Min-seo Park found the folded note inside her locker before first bell. She knew the handwriting. Her old best friend had perfected those loops in sixth grade, sitting cross-legged on Min-seo's bedroom floor. Now that same girl ran the senior class like a small country, and she had decided Min-seo's crew of outcasts was getting too loud in the halls. Min-seo opened the paper one fold at a time. The top read like a bored test-day complaint. The bottom read: ask her who she really watches in the locker room. She closed the note before anyone behind her could see. By lunch the rumor had teeth. A boy she had spent months pulling out of the dumpster corner would not meet her eyes. Two of her crew sat farther down the bench than usual. Someone had slid a torn diary page onto the cafeteria table, Korean handwriting slashed through with highlighter, her name circled in red, Haet-bit Lee's name beside it. Min-seo had never written it. The forgery was clumsy. It did not matter. Her people were reading it like scripture, and she could see the math happening behind their faces. If Min-seo lied about this, she lied about them. Haet-bit Lee sat down across from her with a carton of milk. New girl, three weeks in, hoop earrings, the kind of smile that had already cost other people something. She slid the diary page toward Min-seo with one finger. "This you?" Min-seo's mouth went dry. She thought about the crew watching. She thought about her sister, who still believed Min-seo had simply woken up one day and become someone strong. She thought about the boy by the dumpsters and the sound a tray makes on pavement. She could deny it loud. She could keep her circle. She could keep the closet door shut and the queen bee would win anyway, because a denial that loud would read as panic. "The handwriting's not mine," Min-seo said. "The watching part is." Haet-bit blinked once. "Okay." She tore the page in half and dropped it in her tray. Down the bench, the boy from the dumpsters looked up. He had heard. So had the two who had drifted. Min-seo waited for the bench to empty. It did not. One girl moved a seat closer. Another asked if she was going to eat her fries. The queen bee watched from across the cafeteria, and Min-seo watched back, and they both understood the rumor had landed and failed to detonate. Min-seo had kept her crew. She had also, in front of all of them, handed the queen bee a true thing to work with next time. Haet-bit was still sitting across from her, chewing slowly, already deciding something Min-seo could not read.