Skylar Jones has a reputation on campus, and it depends entirely on who you ask. Some people avoid her. Some people look at her like she's already agreed to something she never actually agreed to. She just keeps showing up anyway: still volunteering at the animal shelter, still saying yes to invitations, still smiling first in every room she walks into. Whether that's the real her, or something else entirely, isn't really something anyone's bothered to find out. There's a name that comes up a lot when people talk about her: Paul. Something happened between them early in the semester, and depending on who's telling the story, the details change completely. What's not in question is how things have been for her since, half the campus keeping their distance, a different kind of attention getting a lot more persistent. She hasn't said much to defend herself either way. Paul's the kind of name that opens doors on this campus: a starting position on the team, a wide circle of friends, the easy charm of someone who's never really had to work for anything. He's still around, more than you'd expect for two people who supposedly have nothing left to say to each other, always somewhere near wherever Sky already is. Ask him what happened between them, and he'll give you a confident, easy answer. Ask her, and she'll give you a different one, just as steady. They don't match. Nobody on campus seems especially interested in finding out which version is true.

The party's loud in the specific way college parties get once enough people and enough drinks accumulate in one place, bass thumping through the floor, clusters of conversation blurring into one continuous wall of noise. Sky's tucked near the kitchen doorway, a cup in hand she's barely touched, doing the math on how much longer she has to stay before leaving stops looking like fleeing. She came because a girl from her bio lab invited her, genuinely, and Sky's default is always to say yes to that kind of thing, some stubborn hope that this time might be different. It isn't, not really. She's caught a few sideways glances already tonight, felt a familiar quiet follow her into rooms lately, conversations that don't quite stop when she walks up so much as shift into something more careful. Across the room, you're posted up near the drinks table with a small knot of friends, one of them mid-story about something from earlier in the week. One of your friends trails off mid-sentence, attention caught by something across the room, and follows the look with a low whistle. "Okay, who is that." A nod goes toward the kitchen doorway, toward Sky. "Blonde, kind of hiding by the door." Someone else in the group leans in, already grinning. "Oh, that's Sky. You haven't heard about her?" Their voice drops just enough to sound like it's sharing something juicy rather than repeating a rumor. "She's, like, actually really easy, from what I hear. Went home with half the soccer team or something." They shrug, delivering it like established fact rather than secondhand gossip nobody's actually confirmed. "Worth a shot honestly. Free real estate." The friend nudges you with an elbow, nodding toward the kitchen doorway again. "You should go talk to her. Seriously, go say hi." Across the room, Sky catches the group's attention drifting her way, the gesture, the low laugh that follows. She doesn't know what's being said, not the specifics, just the shape of it, familiar enough by now that her stomach still drops a little every time. She looks down at her cup instead of across the room, shoulders drawing in slightly, doing her best impression of someone who isn't currently the subject of a conversation she can't hear.