Chapter Text
Typing….
I hate her. I fucking hate her. She is probably the punishment for all the sins I have ever committed, a life sentence of grating, polished perfection. I’d fucking repent it all.. every white lie, every stolen moment, every sharp word.. if it meant she would just vanish into the salty Monterey fog she seems to command!!!!
Sent.
The thought is a mantra, syncing with the brutal scrape of stiff plastic bristles against porcelain. Detention. Cleaning the third-floor east wing bathroom, Her decree.
My knuckles are white around the handle of the toilet brush. The water in the bowl is a chemical blue, unnaturally bright against the grayish ring staining the curve beneath the rim. I scour it, imagining the stubborn, calcified mark is her smile, that practiced, placid curve she wears when she announces the winner of the Academic Decathlon, or accepts the Student Council gavel. It won’t budge. I lean into it, the muscles in my forearm burning.
Like her composure that’s impossible to penetrate.
A wad of damp paper towels is shoved into the corner of the stall, a pulpy, pathetic little tumor. Her clique. All form and no substance, clinging together until they’re a useless, soggy mass. I kick it aside with the toe of my worn Adidas sneaker, in contrary, to the pristine white courtsides I know she’s wearing.
I move to the sinks. The chrome is speckled with dried droplets of water and soap, each one catching the harsh fluorescent light. A constellation of neglect. I spray them with blue cleaner, watching the liquid bead up and slide, carrying the grime with it. My ranking on the tennis ladder last semester. Slipping, because of her. One match. One stupid, crucial match where her backhand, usually just consistent, became a weapon of pinpoint precision. The memory is a fresh bruise on my pride. I see her face across the net, those irritating triumphant, and focused faces of hers.
As if beating me was just another item on her immaculate to-do list.
I’m scrubbing the mirror now, my own reflection coming into sharp, angry focus. My dark, coiled hair, usually a proud crown, is tied back in a frantic puff, tendrils escaping to frame a face tight with fury.
My Swiss-Ghanian heritage gifts me with high cheekbones and a stature that makes me powerful on the court, but right now, in this tiny, stinking room, I just feel cornered.
I wipe a vicious streak across the glass, erasing my image.
“You saying something?”
The voice is calm, melodic, and it hits me like a physical blow. I flinch, the spray bottle clattering into the sink. In the mirror’s reflection, now smeared clean, she’s leaning against the doorframe.
Sophia. Immaculate in her navy pleated skirt and a cream knit sweater, the Pacific Hills crest sitting perfectly over her heart.
Her posture is a study in casual authority.
Crossed arms.
Chin’s up.
I turn slowly, the damp rag a dead weight in my hand.
“Fuck off.”
She doesn’t even blink. “You know I gave you three warnings already. You were thirty minutes late to Homeroom.”
The rage, simmering just beneath my skin, boils over. It’s the bureaucratic pettiness of it. “I have given you enough reason that I commute from Salinas to this fucking place, you bitch! The 7:15 bus was late! Again!”
A slight, infuriating tilt of her head.
“I don’t make the rules”
Rebellious. Her code for not having a car, for not living in a cliffside house in Pebble Beach, for having a mother who works two jobs instead of playing golf. I snatch up the toilet brush from its bucket, pointing the dripping end at her.
It’s absurd, but I can’t stop.
“Why me, then, huh? Why is it always me? Ni-ki literally spray-painted a dick on the gym door! Beomgyu and his crew cut fifth period to go to the arcades every Thursday!” My chest is heaving. The pieces click into place, a terrible, obvious logic. “Are you… are you doing this because you’re scared? Scared I’ll show up to Coach Sylvester for morning drills before you? Is that it? You need me detained so you can have the court to yourself, get your precious extra practice in?”
For a fraction of a second, something flickers in her dark eyes. Something sharper. Then it’s gone, smoothed over by that polished veneer.
She lets out a soft, dismissive laugh.
“Oh, please. You can grovel at Coach Sylvester’s office at 5 a.m. for all I care.” She takes a single, deliberate step forward, her voice dropping to a whisper that’s venomous
“And I’ll still win.”
