He took one look at his classroom—at the girls still locked onto me like I was the only screen in a movie theater; at Lea, practically vibrating with jealous rage; at Madison, glowing with post-victory smugness; at Tommy, the reluctant millionaire; at Jack, the fallen king; at Connor, the war correspondent documenting the whole damn thing—and sighed.

Deep. Heavy. The sigh of a man who just realized his carefully planned lesson was fucked before he'd even uncapped his marker.

"Alright," he said, setting his satchel down with the calm of a bomb disposal expert. "Let's try to maintain some semblance of order. I know this morning was… eventful. But we are here to learn, not—" He gestured vaguely at the beautiful, chaotic mess. "—whatever hormonal Chernobyl is happening right now."

Nobody moved. The girls were still trying to reboot their brains. Lea was still calculating trajectories for office supplies to be thrown at Madison's head.

Mr. Patterson looked at me. Really looked at me, trying to solve the equation of this chaos. Trying to understand why the forgotten student was suddenly the epicenter of a classroom-wide meltdown.

But he couldn't see it. All he saw was Peter Carter. Unremarkable. Inoffensive.

Definitely not the cause of all this.

The disconnect between what his male brain was trying to process and the five-alarm emotional fire his classroom had become must have been giving him an aneurysm.

He sighed again, the sound of a man surrendering to chaos. "Mr. Carter. Welcome back. I trust you have a note for your… extended vacation?"

"Yes, sir. Mrs. Henderson is holding it hostage."

"Of course she is." He turned to the board, seeking refuge in science. "Textbooks to page 247. Let's pretend to be students."

The sound of pages turning was a pathetic attempt to reset the room to normal.

It wasn't working.

Jessica something—blonde, volleyball, desperately trying not to look at me—kept angling her body like a flower to the sun. Her cheeks were permanently flushed, her breathing a mess. She'd drift closer, then jerk herself back, the internal war playing out in real-time.

Behind me, Tommy was enduring his own personal hell. His new sycophant fan club was pestering him with "brilliant" startup ideas and begging for free software. He looked like a saint being martyred by idiots.

In the back, Jack Morrison was a broken statue, staring at his textbook without actually reading the words.

His entire social reality had been nuked from orbit that morning, and his brain was still just a smoking crater, trying to comprehend that I, Peter Carter, the kid he'd used for target practice, was now the reason his world no longer made sense.

Connor's phone was definitely live. I could picture the chat exploding: OMG THE TENSION, LEA IS GONNA MURDER SOMEONE, #PeterPrime is trending.

Speaking of, Lea hadn't even cracked her textbook. She was just staring at me, that volatile cocktail of raw desire and pure hatred swirling in her eyes. Her new, quiet friend whispered something to her—too low for me to catch—and Lea's expression sharpened.

It became less hormonal, more… tactical.

Then the quiet girl's eyes met mine. That manic, razor-sharp flash again. Brighter this time. Unmistakable. A predator marking its target.

Then she looked down and became a ghost again. Just another background character.

But I'd seen it.

Madison caught my eye and mouthed, Lea's gonna have a stroke.

I grinned, just for her.

She beamed back and mouthed, Good.

"Mr. Carter," Mr. Patterson's voice sliced through the room. "Since you've graced us with your presence after a week-long sabbatical, perhaps you'd like to demonstrate your grasp of angular momentum? The board, if you please."

He'd written a beast of a problem on the board. Multiple steps, integration required—the kind of thing designed to make students cry.

Every eye swiveled to me. The girls, leaning forward with that inexplicable, biological need to watch me succeed. The boys, curious to see the slacker get his comeuppance. And Lea… oh, Lea's face was a picture of pure, unadulterated glee. She thought I was toast. She thought I'd been too busy screwing around to keep up.

I stood, strolled to the board, and took the marker from his hand.

And I solved it. In nine seconds, flat.

Not showing off. With the System cranking my intellect, the problem was child's play. The physics were intuitive, the math automatic. I wrote out the steps, clean and efficient, and circled the answer with a flourish.

Silence.

Mr. Patterson stared at the board, then at me, his brain visibly buffering. "That's… correct. Flawlessly correct." He blinked. "When, exactly, did you learn to do that?"

"I've been keeping up," I said, and walked back to my seat.

Lea's victory dance had curdled into an internal nuclear meltdown. She'd been banking on my humiliation. Instead, I'd just casually demonstrated that I'd lapped her. Again. Her hands clenched into white-knuckled fists of sheer rage.

And the quiet girl next to her smiled. Just a tiny, knowing little curve of the lips. She had enjoyed watching Lea's implosion. Enjoyed the jealousy and the helpless, consuming fury.

What the actual fuck was her deal?

Madison was convulsing with suppressed laughter, her whole body shaking as the magnificent drama unfolded.

Mr. Patterson, a brave man, tried to return to his lesson, but it was too late. This classroom was no longer a place of learning. It was an emotional wasteland.

He was lecturing to a room where half the students were having involuntary existential crises, where social dynasties were crumbling in real-time, and where I was, undeniably, the sun holding it all together.

The bell would ring. We'd move on.

But Room 304 was permanently scarred.

Because I'd walked in. Because my aura had detonated like a hormone bomb. Because Madison had drawn her lines in the sand. Because Lea's mask of superiority had just been atomized for everyone to see.

And because, somewhere in the beautiful wreckage, a quiet girl with a forgettable face was watching it all with hungry, manic eyes that promised more chaos to come.

I played my part. Took notes. Nodded along. The perfect student.

Inside, I was the Pope of the Liberation Church, attending high school.

What could possibly go wrong?

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