"Gossip spread like fire."
By Monday morning, Yale felt different.
Not visibly. Students still hurried across Old Campus with coffee cups and too many layers, their breath fogging in the cold February air. The Gothic towers still loomed over the quad, stone and iron indifferent to whatever drama unfolded below. But the air carried something sharp, electric.
Silver felt it before she heard it.
Whispers turned heads when she passed through the Sterling Library archway. Conversations dipped when she walked into Commons dining hall. Her name drifted through sentences she wasn't meant to hear, catching on the edges of other people's gossip like static.
Except this time, it wasn't cruel.
It was curious.
"Did you hear what happened at Ingalls?" one guy whispered to his friend near the cereal station, too loudly. "Apparently Carroway went off on her. Total meltdown."
"She just skated away," someone else added from a nearby table. "Didn't even respond. Kind of iconic."
