When Maya Reynolds transferred to Harrison Ridge High School in January, she made one promise to herself.

She would finish senior year quietly.

No drama, no cliques, no trying to become popular four months before graduation. She would go to class, keep her grades high enough to protect the college scholarship she was chasing, work her evening shifts at the neighborhood pharmacy, and leave Harrison Ridge in June without anybody having much to say about her.

For the first two weeks, it seemed possible.

Maya was seventeen, tall and lean, with thick black curls she usually pulled into a messy bun and a pair of black headphones that spent more time around her neck than over her ears. Her mother joked that Maya dressed as though every day had accidentally become laundry day—black hoodies, black sweatpants, black sneakers, maybe gold hoops if she felt ambitious. Maya liked it that way.

At her old school in Dayton, people knew her.

They knew she had run track since middle school, that she could solve a calculus problem faster than she could parallel park, and that she worked Saturdays because she hated asking her mother for money. At Harrison Ridge, she was simply the new Black girl standing beside the guidance counselor on a cold January morning while somebody tried to remember which locker had been assigned to her.

Maya preferred that.

Her mother, Denise Reynolds, did not.

“You’ve barely mentioned anyone at school,” Denise said one evening while cutting vegetables at their apartment kitchen counter.

“I’ve been there nine days.”

“You can meet a person in nine days.”

“I met teachers.”

“Teachers don’t count.”

“They’re people.”

“They’re employed to talk to you.”

Maya smiled and reached for a carrot.

Denise slapped her hand away.

“Wash your hands.”

“I just did.”

“You touched your phone.”

“Mom.”

“Wash them.”

Maya obeyed.

Their move to Mason Creek, Ohio, had not been optional. Denise had spent nearly two years commuting forty-five minutes each way to her job as an ultrasound technician at St. Anthony Medical Center, and when an apartment finally opened close enough for her to cut the commute in half, she took it.

It meant Maya had to leave her old high school in the middle of senior year.

It also meant Denise would finally get home before eight most nights.

Maya had told her mother the trade was worth it.