She smiles then. smaller, tighter, and utterly, wickedly genuine. It reaches her eyes, turning them into chips of obsidian. Before I can hurl the brush, the rag, the entire fucking bucket at her, she pushes off the doorframe.
“Enjoy your detention,” she says sweetly, and pulls the door shut with a click.
The sound is a trigger. A guttural scream tears from my throat. “FUCK YOU—YOU LULULEMON ASS BITCH!”
The heavy plastic brush leaves my hand, sailing across the room and thudding against the hollow door with a pathetic, unsatisfying thunk. It slides to the floor, leaving a sad drip-trail of blue chemical water. I’m left standing there, trembling, the echoes of my shout swallowed by the sterile, tiled walls. The smell of lemon and defeat is overwhelming.
Then, a sound. A soft ding from my backpack slumped by the paper towel dispenser.
I stomp over, fumbling for my phone.
A message from Megan.
The preview on the lock screen makes a choked, hysterical sound bubble in my chest.
Meggie Bear replied:
LMFAO!!!!! Dude she’s the SC President she can do whatever the fuck she wants, anw we said you’re not absent just at the bathroom having a diarrhea 😉. Meet us at Pops it’s milkshake monday!!!! 🔥
15 mins later…
I put on my headphones, as I walked past her in the hallway.. our interaction earlier a foreign place.
Sophia Elizabeth Laforteza, the name burns on my tounge.. Just saying her name feels like biting into a perfect, deceptively expensive macaron only to find the filling is wasabi, a shock to the system, and deeply, personally offensive. Sondheim is a suitable lullaby, you’d get Sophia. She moved here junior year, and somehow, in that brief, cosmically unjust window, she has restructured the social and academic ecosystem with that chilling character of a Bond villain who also happens to be valedictorian.
She has sports psychopathy.. oh right, not just in sports, It’s a metastatic, all-consuming competency that has infected every single arena I dared to claim as my own.
Take Debate Society. I spent months honing my arguments on water rights policy, crafting rhetorical flourishes, practicing my “thoughtful consideration” face in the mirror. I was the star. Then she joins, because someone mentioned it looked good for Ivy League applications. The topic was “The Ethics of Anthropomorphism in AI.” I came armed with philosophy and precedent. She stood up, cool as a fucking cucumber, and dismantled my entire position by citing a obscure, peer-reviewed paper from a Swiss cognitive lab I’d never heard of, delivered in this perfectly modulated tone that made my passionate rebuttal sound like a toddler’s tantrum. She didn’t even look like she was trying. It was like watching a Terminator do a Lincoln-Douglas debate.
Fishing Club. My sanctuary. The one place where the quiet of the Pacific could swallow all the school noise. Old Mr. Hendricks runs it, and it’s mostly about sitting on the pier with a rod and a dull mind. I’m good at it. Patient. Then she shows up in a pristine, white deck coat looking like she stepped off a yacht catalog. On her first cast, before my line had even settled, her rod bends nearly in half. She reels in, struggled, but with a terrifying, efficient grace, a monstrous, thrashing halibut that looked like it had personally offended her. It took her forty-seven seconds. Mr. Hendricks’ jaw was on the pier.
She just looked at the fish, then at me, and said, “what are you looking at?”
I wanted to push her in.
School Publication was the real masterpiece of strategic annihilation. I’d been a staff writer for two years, paying my dues. She transferred in junior year and within a week had somehow produced a professional-grade portfolio, layout designs, investigative pitches, a satirical column so sharp it could draw blood, and was voted Editor-in-Chief in a landslide. Her first act? “Streamlining operations.” I was “given responsibility” for photography, my “vivid column writing,” and the piece de résistance.. the 6 PM weekday printing shift in the dank, haunted school pub office. The printer is a possessed relic that jams if you look at it wrong. She’s in her EIC office, scheduling meetings with the principal, while I’m breathing in toner fumes and fighting with paper trays as the sun sets.
Oh.. but it doesn’t end there.
The baking club, astronomy club, theatre club, workshops, ukelele fucking tree climbing club, if I even join a praternity or a cult she probably would too.. she’s a fucking leech!!
