Chapter Text
The humidity of the London afternoon clung to Lissy’s skin like a damp shroud, smelling of wet asphalt and the copper tang of adrenaline. In the narrow alleyway behind the prep school’s gymnasium, the world had narrowed down to two things: the sound of her own jagged breathing and the sight of a boy named Julian pinning Jimmy against a brick wall by his silk tie.
Lissy stood ten feet away, her combat boots planted firmly in the oily puddles. Her bubblegum-pink hair was a neon scream against the gray stone of the academy.
"Let him go," Lissy said. Her voice wasn't loud. It was a low, vibrating hum—the sound of a fuse already halfway spent.
Julian, a boy whose family name was carved into the library’s mantle, didn't even look over his shoulder. He just tightened his grip on Jimmy’s collar, making the younger boy gasp. "Go home, Ronan. This is a private conversation about how your brother doesn't belong in the locker room. Or this school."
Jimmy’s eyes, usually dancing with some witty retort, were wide and glassy. He looked small. He looked like the person Lissy had spent her entire life promising to protect, regardless of what their parents' "image" required.
"I said," Lissy repeated, her fingers curling into a white-knuckled fist, "let him go."
When Julian finally turned, a sneer curling his upper lip, he didn't see a girl. He saw an obstacle. He made the mistake of lunging, his hand reaching out to shove her back into the street.
Lissy didn't think. She didn't calculate the cost of the tuition or the inevitable phone call to her father’s legal team. Her body simply took over—a frantic, rhythmic sequence of motion she’d perfected in the basements of punk clubs and the quiet corners of the estate.
She stepped inside his reach, the air whistling past her ear. Her first punch caught him square in the solar plexus, a dull thud that sucked the oxygen out of the alley. As he doubled over, she didn't stop. She couldn't. The "red-out" had already started, a heat behind her eyes that blurred the edges of the world into a smear of crimson and shadow.
She drove her knee upward, connecting with the bridge of his nose with a sickening crack that echoed off the damp brick.
"Lissy! Lissy, stop!"
Jimmy’s voice sounded like it was coming from underwater. She had Julian by the lapels of his expensive blazer now, her knuckles split and stinging, her vision tunneling until all she saw was the fear in the bully's eyes—a mirror of the trauma she’d been carrying for a year.
She raised her fist for one last strike, the safety pins on her jacket jingling like tiny, mocking bells.
"Lissette!"
The sharp, authoritative bark of a faculty member finally broke the spell. Lissy froze, her fist inches from Julian’s shattered face. She blinked, the red haze receding just enough to reveal the wreckage she’d caused. Julian slumped to the ground, a dark smear of blood staining his white collared shirt.
Lissy stood over him, her chest heaving, her pink hair matted to her forehead with sweat. She looked down at her hands. They were shaking—not with fear, but with the terrifying realization that for the first time in her life, she had fought back, and it hadn't made the world feel any safer.
She looked at Jimmy. He was safe, but he was staring at her with a look of profound, quiet heartbreak.
The silence that followed was heavier than the blows. Lissy knew, even before the headmaster reached them, that this was the end of their life in London. The Ronan name wouldn't save her this time; they were going to be sent away, tucked into some coastal corner of the world where her father hoped the salt air would scrub the "punk" out of his daughter.
She wiped her bloody knuckles on her plaid trousers and reached for Jimmy’s hand.
"Come on," she whispered, her voice cracking. "Let’s go pack."