Alarm buzzes

Emma’s alarm went off at 6:00, but she’d already been awake for twelve minutes. She’d set out her clothes the night before: white blouse, new grey suit pants with a crisp crease, white sneakers cleaned with a magic-eraser wipe because she refused to show up to finals looking smudged. Her planner lay open on her nightstand, color-coded boxes marking out her day in blue, pink, red, green.

Hair: high ponytail, smooth, bobby-pinned.
Concealer: under eyes, light touch.
Coffee: French press, pre-measured.
Run: If she finished calculus in time.

Downstairs, she poured the coffee, made toast, and slid extra slices onto a plate for John. The universe wouldn’t spontaneously collapse if she didn’t, but she didn’t want to hear him whining through a hangover. And secretly, she liked the morning banter. It was the one part of the day where she felt fast enough to match him, toe-to-toe.

She was halfway through her coffee when she felt a shift behind her—the static awareness that John had entered the room.He looked terrible. Shirt wrinkled, one side of his hair flattened like he’d slept on a construction site, eyes hazy with last night’s bad decisions. He moved like a human sigh. He poured himself coffee without looking and drank it like it could punish him. They traded their usual morning jabs, light and sharp and familiar. Twin energy. Good energy, mostly.

Then she went to the hallway mirror, the one she always checked before leaving. She straightened her blouse, smoothed the crease in her pants, adjusted the ponytail even though it didn’t need adjusting. Tiny ritual movements. Resetting the system. That was when she felt him looking.

Not at her face. Lower.
A thread of confusion pulled tight through her chest. She followed his gaze down and—
Ah. The panty lines.

Her new suit pants were a thinner fabric than she’d realized. Crisp, flattering, tailored. And apparently broadcasting the outline of her underwear to the kitchen like a PSA. She hadn’t thought about it—not once. Why would she? She always wore simple cotton briefs. Comfortable. Practical. Invisible—until today, evidently.

John snorted. “Wow. Those are some spectacular panty lines. What are you even wearing under there, grandma’s old underwear?”

Heat bloomed along her neck, too fast to block. She kept her shoulders still, refused to flinch.
“Shut up,” she said evenly. Nearly evenly.
John grinned with all the smugness of someone who’d just discovered fire.
“I’m serious. You get ready like you're starring in a toothpaste commercial, and then you ruin it with granny panties? Doesn’t really fit the image.”
Her grip on her phone tightened. “Nobody cares about that.”

“Umm actually... all hot girls wear thongs.”

Her chest buzzed—like pressure under her ribs, sharp and humiliating.

“You are such a fucking creep,” she snapped. Her voice cracked at the very edge. That was the worst part. Not the underwear. Not John seeing it. The crack.
He grinned wider. She **** her breathing even, refusing to give him more than that single flicker. She slipped her planner back into her bag, checked her reflection one last time (ignoring the lines), and left the house with focus restored. Mostly restored.
The phrase followed her anyway:

Umm actually... all hot girls wear thongs.

It wasn’t jealousy, or insecurity, or even John’s stupid horny-boy opinion. It was the fact he’d said it so casually, like a rule she’d somehow missed. For a second she wondered if everyone noticed her panty lines. If all her clothes from the last years had outlined something she’d never thought to see.

It wasn’t jealousy, or insecurity, or even John’s stupid horny-boy opinion. It was the fact he’d said it so casually, like a rule she’d somehow missed. For a second she wondered if everyone noticed her panty lines. If all her clothes from the last years had outlined something she’d never thought to see.
Ridiculous. Pointless. Not useful.
She buried the thought and followed her plan. At school she went straight to her locker, refusing to look around. Better to get into exam-mode than linger in the hallway social swamp. She was almost at her row when she heard Nate’s voice, loud as usual.

“Ask him about last night! Puppy mode!”

She rolled her eyes as she spun her lock. Of course Nate would drag it out. Aline—no, Alina, she corrected herself, Alina—joined them, giving Emma a tiny look of recognition before turning back to harass her brother.

Emma shut her locker just in time to hear John insist:

“It wasn’t like that.”

Then Nate prodded. Alina added a jab. And John—idiot—blurted:

“Umm... actually, girls our age are way hornier than guys. They just hide it better.”

Emma didn’t look over. She didn’t need to. The sentence hit with the same strange, internal click as the one that morning. Not a flare of embarrassment. Something more subtle. A warmth that ignited and sank low before she stamped it flat.

She walked to class without reacting. No reason to give the boys anything.

Ms. Lindstrom’s classroom smelled like pencil shavings and stale coffee. The blinds were open. Dust drifted in thin beams of sunlight. Emma took her seat by the window and set two sharpened pencils parallel to each other, her ID aligned perfectly above them.

The test packet arrived; her name went at the top, steady and clean.

Causes, the prompt said.

She had them ready.

France. Grain. Tax. Wages. Rumor outrunning crown. A nation like a matchstick.

Her thesis locked into place with the first line.

Her hand moved quickly, not rushed. Muscle-memory met planning. The outline unspooled as if she’d practiced it on the walk to school.

Then, out of nowhere, her body reminded her of the underwear.

The cut of the cotton. The seams. The lines pressed against her skin, sharper now that she was aware of them. She shifted slightly on the chair. The fabric tugged wrong. Too thick. Too childlike.

She tried to dismiss the thought—it was nothing, a non-issue—but the warmth under her skin flickered again, faint but insistent, like a pulse against the waistband.

She crossed her ankles under the seat, adjusted, and focused on grain prices.

Around her, the room fell into exam silence.

The girl by the far window had her lip caught between her teeth as she wrote, then smoothed it with her thumb. Another girl clenched her thighs once, subtly, rhythmically, while reaching for more paper. Emma didn’t know why that detail stuck out, but it did.

She wrote through it, pressed on. Paragraph by paragraph. She found her transitions lined up perfectly; the argument was tight, her evidence precise. The warm flicker under her skin didn’t change that. It couldn’t. It didn’t get to.

John was somewhere behind her, two rows over. She didn’t need to look to know his posture. She could picture the slump of his shoulders when he concentrated. The crooked tilt of his pencil grip. The faint scrape of his eraser. She didn’t check. She wasn’t going to.

“Two minutes,” Ms. Lindstrom said.

Emma reviewed each prompt. She fixed a clause order with a small arrow. The correction settled something in her chest.

When the bell rang, the room exhaled. Students pushed back chairs and dragged themselves to the front. A few friends wished her happy birthday (“Oh my god, eighteen! Finally!”), and she nodded politely. She liked birthdays. She did not like fuss.

In the hallway, she moved with the crowd, returning to her locker. The mirror on the inside of her locker door caught her face cleanly. Pale. Calm. Focused.

She tucked one stray hair behind her ear.

The panty lines tugged uncomfortably again.

She did not react.

She closed the locker softly, as if nothing in her morning had shifted at all.