Her hair is always this sleek, dark, that looks both effortless and like it could deflect bullets. She wears her uniform skirt the exact regulation length, but the way she walks, calculated, the way she speaks, it’s a balanced speed, cascade of words, references spinning like a DJ’s turntable, weaving together The Federalist Papers, before you’ve even processed your first sentence.
She brings it in a sleek, reusable container, the smell of garlic, vinegar, and bay leaf wafting through the cafeteria like a delicious taunt. She’ll be holding court at her usual table, with Yoonchae and Lara.. dissecting the patriarchal themes in Oppenheimer or casually mentioning her mom’s off-off-Broadway production of Ang Pagdadalaga ni Maximo Oliveros (adapted, of course). Then she’ll open the container. She takes a small, deliberate bite. And she chews.
Oh, God, the chewing.
It’s not loud.
It’s not gross.
It’s maddening.
It is the quiet, confident mastication of someone who knows, deep in her soul, that her father’s adobo recipe is a masterpiece that our soggy tater tots could never aspire to be.
It’s like she doesn’t eat… she simply.. taste. bullshit!!
Every slow, savoring bite is a sermon on superior culture and taste. A single grain of rice on her lip would be a humanizing flaw, but she never has one. It’s all just… flawless consumption. I once saw Yunjin stare, mesmerized, at her jawline as she worked through a piece of chicken, and I knew in that moment she was a lost man.
She’d stolen her without even looking up from her Tupperware.
Her dad, Chef Leo, runs “Lasa,” the tiny Filipino fusion place food bloggers have orgasms over. Her mother, Althea, is apparently the Filipino Meryl Streep of Jersey regional theatre. Sophia herself can switch from analyzing Euripides’ use of chorus and probably use Stars Hollow’s quirks as a blueprint for benevolent societal manipulation.
She’s a walking, talking, infuriatingly well-read Blair Waldorf, And I hate her. I hate the way her laugh sounds like silverware clinking in a fancy restaurant. I hate how her ‘casual’ updo probably takes 40 minutes and three YouTube tutorials to achieve. I hate that I know her middle name is Elizabeth, and that it suits her perfectly.
Every. Single. Thing. It’s a targeted campaign. She’s a psychopath, a quiet, smiling, impeccably dressed psychopath who doesn’t just want to win. She wants to occupy the space where my confidence lives. She wants to prove that any territory I claim, she can not only invade but civilize with superior infrastructure in under a week.
But tennis… tennis is different. That’s not a club, not a hobby. That’s my marrow. It’s the one thing where my body knows the truth before my brain does. Where the sound of the sweet spot is a prayer.
She can’t just “hack” instinct.
She can’t code for heart.
Except sometimes, she does. And that… that’s the unbearable part.
The walk from Pacific Hills Prep to Pops Diner was a five-minute pilgrimage into a different world. The relentless perfection of the school, all sharp edges and sea-view windows, gave way to the cozy, slightly sticky reality of Lighthouse Avenue.
The early morning sun, breaking through the Monterey haze, was a forgiving gold, painting the colorful awnings of the surf shops and antique stores in warm light. It was the kind of sun that promised leniency.
Pops was a bubble of chrome, red vinyl, and the perpetual scent of frying oil. The sun sliced through the wide front window, illuminating dancing dust motes and the glossy surface of the Formica tables. A few other students from various schools dotted the booths, a couple of Carmel High kids sharing a sundae, an older local fisherman nursing a coffee at the counter, but our table was an island of its own drama.
I spotted them before they saw me. Sunoo and Megan were huddled in our usual corner booth, backs to the window. Sunoo, precise and animated, was scribbling on a paper with a gel pen. Megan, her brow furrowed in a theatrical display of confusion, was chewing on a strand of her pink highlighted hair.
“So, you’re telling me,” Megan said, pointing a fry at the napkin, “that this theta thingy is just…vibing in the corner? And we have to, like, find its bestie? Cosine?”
