Page 7 of A Deal with my Bully Roommate

She looks up at me, her blue eyes glassy with unshed tears, but she turns her face away before I can see it. “I don’t need a pep talk from you, Avery.”

She brushes past me, getting into the room, trying to slip her mask back on. But it’s too late. I know how affected she is by her dad’s disapproval. Under all the snark and meanness, she’s just a nineteen-year-old girl who wants to be seen.

Harper goes back to organizing my notes, turning her back to me like the conversation never happened.

And for the first time, I don't want to make her crawl. I want to pull her out of the wreckage.

The room is silent for the rest of the evening, but it’s a vibrating, restless kind of quiet. Harper is hunched over her desk, her back a rigid line of faux productivity. I know she isn't actually reading the Constitutional Law brief in front of her; she’s been on the same page for twenty minutes.

She’s trying to rebuild her walls, stone by stone, but I can still see the tremor in her hands every time she reaches for a highlighter.

"I'm going to the communal kitchen to grab a snack," I announce, mostly to give her a moment to breathe without me watching her.

"Fine," she mutters, not turning around.

When I return ten minutes later, the room is empty. The bathroom door is shut, and I can hear the shower running—a long, steaming retreat where she can finally let the mask drop. I move toward my bed, but my foot kicks something solid tucked just under the edge of Harper’s duvet.

It’s a leather-bound book. It must have slid out when she was frantically pulling her laptop earlier.

I know I should leave it. I know that after the conversation in the hallway, I owe her some semblance of privacy. But the "detective" in me—the girl who survived high school by staying three steps ahead of everyone—can’t resist. I pick it up, expecting a diary filled with more "Price family" neuroses.

I open it, and my breath hitches.

It’s not a diary. It’s a sketchbook. And it isn't filled with legal diagrams or architecture.

It’s filled with me.

I flip through the pages, my heart climbing into my throat. There’s a charcoal sketch of me in the library, a lock of hair falling over my face. There’s a quick pencil drawing of me laughing at the sitcom, my head tilted back. On the next page, a more detailed study of my eyes, capturing a look of frustration I didn't even know I wore. The drawings are raw, intimate, and—most shockingly—beautiful. They aren't the work of a hater. They are the work of someone who has spent a long time observing every curve of my face with something bordering on reverence.

The shower stops.

I should put it back. I should run. But I’m frozen, staring at a page where she’s captured the exact moment I looked at her in the cafeteria. Underneath the sketch, in tiny, cramped handwriting, are the words: How can something that hurts so much look so bright?

The bathroom door creaks open. Harper walks out, enveloped in a cloud of steam and wearing a silk robe. She stops dead the second she sees the book in my hands.

"Give it back," she says. Her voice isn't the "Queen Bee" snarl. It’s a low, panicked plea.

I don't. I stand up, the book open to the portrait of me laughing. "Harper... what is this? Why have you been drawing me for years?"

"It’s nothing! It’s just... art practice," she says, lunging for the book.

I step back, holding it out of her reach. "You don't draw a 'nobody' with this much detail. You don't spend hours shading the way someone’s eyes look when they’re angry unless you’re obsessed with them. Are you stalking me?"

“No.” Harper looks scared, her blue eyes wavering. It’s like I’ve exposed a part of her that she doesn’t want seen.

“Then, what?” I look at her, the pieces of the last five days—the defense in the cafeteria, the "sitcom" laughter, the way she looked at my mouth—finally clicking into a terrifying, gorgeous picture. “Don’t tell me you…like me?”

It’s so improbable that I want to laugh as soon as the words are out of my mouth. Harper is my bully. My nightmare. My rival. She spent years hating me, making me high school life hell. Besides, Harper doesn’t even like girls. She’s as straight as a ruler.

But when I look up, my doubts become more pronounced. Harper stops moving. She stands in the center of the room, her damp hair clinging to her neck, her chest heaving. The silence is thick enough to drown in. Her silence, her weird gesture makes me question every action of hers.

“You…do like me.” I exhale, not able to believe this. “Since when? I thought you only liked boys.”

When Harper looks up, her eyes flash hurt. “I don’t like boys at all,” she admits. “I…” She blushes, turning her face away. A few days ago, I’d feel so much satisfaction at watching her squirm, but right now, I feel awful.

“But…you dated all those boys in school. I thought you hated me because I was a lesbian, and you thought I was weak and abnormal.”

“I—” She chokes on her voice, and more facts click into place. Oh god, I was so stupid. I never thought Harper Price was a lesbian. Never thought she did all this because she hated me for having what she couldn’t—the freedom to be herself.