The way an entire room had waited to see whether I would break.
I didn’t.
That was the part none of them understood.
Alex had believed humiliation was power because he had only ever seen people confuse the two. But power that depends on witnesses is fragile. Power that depends on fear is already dying.
I set my tray down by the window and sat in the noon light.
Outside, students crossed the courtyard without looking over their shoulders. Inside, the noise of lunch rose and fell in ordinary waves.
And for the first time since arriving at Redwood, I finally understood what my mother had meant in the car.
Noise and power were never the same thing.
One disappears the moment people stop feeding it.
The other survives long enough to tell the truth.