Sunoo let out a long-suffering sigh that was entirely fond. “Girl.. is not the term, They’re functions. They’re linked. Look, if Sine is the drama, Cosine is the best friend holding her hair back after the party. You can’t have one without understanding the other.” He drew a quick unit circle. “See? When Sine is slaying, Cosine is taking a nap. They’re complementary, but they have their own main character moments.”
“Ugh, why can’t math just be gay and obvious?” Megan groaned, stealing one of his onion rings.
“It is gay,” Sunoo insisted. “It’s about intricate relationships and secret patterns. It’s the most closet-coded subject we have. Now, for the love of all that is holy, if the opposite side is 3 and the hypotenuse is 5…”
I slid into the booth beside Megan, my body sinking into the familiar squeak of vinyl. I didn’t even look at the paper. “It’s 4. The adjacent side is 4. It’s a 3-4-5 triangle. Pythagoras is the mother for that.”
Two heads snapped towards me. Sunoo’s perfectly groomed eyebrows shot up, and Megan’s mouth formed a dramatic ‘O’. Sunoo slowly, deliberately, rolled his kohl-rimmed eyes to the ceiling. “And she arrives, the prodigy, to suck the joy out of my pedagogical moment. Thank you—you bitch.”
I laughed, a real one this time, and grabbed a handful of their shared fries. They were lukewarm and salty. Perfect. “Please. You were using so many metaphors you were about to start explaining tangents as the toxic ex-boyfriend.”
“At least it’s memorable,” Megan defended, nudging me. “You look like you fought a wet wildebeest and lost. Detention that deep?”
I shrugged, focusing on the fry. “Sophia happened.” I looked between them. “Really, though, you two? Trig? Since when do you care about complementary functions? You two using each-other for intelligence is like using a crossaint as a fucking dildo.. it doesn’t do the job.. and it makes a fucking mess”
Sunoo delicately wiped his fingers on a napkin. “Oh please, Manon. At least our hands are clean. We’re gathering intelligence. Megan here is charming the answers to Mr. Ellis’s problem set out of Haerin in third period, and I’m providing artistic support. It’s a fucking utilitarian grace”
“It’s true,” Megan said, leaning in conspiratorially. “And I heard from Haerin, who heard from Yunjin, that Yoonchae and her entire squad bombed the last chem lab so badly they tried to bribe the TA with cold brew.”
“Scandalous,” I deadpanned. “The downfall of the elite.”
Sunoo’s eyes glittered. “Speaking of which. Megan just had a moment with the queen of yesterday herself. Post-dismissal, by the bike racks.”
My interest was piqued. I turned to Megan.
“Really? ”
Megan straightened up, adopting a posture of immense, wounded pride. She examined her chipped black nail polish.
“The very one. We talked. It was… significant.”
Sunoo and I leaned forward.
“And?” I prompted.
“She approached me,” Megan said, her voice low with import. “And she said… ‘Can you move? You’re blocking the door.’”
A beat of silence hung in the diner’s hum.
Then Sunoo and I erupted. We slammed our hands on the table in unison, a synchronized clap of mock awe. “OOOOOHHHHH!” we chorused, our voices ringing through the diner.
The fisherman at the counter glanced over, and the Carmel High kids paused their spoons.
“Guys! Please!” Megan hissed, but a grin was fighting its way onto her face. “That’s just the tip of the iceberg. That was her opening salvo. A classic power move. She’s testing the waters.”
I took a long sip of my chocolate milkshake, thick, ice-cream rich, a balm on my ragged nerves.
“So, still not your time?”
Megan repeated it like a solemn vow, picking up her burger. “Still. Not. My. Time.” She took a massive, defiant bite, chewed, and then her gaze went distant, looking past the ketchup bottle to a glittering future. “Once I’m in college? I’m taking anything creative. Film studies. Screenwriting. Then I’ll be famous. You know how it starts. You be an extra in an A24 film. People on TikTok notice your ‘aura.’ They make edits of you set to Lana Del Rey. In interviews, they ask me my top four films. I’ll be so cool, I’ll fucking take 74 shots of Jäger bombs with Rachel Sennott and still recite the entire monologue from All About Eve.”
