The hairs on the back of my neck prickle while the sound of a car door closing nearby catches my attention. My gut tightens into the same icy knot as before. Something is wrong.
But Declan laughs, that big, easy sound that always chases away the shadows. He’s already retelling the story of our geometry teacher tripping over the projector cord, and his laughter is an anchor to the night we were supposed to have. I let it pull me along, chasing away the silence.
“He straight up gaslit the whole class,” I say, my grin returning.
Declan huffs a laugh, then stumbles half a step with mock drama. “Just proving his point. That floor is unstable.”
I shove him, the familiar, playful energy returning. “You’re such a menace.”
He stumbles for real this time, laughing, his phone slipping from his hand and clattering onto the gravel. He crouches to grab it. “Hey, jackass—”
The shot cracks.
It’s not just a sound—it’s a break in the world. A sharp, violent tear in the night's fabric. The air itself fractures. My ears explode with a high, shrill ringing, a pressure so intense it feels like my skull is going to split open. That wasn’t a gunshot. Couldn’t be.
Declan jerks upright. His body snaps tense, a puppet with its strings cut. For a split second, my brain can’t process it. He’s just startled. A firecracker. That’s all.
Then he sways.
His hand drifts up to his chest, slow, confused, as if he’s trying to swat away a fly. Then I see it. The blood. It blooms across the front of his shirt, a dark, wet flower of crimson spreading too fast, too much. It seeps out, slowly at first, then all at once, a sudden, horrific flood, like something vital inside him broke and couldn’t stop.
His eyes find mine. Wide. Scared. Full of a question he can’t ask. He opens his mouth, but only a wet, choking sound comes out as my heart free-falls through my ribs.
“Declan—” My voice is a strangled, useless thing. I dive forward, my hands shaking as I catch him as his legs buckle. We hit the pavement hard, the sharp edges of the gravel digging into my knees, the pain a distant, unimportant fact. My hands slam into his chest, pressing into the impossible heat and slickness, trying to find something solid, something still holding him together.
“Hey. No. You’re fine. You’re okay,” I say, the words a frantic, shaking lie. My voice doesn’t sound like mine. My fingers slip on the slick warmth of his blood. It stains my jeans, streaks down my wrists. The metallic smell of iron hits the back of my throat, hot and thick, making me want to gag.
He blinks, slow, his jaw working like he’s trying to speak through wet cement. His hand twitches, his fingers grabbing weakly for my sleeve.
“I—” he rasps, his voice a wet, rattling sound. “Take care of her.”
My chest caves in. The weight of those four words crushes me.No, you do it. You stay and take care of her.“You’ll be hereto take care of her,” I say, the words fast, panicked. “You’re not going anywhere.”
He wasn’t. He couldn’t.
I fumble for my phone, my hand slick and shaking. The screen slips once, twice under my bloody fingers. I punch at it, my vision shot, blurred by sweat and the hot sting of tears I didn’t know I was crying. “Come on. Come on,” I mutter, the sound a desperate prayer.
I glance back down. Declan’s eyes are still open, but the focus is gone. He’s looking at me, but he’s seeing something else. Something far away. His lips move again, a barely there flicker. I lean in, my ear close to his mouth. “Declan?”
There’s no sound this time. Only the soft, wet hitch of his chest, a desperate, fading gasp. His eyes, fixed on some unseen horror, slowly lose their light, becoming vacant and still as life drains from them, leaving only the chilling emptiness of death. Then… stillness.
Somewhere in the back of my brain, a cold, quiet voice knows. It knows that kind of stillness isn’t something you come back from.
My breath tears out of me in a raw, animal sob. “No. No. You don’t get to leave. Not like this.”
A sound cuts through the ringing in my ears. Footsteps. Fast. Stumbling on the loose gravel. My head jerks up, a flicker of instinct trying to identify a threat, but my eyes struggle to focus. A shape breaks through the dark, dropping hard beside us. Knees slam onto the pavement. Hands reach for Declan, frantic, shaking. The shape makes a sound, a noise that is somewhere between a sob and a scream, and it folds over him, clutching his jacket, pressing its forehead to his chest as if proximity alone can keep him breathing.
I can’t speak. Can’t move. The shape rocks over him, gasping, whispering words I can’t make out, a desperate, pleading prayer.
And me? I just kneel there. My hands soaked in his blood. The phone forgotten on the concrete, its screen cracked. My heart splintered wide open.
The air is too quiet now. The ringing in my ears is a constant, deafening scream. Night has swallowed everything, and I already know, with a certainty that feels like a brand on my soul, this is the silence I’ll carry with me for the rest of my life.
Chapter 2
East
Present Day
