Loid didn't think much of Shaw, most days. He was a year above them, quiet, a fixture at the edges of the school that most people didn't pay close attention to — which made it all the more unsettling when Shaw approached him directly, for the first time, on a Tuesday after school.
"Got a minute?" Shaw asked, falling into step beside him near the front gates, his tone casual in a way that didn't quite match the look in his eyes.
"Sure. What's up?"
Shaw studied him for a moment before answering, like he was deciding exactly how to phrase whatever he'd come to say. "You think Charlotte understands you?"
The question caught Loid off guard. "What do you mean?"
"Just what I said. You two are close. Everyone's noticed. I just wonder if you've actually thought about what that means, or if you're just going along with whatever's convenient."
"I don't—" Loid started, genuinely confused now. "What is this about?"
Shaw didn't answer directly. He just shrugged, that same unreadable expression on his face, and said, "Forget it," before walking off, leaving Loid standing there with a strange, uneasy feeling he couldn't quite shake.
He mentioned it to Jay the next day, half-expecting Jay to laugh it off, but Jay's reaction was more serious than expected.
"That's weird," Jay said, frowning. "Shaw doesn't talk to anyone. Why would he suddenly walk up and say something like that to you?"
"I don't know. He wouldn't explain."
Jay didn't have an answer either, and the strangeness of the encounter lingered, unresolved, for the rest of the week — until small, odd rumors started appearing. Nothing dramatic, nothing that could be traced directly back to any one source, just little whispered comments here and there that painted Loid in a slightly unflattering light — that he was two-faced, that he said different things to different people, that he wasn't as genuine as everyone assumed.
None of it was true. None of it was even especially damaging, on its own. But it accumulated, the way small rumors did, until Loid started noticing people looking at him a little differently in the hallway, a few friends who used to say hello now offering only a distracted nod instead.
He didn't understand why Shaw was doing it. He barely knew the guy — had maybe exchanged a dozen words with him total before this week — and couldn't think of a single reason someone would go out of their way to make people question him over nothing.
Charlotte noticed the shift too, faster than Loid expected.
"People are saying weird things about you," she said, finding him at lunch on Thursday, her expression more concerned than curious.
"I know. I don't know where it's coming from."
"I don't believe any of it," Charlotte said, immediately, without a second of hesitation, and something in Loid's chest eased at the certainty in her voice. "For what it's worth."
"Thanks."
"I mean it. Whatever anyone's saying, I know you. This isn't you."
He appreciated that more than he knew how to properly express, sitting there across from her while the low hum of rumor kept circulating somewhere just out of earshot, unfounded and inconvenient and, as far as he could tell, entirely engineered. He still didn't understand Shaw's reasons. But whatever they were, Charlotte's unwavering certainty made the whole uncomfortable situation feel, at least for the moment, a little more bearable.
He tried, over the following days, to figure out what he might have possibly done to earn this kind of quiet, deliberate campaign against him, and came up empty every time. He barely knew Shaw. They'd never had a class together, never crossed paths outside the occasional hallway nod, and Loid genuinely couldn't think of a single interaction between them that would explain this sudden, targeted attention.
Jay had his own theory, offered over lunch one day with more seriousness than his usual jokes.
"Maybe it's not about you at all," Jay said. "Maybe it's about Charlotte."
"What do you mean?"
"I mean, I don't know the guy well, but people talk. There was some story last year — before you two got close — about Shaw and Charlotte. Nothing official, I think, just some vague thing where he liked her and it went nowhere. I don't actually know if it's true. But if it is, and now he's watching the two of you get closer every week..." Jay shrugged. "Might explain the sudden interest in making you look bad."
Loid turned that over slowly, an uncomfortable kind of sense settling into place. He didn't know if Jay's theory was accurate — hadn't heard anything about it himself, and didn't especially want to go digging for confirmation — but it fit, in an unpleasant sort of way, with everything that had happened so far. The pointed question about whether Charlotte "understood him." The rumors, specifically targeted at making Loid look untrustworthy rather than simply unlikeable.
He didn't bring the theory up with Charlotte. It felt like the kind of thing that would only complicate matters further, and he wasn't sure it was even his information to share, if it was true at all. But he found himself watching Shaw a little more carefully after that, in the hallways, in the courtyard, wondering exactly how far this quiet, deliberate campaign was going to go before it ran its course.
He mentioned it, cautiously, to his grandmother that evening, leaving out names, just describing the general shape of the situation — someone spreading small, unfounded rumors for reasons Loid couldn't quite understand. She listened, as she always did, without interrupting, and when he finished, she considered it for a moment before offering her own view.
"People who feel like they've lost something," she said, "sometimes try to take something from someone else instead of dealing with the loss honestly. Doesn't make it right. But it might make it easier to understand, and understanding it might make it easier to not take it personally."
Loid turned that over for a while, lying in bed that night, and thought it probably explained things better than any other theory he'd heard so far. He still didn't know for certain what had happened between Shaw and Charlotte, if anything had happened at all. But if his grandmother's read was right, then whatever Shaw was doing had less to do with Loid specifically and more to do with something he was struggling with on his own, something Loid happened to have gotten unfortunately caught in the middle of.
It didn't make the rumors less irritating. But it did make them feel, somehow, a little less personal, which was its own kind of relief.