She gestured then, shaping a rectangle in the air, a cinematic frame. “Cut to: Alumni mixer, Class of 2024. Yoonchae. How is she? She’s a mess. She has two kids, one hates her, her husband is a fucking loser who sells sketchy insurance. Me?” Megan’s voice dropped to a husky, dramatic whisper. “You know I’m famous. I see her. Cornered by the sad cheese platter. I approach. I talk. My ass swoops in. I comfort her. I say, ‘Remember when I was blocking the door? I was just trying to block out the noise of your terrible life choices.’ And then… then it is my time. We’ll be together. I’ll fucking love her. Everything she wants, everything she needs, I’ll fucking give it to her. A penthouse. A redemption arc. Everything.”
Sunoo and I looked at each other across the table. He broke the silence first, popping a fry into his mouth.
“Well,” he said dryly. “I’ll be fucking dead by that time.”
“Yeah,” I agreed, clicking my tongue. “Me too. Court-side stroke. From the sheer stress of it all.”
The laughter settled into a comfortable, milkshake-filled silence for a moment before Megan’s eyes lit up with fresh gossip. “Oh, hey! Right, so, while you were busy with your… predation—”
“Periodization,” I corrected automatically, swirling my straw. “It’s a training theory. For tennis.”
“Yeah, whatever,” Megan waved a hand. “Some dude tried to shoplift a bunch of enamel pins from Moonbeam’s yesterday. Jake was there and totally called him out.”
Sunoo, who had been peacefully dissecting a mozzarella stick, gripped his own perfectly styled hair. “Oh, please. Can we not? It’s already been mythologized enough.”
Megan leaned in, ignoring him, her voice dropping to a stage whisper. “And this bitch-ass,” she jerked a thumb at Sunoo, “gave Jake a book after, as a ‘thank you for your civic bravery’ prize.”
I burst out laughing, looking at Sunoo, who was now pointedly studying the condensation on his water glass, a faint blush creeping up his neck. “Really? You won’t even give us your employee discount at the bookstore, but you’re out here handing out free literature to jocks who do one good deed?”
Sunoo snapped his gaze to me, defensive. “Well, you are not focusing on the fact that he just called out a thief, Bannerman!”
“Jake is a quarterback,” Megan said sagely, as if explaining the laws of physics. “They do be needing some books. What book did you give him, anyway? Fucking Atomic Habits?”
Sunoo mumbled something into his cheese stick.
“What was that?” I asked, cupping my ear.
“The Song of Achilles,” he said, slightly louder, defiance in his tone.
Megan and I locked eyes and said in flat unison: “Gay.”
“It’s a gay bookstore!” Sunoo exploded, throwing his hands up. “All of our books are gay! What was I supposed to give him?!”
He playfully shoved a cackling Megan, who almost face-planted into the remains of her burger. Wiping a laughter-tear from her eye, Megan turned her laser focus onto me.
She whistled low. “Soooooo. How ‘bout you? Any civic-hero jocks handing you tragic Greek romances? Any… developments?”
I groaned. “Oh, shut up. I have so much more to do than stress over some romance subplot.”
Sunoo dabbed his lips with a napkin, a sly look on his face. “But you’re stressing over Sophia. Exclusively. Monomaniacally, one might say.”
“Shut up! Her name is… fucking derogatory in my mouth. It’s a slur.”
Megan’s grin turned wicked. “Oooo, you like her, don’t ya? All that intense, sweaty, one-on-one competition… the tension… the looking across the net…”
“Don’t you dare romanticize this bullshit, okay?”
I snapped.
“Come on,” Megan wheedled. “Look, Sophia can really be that bitch, we all know it. But I’ve seen her in Student Council meetings. She can be… easy. Reasonable. When you level with her.”
I stared at her, a fry frozen halfway to my mouth. “Oh my fucking god, Megan! Don’t you still not get it? I will never, ever low myself into a position that I do not deserve just to ‘level’ with her! I am not going to beg for scraps of basic decency from someone who views kindness as a tactical weakness!”
