Written by Gabriela Molinari, Isa, and Lais Taranto.
Sweat clung to me in a thick sheen, pinning my hair to my forehead in unattractive clumps. My breath seemed to rattle, like my ribs were pressing tight against the inside of my skin, shaking with the tension. I clutched a baseball bat tight between my palms and watched the door sway, back and forth, moving by the wind whispering through the window.
Each time my eyes dipped with sleep, I saw her face in a flash of color: blues and pinks and oranges. And then reds: the flashes and splatters as they climbed the lockers, the shine of a crimson blade bathed by moonlight, and the scarlet bubbles burbling past pretty lips and staining white tile. My eyes never stayed shut for long, and if they did, they flew open with a burn and a film of tears.
He was watching. I knew it. Every time I heard a change in the breeze or saw a flash in the corner of my eye, it was him. He was in the corners of my mind, wiggling his way between each pink, sticky fold. I remembered his eyes, sharp and cruel and empty, and I remembered the necklace that swung at his collarbone catching the pearly light of the moon. I remembered the way it matched his knife.
Johnny. His name would stick to me for as long as I lived. Sometimes, that made me wish he would find me.
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