Unfortunately, tomorrow usually looked very much like yesterday.
The repeated humiliation began to change things Nora had once taken for granted.
She stopped choosing the shortest route to class because Madison and her friends liked gathering near the main staircase.
She learned which cafeteria tables were likely to be occupied by them.
She began arriving at certain classrooms early, simply because sitting down before Madison entered meant she could avoid walking past her.
Small changes.
Nothing anyone unfamiliar with the situation would immediately recognize as fear.
But together, they made school feel less like a place where Nora belonged and more like somewhere she had to move carefully.
She sometimes wondered how many other students noticed.
They must have seen something.
They saw the sideways looks and heard the comments.
They saw how Madison could turn an ordinary afternoon into something humiliating with a single sentence.
Yet most continued walking.
Nora understood why.
Nobody wanted to become Madison’s next target.
Understanding did not make it hurt less.
At home, things were different.
Nora lived with her mother, who had always been the steady center of her world.
Her mother was not someone who filled every silence with questions.
She had a calm manner and an attentive way of listening that made Nora feel that even small worries deserved consideration.
When Nora was younger, she had believed her mother possessed an answer for almost everything.
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A difficult homework question.
A broken zipper.
A friendship that had gone wrong.
A night when Nora could not sleep because she was worried about an exam.
Her mother rarely claimed that every problem could be fixed immediately.
Instead, she listened.
Sometimes she offered advice.
Sometimes she simply sat beside Nora until the worst of whatever she was feeling had passed.
That ordinary dependability meant more to Nora than she knew how to explain.
She trusted her mother in the instinctive way children sometimes continue trusting a parent even after they are old enough to question everything else.
There were disagreements, of course.
Nora sometimes complained about being asked where she was going or whether she had eaten lunch.
Her mother sometimes reminded her that leaving everything until the last minute was not a clever way to prepare for an examination.
But those small arguments belonged to a familiar, comfortable life.
Nora never imagined that some part of it might be connected to something frightening.
Least of all the little mark above her eyebrow.
The crescent had been there for as long as she could remember.
It sat just above the outer part of her left eyebrow, faint enough to be overlooked at first glance but distinctive once someone noticed it.
As a child, Nora had sometimes stood in front of the bathroom mirror and studied it.
She thought it looked like a tiny moon.
Her mother had never treated it as something shameful.
When Nora asked about it, she would explain that some people were born with marks on their skin and that there was nothing strange about having one.
Nora accepted that answer.
Why wouldn’t she?
Children rarely question ordinary explanations when they come from someone they love.
As she grew older, the mark became something she barely thought about.
She did not cover it with makeup.
She did not take particular pride in it, either.
It was simply part of her face, no more mysterious than the color of her eyes or the natural waves in her hair.
That was why she had never imagined that someone might deliberately try to draw blood from the skin near it.
Or that a stranger might be waiting for proof of its existence.
The morning everything changed began with an ordinary conversation.
Nora was sitting at the kitchen table, trying to finish breakfast while checking the time.
Her mother stood nearby, watching her with familiar concern.
“You’re awfully quiet today.”
Nora looked up.
“I’m always quiet.”
“Not like this.”
Nora lowered her eyes toward her plate.
There were a dozen things she could have said.
She could have told her mother that she dreaded walking through the school doors.
She could have explained how a particular laugh could make her stomach tighten before she even saw the person laughing.
She could have admitted that, for several weeks, she had been choosing where to sit and which corridors to use based on whether Madison might be there.
Instead, she said, “I’m just tired.”
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Her mother was silent for a moment.
“Is something happening at school?”
Nora’s fingers tightened around her fork.
There it was.
The question she had been avoiding.
She could almost hear Madison’s voice already, laughing about the possibility of Nora running home to complain.
It embarrassed her that a girl her own age had acquired so much control over her thoughts.