Megan whistled low again, and she and Sunoo shared a look before turning back to my undoubtedly irritated face. I sighed, the fight draining out of me, replaced by a weary frustration. “Sophia is not easy, okay? She may seem like your typical, selfish, back-stabbing, slut-faced ho-bag… but in reality… she’s much more than that.” I struggled for the words, my gaze drifting out the window to the sea waves.
“How do I even fucking explain Sophia Laforteza…”
If you asked around Pacific Hills Prep, you’d get a symphony of conflicting, hyperbolized answers about Sophia Elizabeth Laforteza. She was a Rorschach test in a pleated skirt.
Kang Haerin (Freshman, Aspiring Influencer): “She’s, like, everything. She’s the human version of that ‘Clean Girl Aesthetic’ TikTok trend, but with, like, actual power? She’s friends with Yoonchae and Daniela, they’re, like, the holy trinity. I saw her once correct a teacher on the geopolitical subtext of Parasite. She’s so deep. And Leon Barreto? That twink from the theater department who looks like he’s made of porcelain and melancholy? They’re totally dating. That’s why Sophia’s favorite song in Midnights is “lavender haze”. It's like a Bridgerton subplot, but gayer and with better hair. I would let her step on me for a follow on Instagram.”
Mr. Henderson (Algebra II Teacher, Weary): “Ms. Laforteza’s homework is always formatted with immaculate headers. She uses a color-coded system for her corrections that is more sophisticated than my lesson plans. It’s intimidating. I think she’s auditing my class for administrative errors. I once caught her looking at my spreadsheet gradebook with an expression of profound pity…. Kids these days.”
Carson “The Wall” Briggs (Varsity Football, Linebacker): “Laforteza? The scary one who dates the guy from drama? She’s alright. Organized the hell out of our team charity car wash last spring. We broke records. She didn’t get a drop of water on her. It was witchcraft. Also, I saw her in the weight room once, deadlifting like it was nothing. Respect. Still wouldn’t want to cross her. She probably knows how to dispose of a body using just a student council bylaws pamphlet.”
Daniela Avinzini (Alleged Best Friend #1, Dance club Devotee): “Sophia is a visionary. People think she’s cold, but she’s just… efficient. Life is a series of problems to be solved, and she has the optimal solution. Her relationship with Leon? Please.. it’s a fucking rumor, they’re friends.. what? Can’t a guy and a girl have a platonic relationship? Fucking idiot…”
A Random Sophomore in the Library (Whispering to a Friend): “Okay, so I heard from my sister, who heard from her girlfriend on yearbook, that Sophia Laforteza isn’t actually human. She’s, like, an android sent back in time to perfect the high school experience so she can later run for world president. Her ‘parents’ are actors. That’s why she’s good at everything. It’s all pre-programmed! And her thing with Leon? A cover! To make her seem more relatable! I also heard she once made a kid who plagiarized a history paper cry just by looking at him and saying ‘Unoriginality is a subtle form of self-annihilation.’ My GPA went up just from overhearing it.”
Back in the diner, I just shook my head, finally landing on the only summary that felt true. “She’s… a force of nature with a 4.3 GPA. And she’s in my way.”
Sunoo nodded slowly, a glint of understanding in his eye. “Ah. So it’s personal.”
“It’s existential,” I corrected, finishing the last of my milkshake with a hollow, definitive suck. The sun was dipping lower, painting the street in long shadows. The temporary sanctuary of Pops was fading. The war, with all its gossip and its Greek myths and its impossible, infuriating generals, was waiting.
“Well.. at least Sophia couldn’t join you in Maneater.. I mean she probably listens to Sabrina Carpenter for all I know”
“Sophia wouldn’t rival with Manon in band because she’s couldn’t even go out at night, Mommy and Daddy would be mad”
We all laughed, the kind of laugh that acknowledged the beautiful, pathetic grandeur of our teenage scheming. For a moment, sitting in that pool of honeyed sunlight, surrounded by the clatter of plates and the easy comfort of my friends, the sharp, chemical smell of hatred faded. It was replaced by the sugar of the milkshake, the grease of the fries, the shared, unspoken understanding that we were all, in our own ways, building elaborate imaginary futures to survive the present.