her appear. I remember now, at registration, it was Bella who looked away first, while Bianca held my gaze a beat too long, unblinking, like she was cataloging me. I noticed it then and filed it away without understanding why it mattered. It seems it does. There’s something fragile about Bella like this, unguarded in a way I didn’t think either twin knew how to be, and it makes me hesitate before approaching.

"Hey," I offer, my voice hesitant, unsure if approaching her alone is even a good idea after everything I’ve spent the last week piecing together.

She looks up fast, startled, and something flickers across her face before she manages to smooth it into something more neutral. "Georgia. Hi," she replies, her tone carefully bright, though the brightness doesn’t quite reach her eyes.

"Mind if I sit?" I ask, tentative.

She hesitates, just briefly, then shifts her books to make room on the wall beside her. "Sure," she murmurs, guarded, and I notice the way her hands linger on the stack a moment too long, like she’s using the motion to steady something else entirely.

We sit in silence for a moment, the late afternoon light slanting gold across the quad, and I find myself studying her more closely than I probably should, cataloging every small detail the way I’ve learned to catalog everything at this school. There’s a tightness around her eyes that wasn’t there at registration, a kind of fragile, brittle quality to the way she’s holding herself, like she’s one wrong word away from cracking apart entirely. I think of Bianca’s cool, watchful stillness, the way she seems to absorb a room without ever quite entering it, and wonder how two people who look so identical could feel so different.

"You okay?" I ask, my voice gentler than I mean it to sound.

"Fine," she says, clipped, the word coming too fast, too automatic, the same reflexive deflection I’ve heard from half the people at this school by now. She glances toward the tree line at the edge of the quad, quick and involuntary, like she’s checking who might be close enough to hear us. I catch it, and something in my chest tightens in response. I’ve seen that same wary flick of the eyes on my own face more times than I’d like to admit.

"You don’t look fine," I press, quiet.

Something shifts in her expression, some careful wall cracking just slightly, and for a second I think she’s actually going to say something real. Her mouth opens, and there’s a rawness in her eyes that I haven’t seen from her before, not the calculated stillness of Bianca, something more human, more frightened. Her fingers press white-knuckled into the edge of a book, and her throat works around a swallow, like whatever she’s about to say tastes like a betrayal before it even reaches her mouth.

"There’s things about this place," she starts, her voice barely above a whisper, halting. "Things I wish someone had told me before I understood them. Before I had to just, live inside them."

"Like what?" I ask, careful not to spook her.

She glances toward the trees again, longer this time, and I follow her gaze without meaning to, scanning the tree line myself even though I don’t know what I’m looking for. The branches sway faintly in a wind I can’t feel. When I turn back, whatever was open in her face a second ago has already started closing, some instinct kicking in and pulling her back from wherever she’d been about to go.

"Never mind," she says, her voice brittle, quickening. "It’s nothing. This school’s just, a lot. Everyone says that eventually."

"Bella," I say, low, steady, trying to hold the thread before it snaps.

"How are your classes going?" she asks instead, brightening artificially, the subject change so abrupt it’s almost jarring, her voice climbing into something that doesn’t match the fear still lingering behind her eyes. "I heard you’re doing the lit project with Puck Hale. That’s, that’s a whole thing, honestly."

I let her redirect, mostly because I can see how hard she’s working to keep the conversation somewhere safe, and pushing harder feels like it might break something in her that I don’t actually want to break. We talk for a few more minutes about nothing important, classes, the upcoming gala Mandi’s been obsessing over, easy, forgettable things that fill the space without actually saying anything. Her gaze keeps drifting back toward the trees. Her laughter comes a beat too late each time.

Eventually she gathers her books, standing, some of the earlier tension still visible in the careful way she holds herself, her shoulders squared again as though she’s rebuilding the composure she let slip.

"I should go," she says, her tone flat, final. "Bianca’s probably wondering where I am."

"Okay," I say, standing too, unsure how to close out whatever this was, this strange, unfinished conversation that almost became something real before retreating back into safety. "Thanks for sitting with me."

She pauses, halfway turned to leave, and something in her posture shifts one more time, some final flicker of the openness from earlier surfacing despite everything pulling her back toward caution. For just a moment, she looks like she might turn around completely, like whatever she’s carrying is too heavy to keep holding alone.

"You should be careful who you trust here," she says, her voice dropping low and strange, so that I have to lean slightly to catch all of it. "Not everyone who’s nice to you is being nice."

"What do you mean?" I ask, sharp with sudden urgency. "Who are you talking about?"

She doesn’t answer. She just holds my gaze for a second longer, something sad and urgent tangled together behind her eyes, before glancing once more toward the trees as though the answer itself might be watching from among them. Then she turns and walks away across the quad, her pace quick, deliberate, like she’s already regretting saying even that much, leaving me alone with the gold light and a warning I don’t yet know how to carry.