She pulled her cardigan back over her shoulder.
The vice principal noticed the gesture, and something like regret passed across his expression.
“Are you all right?” he asked.
Nora stared at him.
The question seemed almost absurd after what had just happened.
“My head hurts.”
He blinked, as though those words had brought him back to the immediate situation.
“Of course.
We need to get you some help.”
But he still did not move.
Nora looked toward the door.
For the first time since Madison entered the restroom, an adult was standing between her and the hallway.
She should have felt safer.
Part of her did.
Another part was increasingly alarmed by the way he continued staring at her face.
She thought of the two messages.
Blood.
The same mark.
The vice principal’s reaction.
The pieces seemed connected.
But she could not understand how.
“Sir,” she said quietly, “do you know something about me?”
His expression changed again.
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“Why would you ask that?”
Nora hesitated.
She wanted to explain the messages.
She wanted to tell him that Madison had received something strange on her phone.
But she was frightened of losing control of the only information she possessed.
She glanced at Madison.
The blonde girl’s fingers tightened around the device.
The vice principal followed Nora’s gaze.
For an instant, his attention rested on the phone.
Then he looked back at her.
“Nora,” he said carefully.
Hearing her name in his uncertain voice unsettled her.
She had heard him address students hundreds of times.
He was usually direct.
He asked clear questions and expected clear answers.
Now he seemed reluctant to speak.
“How do you know about my birthmark?”
Nora asked.
The question came before she could stop herself.
The vice principal’s eyes widened.
Madison shifted beside the wall.
Nora noticed both reactions.
Her chest tightened.
“I mean…”
She swallowed.
“You keep looking at it.”
He removed his glasses.
For a moment, he simply held them.
Nora could see how unsettled he was without the familiar frames resting on his face.
He looked older.
More vulnerable.
Less like the stern administrator she had known from a distance.
“I didn’t mean to frighten you,” he said.
But the words did nothing to ease her fear.
“Then why are you acting like that?”
He looked at the floor.
His silence seemed to stretch.
Nora knew he had come into the restroom to investigate a serious incident.
A student had been hurt.
The mirror was damaged.
There should have been questions, instructions, and a practical response.
Instead, he seemed caught in a memory he could not escape.
Nora wanted to understand that memory.
She did not know why.
But something in his face told her it mattered.
For most of her life, Nora had believed that adults knew more than children because they had lived longer.
When she was little, that difference had felt reassuring.
Adults understood what to do when something broke.
They knew which number to call when there was an emergency.
They could recognize a serious problem before a child understood why it mattered.
As Nora grew older, she realized that adults were not always certain.
They made mistakes.
They worried.
They sometimes avoided difficult conversations.
Still, she had never imagined seeing a school administrator look at her as though the sight of her face had undone everything he believed.
The vice principal replaced his glasses.
Then he looked toward Madison.
“Did you do this?”
His voice had recovered some of its authority.
Madison lifted her chin.
“She pushed me.”
“That isn’t what I asked.”
Nora watched Madison’s expression tighten.
The vice principal looked toward the broken mirror.
Then back at Nora’s injured forehead.
His face hardened for a moment.
Whatever had frightened him, he seemed to understand that something unacceptable had happened.
But when Nora moved a loose strand of hair away from her eyebrow, he faltered again.
The crescent was visible.
Small.
Faint.
Unmistakable.
His eyes fixed on it.
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Nora suddenly remembered the second message.
DOES SHE HAVE THE SAME MARK?
She felt cold.
What if it was not simply a coincidence?
What if Madison’s phone and the vice principal’s reaction were somehow connected to the same person?
She did not know who that person could be.
But she knew one thing.
The vice principal had recognized her birthmark.
Not merely noticed it.
Recognized it.
“Sir,” she whispered.
He turned toward her.
“Who else has this mark?”
The question seemed to strike him.
His shoulders stiffened.
Nora could see him struggling with something.
He opened his mouth.
Then stopped.
Madison looked toward the restroom door again.
Nora barely noticed.
All her attention was focused on the older man.
“Please,” she said.
“You looked at me like you’d seen something impossible.”
