Day 1: Rachel (Parting and Meeting)

You don't knock anymore.

Rebekah’s house has become part of your weekly rhythm—just like the show itself, just like the game. Tuesdays are supposed to mean coffee that’s too strong, toast that’s too burnt, and a strategy session conducted at a breakneck pace while Rebekah paces barefoot in a hoodie, explaining how you’re going to corrupt someone without looking like a dick. It’s a little twisted how much you’ve come to enjoy it.

But today... the house feels wrong before you’ve even closed the door behind you. There’s no smell of toast, no singed peanut butter. No laptop hum, no Rebekah yelling at Jada from across the house for drinking the last of the oat milk. Just a quiet, slow-burning kind of silence.

Jada’s on the couch, exactly where you expect her to be—blanketed legs tucked under her, earbuds in, eyes fixed on a silent stream playing out some kind of top-down dungeon crawler. She acknowledges you with a soft nod and then slides her focus back to the screen, disappearing into the digital fog like she always does.

You glance toward the kitchen. It’s empty. No coffee mugs. No open jam jar. Not even the crumbs of hurried toast. That’s when you know something’s off.

You find Rebekah in her bedroom, kneeling by the bed with a duffel bag wide open on the floor and compression sleeves half-pulled up her arms. She’s not hunched over a laptop. She’s not sketching strategy on her whiteboard or shouting into a headset. She’s zipping up the duffel bag, foot braced on the frame, her hair swinging low over one shoulder as she jerks the zipper closed.

“No breakfast?” you ask, confused by the change.

She doesn’t look up. “Not that kind of Tuesday.”

The tone is flat. Final.

You step into the room, lean against the wall. “What’s going on?”

“I’m leaving.”

You blink. “For...?”

She stands, slinging the duffel onto the bed and cinching the top closed with quick, practiced fingers. “Regionals.”

It takes a second to click. Not because you don’t recognize the word—but because you weren’t expecting her to say it. Not now. Not like this.

“Flourescence?” you ask, remembering the game she’d been conquering on the video you’d found of her back when she was just another Lady of the College Spread deck.

She nods once. Sharp, clipped.

Your remember the title. Controlling the Center Line. The Rebekah in that clip—ruthless, unreadable, joyless in the way only someone entirely focused on winning can be—felt like a different person. Not the girl who’s been ordering you around all semester in oversized shirts and bitter sarcasm.

"You never said you were competing.”

“I wasn’t. Until last night.”

She hoists the duffel off the bed and sets it upright by the wall.

“I was going to stay,” she says, voice a little lower now. “Skip Regionals. Babysit you. Make sure you didn’t try to rehabilitate another tragic backstory with your dick.”

You snort. “WHICH challenge are you talking about?”

“Take your pick.” She turns toward you now, finally facing you fully. Her expression is tight—but there’s a flicker of something behind it. Regret? No. Not quite. Something quieter.

“I was going to stay,” she repeats. “Then you pulled Rachel.”

You roll your eyes. “She’s not that bad.”

“She’s a four,” Rebekah says. “And you’re holding a Kiss card. This week’s a popcorn filler episode. No stakes. She doesn’t even fit your hand. You can handle it. And if you can’t? Well, a fair here doesn’t matter.”

You fold your arms. “So now you trust me?”

“Hell no.” She snorts. “But I trust the limits of Rachel Lin’s libido. And I trust that even you won’t find a way to turn kissing a soft-spoken art student into a full-blown self-esteem crisis.”

You open your mouth. She lifts a hand before you can speak.

“Use the kiss. Smile. Let her sketch your eyelashes or whatever. Make the audience think you’re growing.” She steps forward and jabs a finger into your sternum—not hard, but with intent. “I’m going to Regionals. We win, I qualify for Nationals over break. That’s the goal. That’s my game.”

You search her face. There’s no teasing. No false bravado. This matters to her. Maybe more than you realized.

“I didn’t think you were still playing,” you say.

She shrugs. “Honestly, I’m lucky to get the chance. I haven’t been practicing with the team lately. They had to replace me but Bobby dropped out. He was my understudy. Now I’m back in. Sometimes you get a window, and if you don’t jump through it, someone else slams it shut on your fingers.”

The duffel bag lands by the door with a muffled thud. Rebekah adjusts the strap, looks like she’s ready to walk out the door and not look back.

Then she hesitates. “I didn’t want to leave you alone,” she says. It’s almost a whisper. “But I think maybe you need to be. Just for a bit.”

You nod. She reaches for the door and opens it. Then: “Don’t fall in love.”

You smile. “Why not?”

She throws you a smirk over her shoulder. “Because I won’t be here to talk you out of it.”

And with that, she’s gone.

After Rebekah leaves, the house feels like a deflated balloon — all pressure gone, no bounce left. So you walk. The campus has that just-past-morning stillness, when the late risers are crawling toward their first classes and the overachievers have already conquered their to-do lists. The air smells like cut grass and distant bagels. It feels like the first day of a new story arc.

