The laughter spread. Open, mocking, fearless. They had no idea what they were laughing at. No idea whose phone lay broken on the ground.
I stared at the shattered screen. My reflection looked back at me in fragments.
"I hope you'll still be laughing this hard in a few minutes," I said.
The laughter didn't stop. But something in the courtyard shifted. A change in pressure, like the air before a storm, that only I seemed to feel.
I turned to the teacher. She stood by the academy doors with her arms crossed, watching the destruction of my car and my belongings with the satisfied expression of someone who'd chosen the winning side.
"You knew my daughter was being bullied at school, didn't you?"
The teacher looked at me. Not with guilt. Not with shame. With disdain, open and absolute, the kind reserved for people she considered beneath the effort of pretending.
"So what if I did?"
She said it loudly enough for everyone to hear. Loudly enough for Luna to smile.
"A bastard daughter of a worthless mistress is nothing but trash." The teacher's lip curled. "Massimo was just taking out the trash. What's the issue?"
The words settled over the courtyard like ash.