Yeah, that was what everyone said, wasn't it? They don't deserve you, you're better than them. Something she'd heard from Rosario more than once, usually about boyfriends who didn't stay the distance (and once, when she was sixteen, about her mom, but that was a whole different kind of complicated.)
Lyra knew what Rosario meant, and she wasn't about to argue it, but it wasn't true, was it? Cuz people didn't just freeze out people who were better than them. People were desperate to be closer to people who were better than them, look at Archer, right? Everyone was desperate to be Archer's friend cos he had everything, cos he was everything. It wasn't a judgement, it was just how people were. Lyra'd felt it herself. Only Rosario and Avery seemed immune from the get-go.
It all hurt especially cuz of the couple of moments at the party when she'd really thought people had been glad to see her. The moment where she was pulled into the girl's room upstairs cuz they needed her opinion in particular, even the way Archer had asked her for advice bout something only she could give. Just a couple moments when she felt like she was needed round there cuz she was unique. But apparently too unique.
And she didn't wanna tell Avery that part of Hailey's objection was cuz his view that all sorority girls were part of a breeding programme had the girls all talking bout how he was a pervert, and how Xander had clearly been making his objection to his little brother known, adding fuel to the fire. And she definitely wasn't gonna mention how Hailey had touched her own face to inquire with a silent kind of worry bout the bruise on Lyra's and clearly hadn't believed a word of it when Lyra said she ran into a door, which Lyra couldn't even blame her for, since it even sounded like a lie, but Lyra worried about the messages Hailey was gonna take back to the others about Avery based on that.
"Be way worse if you had gone public with what we saw," she pointed out to Avery, looking on the bright side, sorta