We went back to class, and I met my history teacher, Mr. Spencer. Sadly, we were again covering material I already knew. Wishing the teacher had something to share I didn’t already know. So I only half-listened, finding myself oddly curious about what Raven had wanted to say earlier. Should I have let him speak? Have I overreacted? Nope. It was probably something dumb.

The rest of the day crawled by. Surprisingly, the boys in my class behaved like model students. Hardly any whispering or goofing around. Were they always like this? Or were the teachers just really good?

Mr. Spencer seemed strict but fair—still young, and clearly in control. I respected that. Even though a man.

After the regular classes ended early afternoon, Lea accompanied me to the cooking classroom. Turns out, we wouldn’t be in any of the electives together. She’d chosen astrology as her second subject. Newspaper and astrology, an interesting combination. It really was a shame, though. She wasn’t familiar with who attended cooking classes, but she assured me that there were probably lots of girls attending. Just as I suspected. That gave me a tiny bit of hope.

Most of the electives were situated on the ground floor and when we arrived in front of the cooking class, Lea hugged me goodbye. She would join astrology for one and a half hours today, then her school day was officially over. She left, and I stepped inside.

The cooking room was bigger than a standard classroom, and honestly, more intimidating. The blackboard on the wall to the right had a cheerful doodle of a tomato wearing a chef’s hat. Cute.
At the front stood a petite woman with kind, clear eyes and brown hair pulled back into a bun streaked with gray. She radiated warmth like a human teapot. 

My eyes scanned the room. The setup looked semi-professional—rows of large workstations, each with a stove, oven, and a shiny sink. Pantries lined the back wall, labeled with things like flour and spices in swirly handwriting that felt aggressively wholesome.

I was glad that the average number of girls in this class has dramatically shot up, which was most likely due to all three school years coming together for electives. Each table had four students, two girls and two boys, all engrossed in conversations. Except the back-right table, which only had three. One of them, a black haired girl with a pixie cut, was whispering to a lanky guy with glasses. The third student was bent over behind the table, digging in a lower cabinet like it owed him money.

That’s probably where I’d end up.

“Mirona Sawyer?” the small woman said in a quiet voice, placing a gentle hand on my arm.

I quit my observation and looked at her. “Hello,” I said politely.

“I’m Miss Favour. So nice to have you here, sweetheart,” she said, beaming like a grandmother who’d just discovered I baked bread from scratch.

“Thanks. Full disclosure—I’m probably a kitchen hazard,” I said, hoping honesty might protect me from sharp objects.

She just waved a hand. “Then you’ve come to the right place. We all start somewhere. You’ll learn. Head over to the table in the back right—they’ve already been trained a bit, and I’m sure you’ll fit in just perfectly.”

“Alright.” I nodded and walked toward my assigned table, mentally rehearsing something clever to say like “Hello, fellow chefs” or “Don’t let me near anything flammable.”

The pixie cut girl noticed me first. “Hey, new teammate!” She greeted me with a wide smile, making her look a little like the Cheshire Cat.

Next to her the lanky boy with the glasses glanced up from arranging spatulas and gave me a polite nod. “Hi.”
“Who’re you?” The girl inquired without a pause.
“Hey. I’m Miri,” I said with an unsure smile, resting my hands on the counter.

A noise sounded behind the boy with glasses—followed by a quiet yelp. Then the other boy, who had still been bending over this whole time, stood up, scratching his head.

I swear the universe held its breath.

Our eyes locked.

Raven.

His expression morphed from blank to confused to full-on shocked, surely mirroring my own.

“You?” we said in unison.

No. This couldn’t be real. Not him.