You drift without meaning to, feet finding old grooves until you cross the quad. And that’s when you spot her. Rachel Lin. Your target. She’s huddled under a linden tree, perched on a low fold-out camp chair like she’s trying to vanish into the fabric. Her hoodie sleeves are bunched to her elbows. One foot is tucked up under her, the other bare and flexing against the grass. There’s a sketchpad on her lap, a travel mug wedged between her knees, and a mechanical pencil twitching in her fingers like a nervous tick.

She’s drawing. From this angle, it’s hard to see what. But then you catch a glimpse of the page as the breeze ruffles it. Feet. Very detailed anatomically precise feet. There’s bone and gesture and story in the lines. It’s like she’s trying to write an essay through ankles.

You watch for a moment too long and then realize how that looks. You clear your throat gently.

Rachel startles like a cartoon cat — shoulders jumping, pencil flying, sketchpad nearly tumbling. She scrambles to catch it, nearly spills her drink, and ends up blinking at you over her glasses with wide, mortified eyes.

“Oh—uh—hi?” she says, voice small, uncertain.

You raise both hands slightly. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to spook you.”

She adjusts her glasses, clearly still deciding if you’re a threat or just deeply weird.

“I was just passing through,” you add, “but... you looked really focused. Didn’t want to interrupt.”

“Oh. Um.” She looks down at her sketchbook like it betrayed her. “I guess I was.”

You nod toward the page. “That’s some intense foot drawing.”

Her nose wrinkles faintly, but not in a bad way. “They’re good models. Feet. They don’t lie.”

You blink. “Come again?”

Rachel hesitates, then taps her pencil against the paper. “People fake expressions,” she says. “Smiles, surprise, attraction. They’re all practiced. But feet? They always tell the truth. You can tell who someone likes by where their toes point. If they’re nervous, they’ll bounce. If they’re scared, they freeze.”

She pauses, then adds, a little sheepish: “It’s probably weird.”

You shake your head. “No, it’s... kind of brilliant, actually.”

That catches her off-guard. She tucks her chin a little lower, and you notice the faintest hint of a blush dusting her cheekbones. “I just think visual language matters,” she murmurs. “The small stuff. It tells stories most people don’t read.”

You glance around the quad—students walking, lounging, passing by. None of them noticing her. And yet, she’s seeing them all.

“You mind if I sit?”

She blinks, surprised again, like that’s not a thing strangers usually ask. Then she glances at the grass beside her chair and nods. “I guess.”

You lower yourself into the grass, folding your legs lazily. You let the silence linger. Rachel tucks her foot back beneath her and returns her pencil to the page. She doesn’t ask who you are, what your major is, or why you approached her. Maybe she doesn’t want to know. Or maybe, you suspect, she prefers people when they don’t try to sell themselves.

For now, you just sit. Let her sketch. Let her draw you in.

You watch the rhythm of her hand more than the pencil itself. She draws fast in short bursts, then slows down as if second-guessing her own lines. There’s a hesitancy to her precision—like she’s trying to make something feel alive without letting it slip out of control.

After a while, you glance at the sketchbook again. She’s not drawing feet anymore. She’s drawing your hands.

“Hope you don’t mind,” she says, voice barely above the ambient rustle of breeze. “They’re... interesting.”

You glance at them. “I’ve never thought of my hands as interesting.”

She shrugs. “They have opinions.”

You blink, wondering what other strange ideas she has about body parts. “My hands have opinions?”

“Yeah.” She taps the eraser against the paper. “You hold your fingers loose, but your thumb rests really tight against your palm. It’s like... you’re trying to seem relaxed, but something underneath isn’t.”

You stare at her, unsure whether to laugh or be impressed. You go with both. “You’re kind of intense,” you say.

“I know.”

She doesn’t sound embarrassed. Just... stating a fact.

A few more quiet moments pass, her pencil whispering against the paper. Then she pauses, frowns slightly, and tilts the sketchpad away from you.

You raise an eyebrow. “Did I do something wrong?”

“It’s not that,” she says. “I just don’t usually draw people I’ve talked to.”

“Why not?”

“Because they become real. It’s harder to get it right.”

You nod slowly. You get that, in a way. Some people are easier to observe from a distance. Others refuse to stay still once you’ve seen them properly.

Rachel sighs, flips to a blank page, and doodles a tiny bear with a bandage on its face.

“Sorry,” she says. “That got weird.”

“No,” you say honestly. “It got honest.”

She glances at you—quickly, sidelong—then back to her page. You check the time. You’ve been sitting there for almost half an hour. No script. No strategy. Just a girl, a pencil, and your supposedly opinionated hands.

You stand slowly, brushing a bit of grass from your jeans. “Thanks for letting me crash your sketch session.”

Rachel looks up. “Thanks for not trying to see the page when I didn’t want you to.”

You grin. “Guess I’ll have to earn that privilege.”

She shrugs. “Maybe.”

You’re halfway across the quad when you glance back. She’s sketching again. But now she’s smiling. She doesn’t know who you are. Not yet. But she’s already sketching the truth of you.