Chapter 8
Zoë
The apartment smells like vanilla candle wax and expensive tequila. It’s a specific kind of sensory overload—the kind that only happens when you cram five Type-A women into a living space designed for three. I’m sprawled on the floor of Maya’s living room, my back against the base of the sofa, staring up at the ceiling fan as it spins lazily, chopping the humid air.
My sketchbook is open on my knees. Without realizing it, my hand has moved. The page is full now.
A cage.
The bars are thick, heavy, unevenly spaced, trapping a dark, empty center.
I can’t focus on lines and fabric drape while the room vibrates at a frequency that grates against my nerves. My shoulders sittight, jaw locked, a low, restless energy humming just under my skin—irritation, I tell myself. Only irritation.
“Pass the bottle,” Clara says from the couch.
Her voice stays calm, but there’s an edge to it—the kind she saves for board meetings and incompetent interns.
Talia, sitting cross-legged on the rug beside me, hands over the tequila without a word. She’s been quiet tonight. Stillness is her default setting, but this feels tuned differently. Like she’s listening to a frequency the rest of us can’t catch.
Genny perches on the armchair with her legs tucked under her, scrolling with a frown that deepens by the minute.
“Okay,” Genny says, looking up, “I can’t be the only one seeing this.”
“Seeing what?” Maya asks from the kitchen island.
She’s slicing limes with a knife that moves a little too fast for someone who’s been drinking.
“The way the campus is losing its mind? Yeah. I’m seeing it.”
“Not just the campus,” Genny corrects. She turns her phone screen toward the room. “The Briarcliff Whisperer just posted again.”
The room cools.
The air shifts.
I don’t want to look. I know what’s on that screen before I see it. I’ve heard the whispers all day—low, insidious currents that followed me through the design studios and the cafeteria. They were there yesterday. Today they’ve sharpened. Grown teeth.
But I look anyway.
The post is a photo.
Grainy. Dark. Taken with a flash that bleaches the shadows into something cruel. A wrecked car—front end folded like accordion pleats, windshield shattered into a spiderweb of white frost. The hood buckled, steam or smoke still curling off the engine block in the frozen image.
Violent. Final.
It sits in what looks like a ditch, tall grass pressing up against the shattered windows like it’s trying to swallow evidence.
Below the image, the caption reads:
Some people walk away from wreckage like it never happened. Guess whose name was on the title? #BriarcliffWhisperer #CleanUpCrew
A pulse jumps low in my stomach—sharp, unwelcome. I shift where I’m sitting, pressing my heel into the floor, grounding myself.
“Jesus,” Clara breathes. She leans in, eyes scanning the twisted metal. “Is that recent?”
“Hard to tell,” Talia says softly.
She hasn’t looked up from her own hands. “But that kind of damage… that’s high speed.”
