Chapter 2: The Smile He'd Been Saving
He smiled.
Not a nervous smile.
Not the kind he used to wear when he was hoping they'd leave him alone.
A slow, calm, confident smile — the kind that said he already knew exactly how this was going to go.
"Hey," Lucas said.
"Remember me?"
They looked at him the way you look at a stranger.
Blank.
Slightly confused.
One of the boys — Tyler, the loudest one — laughed a little.
"Nah, man.
Should we?"
"Yeah," Lucas said.
"You should."
He told them his name.
The laughter stopped.
Tyler's face went through about five different expressions in three seconds.
The girl — the one who had laughed at Lucas's clothes and told him he wasn't worth her time — went completely still.
"That's…
that's not possible," she said quietly.
"It's very possible," Lucas said.
"I just stopped waiting for your approval to become it."
He didn't shout.
He didn't threaten.
He just stood there, calm and unhurried, while every single one of them tried to figure out what to say.
Then one of the other boys said something under his breath — something I won't repeat — and everything changed.
Because someone else had been standing nearby the whole time, watching.
And that person had heard every word.
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May you like
What happened next left the entire hallway silent — and Lucas wasn't the one who caused it.
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