By fifteen, Ainsley Briar had become a myth.
To her classmates, she was the girl with the perfect French braid, the straight-A record, the porcelain poise. Every week she won something: a speech contest, a piano solo, an academic award. She walked through the halls of Westridge Academy like a painting, beautiful, untouchable, perfectly framed.
Half the school admired her. While the other half envied her.
"She's probably got her own driver," someone once whispered in the hallway.
"I bet she's never even been grounded," another scoffed.
Both were right.
And yet, not one of them knew her.
No one saw the raw mornings, the way her mother, Elizabeth, yanked her hair too tightly as she braided it, murmuring, "If your image slips, we all slip." No one saw her father tapping the rim of his coffee mug every time Ainsley answered with less than perfect articulation at dinner. No one heard the way silence roared in the Briar house.
But Ainsley had learned to be pleasing so early, so completely, that by fifteen, the mask was no longer something she wore, it was something she was. Her movements were rehearsed. Her smile was practiced. Even her breath felt choreographed.
Then Caleb arrived.
It was a Monday. Their teacher assigned partners for a genetics presentation, and Ainsley found herself seated beside a boy she barely knew. Caleb had transferred last semester and didn't exactly blend in — he asked too many questions, laughed too easily, and didn't wear the school uniform as neatly as everyone else.
They got to work in silence at first. Ainsley annotated the textbook while Caleb scrawled notes that looked like code only he could read.
"You always talk like you're presenting to a courtroom," he suddenly spoke, not unkindly, just... curious.
Ainsley didn't look up. "I talk like everyone else."
"Nope," Caleb replied, grinning. "Most people don't sound like a TED Talk."
Ainsley blinked. She wasn't used to people saying things like that to her. Especially not with a smile. Especially not like it was... normal.
"I'm just trying to be respectful," she replied, her tone still measured.
Caleb shrugged. "You can be respectful without sounding like a robot. You're allowed to chill, you know."
She looked at him then. Really looked. His eyes were steady, warm. Not mocking. Not pitying. Just... present.
And for reasons she didn't understand, she didn't shut him out.
After that, Caleb kept talking to her. During lunch. In the hallway. After class. He cracked dumb jokes and made sarcastic comments about their Biology teacher's obsession with Punnett squares. He spoke to her like she was just a person — not an image, not a standard. Just Ainsley.
She responded politely at first, the way she'd been taught. But somewhere between mitochondria diagrams and sarcastic notes passed under the table, she found herself... enjoying it.
It didn't make sense. But it also didn't hurt.
-
It wasn't long before people noticed.
Whispers stirred in the locker rooms, floated behind her in hallways. "Ainsley Briar? With him?" someone would snicker. "He's not even in AP classes." "He called her dude once. And she didn't correct him." "Do you think she's...into him?"
Ainsley heard it all.
But for the first time in her life, she didn't adjust to the scrutiny. She didn't pull away from Caleb. In fact, she found herself seeking him out. Her eyes drifting to his desk before class started, her feet hesitating by his locker before she remembered she wasn't supposed to care.
It was terrifying.
It was thrilling.
Because with Caleb, she didn't feel like a painting or a doll.
She felt real.
-
The first time Caleb asked Ainsley for help, it wasn't with Math.
It was History.
They were walking out of Science, the sun filtering through the glass corridor when Caleb fell into step beside her and said, casually, "Hey, do you know anything about 18th-century Europe that doesn't sound like it was written by a fossil?"
Ainsley blinked. "That's... specific."
"Yeah," he muttered, running a hand through his messy hair. "Mr. Langston gave us this reading sheet. I've read the same paragraph five times and I swear it just keeps getting longer."
Ainsley adjusted the strap of her bag. "What do you want me to do about it?"
Caleb tilted his head toward her with a crooked grin. "You're scarily smart. And you explain stuff better than Google. I figured I'd ask."
She hesitated for quite a while. Not because she didn't want to help, but because she did. And wanting things still made her feel guilty.
Still, her voice came out steady. "Fine. Four o'clock. Library."
-
She arrived three minutes late.
Three. She hadn't meant to be. Her mother had cornered her with a question about a volunteer application she hadn't filled out yet, and time had slipped. It felt like a betrayal, somehow, of her own standards, of her word.
Caleb was already sitting at one of the back tables, sprawled out in his usual relaxed posture, flipping through his notes with a bored expression. When he spotted her approaching, he raised an eyebrow.
"Three whole minutes late," he said, voice overdramatic. "I thought I'd have to light a candle and mourn your punctuality."
She sat down without a word and opened her folder. "Do you want help or not?"
His smile widened. "There she is."
-
They started with a review sheet on Enlightenment thinkers. Ainsley spoke efficiently, breaking down long blocks of dense information into clean, digestible bits. Caleb took notes in his usual lazy scrawl, sometimes pausing to ask questions that genuinely made her think.
"Wait, so Rousseau believed people were born good, but corrupted by society?" he asked, brow furrowed.
"Yes," she answered. "He thought government should reflect the general will of the people, not control it."
Caleb looked impressed. "That's… actually kind of deep."
Ainsley looked up at him. "History is deep. It's not just facts. It's what people believed was worth fighting for."
He stared at her for a second longer than necessary before scribbling something down.
-
They worked for over an hour. By the end, Ainsley closed the textbook and turned to him with a slight raise of her eyebrow.
"Pop quiz," she said. "Let's see if you actually paid attention."
Caleb groaned dramatically but sat up straighter. "Bring it on."
She fired off questions,some simple, some more layered. To her surprise, he answered most of them right. Not perfectly. But better than she expected. More right than wrong.
When she told him he passed, Caleb threw both fists in the air and whispered-shouted, "Yes! Redemption!"
Ainsley rolled her eyes, but the corner of her mouth tugged upward.
Then she caught herself. And looked down.
But for a moment, just one, she let herself enjoy it.
The sound of his laugh.
The glow of his small, ridiculous victory.
The ease of it all.
It was nothing.
But it was more than she'd known before.