The school hallways were emptying fast, bleeding students like the arteries of an exhausted body.
The sun spilled golden light across the floor - not warm, not soft, but sharp and surgical, slicing across grey lockers and pale tiles like it was trying to reveal something underneath.
Elija stood at her locker.
Still.
Silent.
Eyes fixed on nothing, fingers absentmindedly tracing the embossed lines of her notebook - as if it might tell her what the hell just happened in that classroom.
And then-
"Yo."
Lorena, chaos incarnate, slid into frame like she'd been summoned by the scent of unresolved trauma and inappropriate humor. A bruised green apple dangled from her hand like a prop in a Shakespearean monologue.
"So," she began, taking a crunchy bite and talking through it like a war crime. "Your 17th century doppelgänger still haunting your emotionally fragile little brain?"
Elija blinked. "Huh?"
Lorena leaned in, stage-whispering like they were on some gothic reality show called Dead Girls, Hot Teachers, and Trauma™.
"This whole day was, like... what the actual fuckfuckfuck did we just survive? Because I feel like I got slapped with poetry and arousal at the same time, and now I need therapy. And maybe a priest."
Elija cracked the smallest smile - fractured, crooked.
"I don't know. It was just... weird."
Lorena's eyes widened so fast it was almost audible.
"Weird?! Babe. Weird is when someone wears socks with sandals. This-" she gestured wildly toward the air like it owed her money- "this was a goddamn psychosexual exorcism."
Elija opened her mouth to respond-
But Lorena wasn't done. She never was.
"And that portrait thing? Like, I get it, maybe you were a lesbian ghost in a past life. Happens to the best of us. But the way Anderson looked at you? Like you were a riddle she already knew the answer to? Nah. That woman either wants to grade your soul or ruin your life with metaphors and silk blouses. Possibly both."
Elija stared at her locker like it might open into another universe. Preferably a quieter one.
"She's..." Elija hesitated. "She's intense."
"Intense?" Lorena scoffed. "She's the fucking final boss of all gay panic. Her vibe is 'ice queen who drinks red wine made of your regrets.' And those heels? Those are murder shoes. You don't wear shoes like that unless you've committed tax fraud or seduced a dying poet."
A pause.
Elija sighed - but she couldn't stop the smile now. Not fully.
"You're being ridiculous."
"And you're being haunted," Lorena said, pointing at her with the apple. "Something's off. Don't pretend you didn't feel it."
Elija opened her mouth to protest - and then paused.
Because... yeah.
Something was off.
That moment in class - the second Aurora's gaze locked onto her and didn't let go - it felt like time shivered.
Like something old had looked through Ms. Anderson's eyes.
Like the past was breathing behind her skin.
And last night - the dream she hadn't told anyone about. The girl in the mirror. The voice whispering in Latin. The blood-red ink running off her notebook page.
Her fingers gripped the notebook harder.
"Elija," Lorena said, quieter now. "You okay?"
"I'm fine," she lied.
"You've got that 'I just remembered my own funeral' look in your eyes."
Elija didn't answer. Her thumb rubbed across the front of her notebook again - only this time, something caught her attention.
A smudge.
No... not a smudge.
A mark.
Red. Thin. Sharp-edged.
Like a streak of-
She opened the notebook.
The first page had changed.
Where her name had been neatly printed the day before, there was now something else scrawled beneath it in jagged, ancient script.
"The girl who should have died."
Elija's breath caught in her throat.
"What the hell..." she whispered.
Lorena blinked. "What?"
Elija snapped the notebook shut.
"Nothing. Just-pen leak."
Lorena raised an eyebrow.
"A red pen that writes cryptic gothic threats on its own?"
Elija said nothing. Her fingers were cold.
Far down the hallway, somewhere behind the teacher's lounge door, a strange noise echoed. Not loud - just... off. Like a record scratching in the middle of silence. Or a voice caught between frequencies.
Elija and Lorena both turned toward it.
And then, from somewhere far behind them, a door creaked shut.
By itself.
Elija's pulse spiked.
Lorena narrowed her eyes.
"...Okay," she said slowly. "I was joking before but I'm officially ready to believe your locker's haunted by your bisexual Victorian ghost twin."
Elija forced a laugh - brittle and dry. "Let's just go."
As they walked down the hallway, the sun finally dipped behind the building.
("Everything tastes better after an existential crisis.")
"Wanna go for a walk?" Elija asked softly, her voice barely above the wind as they stepped out into the deepening dusk.
Lorena stretched dramatically like a tired cat in fishnets. "Only if we stop by the corner shop and get ice cream. My emotional spine is crumbling, and sugar is my god now. That, and cynical conversation."
Elija managed a real laugh this time - the first since her notebook started writing gothic threats in her own handwriting.
"Deal," she said. "But I'm getting the last mint chocolate chip."
"You always do," Lorena grumbled. "One of these days I'll fight you for it. Like, physically. In public. People will film it. We'll go viral. 'Two mentally ill sapphics fight to the death over gelato.'"
"Better than our obituary titles," Elija quipped.
They turned the corner.
The sky was leaking burnt oranges and bruised violets. The city was starting to yawn, stretch its neon bones, and prepare for its nightly transformation - from mundane to maybe. From what-is to what-could-be.
They walked side by side, their boots hitting the sidewalk in an unsynchronized rhythm. The kind of rhythm only shared by people who had long ago decided to keep pace with each other in life, even if they stumbled.
Their conversation danced.
From dumb shit - like whether vampires could survive lactose (Lorena said no, Elija argued for oat milk) - to deeper things, like death, and grief, and how weird it is when someone says "you're so strong" when what they really mean is "I don't know how to handle your pain."
"You ever wonder if people only want us to survive so they don't have to feel guilty when we don't?" Lorena asked at one point, licking a trail of strawberry ice cream off her hand like she was pondering the existence of God.
Elija blinked. "That's... dark."
"It's called processing," Lorena said, deadpan. "You should try it sometime, instead of bottling your trauma and flirting with emotionally unavailable teachers."
Elija snorted, choking on a laugh.
"I'm not flirting with her."
"Oh honey," Lorena said with the tone of someone who has seen too much. "You exist near her like you're in a Jane Austen fever dream. All repressed breathing and eye contact that should be illegal in forty-seven countries."
Elija stayed quiet.
Because - okay. Maybe Lorena wasn't entirely wrong.
Something about Ms. Anderson pulled at her. Like gravity, but smarter. More dangerous. Not lust - not just lust - but something carved deeper, stranger. Recognition. As if Elija had met her before, in a dream. Or a past life. Or a poem.
But she couldn't admit that. Not yet.
Not even to herself.
They reached the corner store, grabbed cheap cones, and wandered toward the park, where the world got a little quieter. The grass glowed blue in the moonlight. Crickets buzzed like they were whispering secrets in Morse code.
Lorena flopped onto a bench like a dramatic ghost.
Elija sat down beside her.
They licked their ice cream in companionable silence for a while, until Lorena suddenly said, "You ever feel like something's following you? Not, like, a person. But a feeling. Like... something you left behind is still coming after you?"
Elija froze.
Because yes.
Because always.
She thought of that notebook.
That sentence.
"The girl who should have died."
She didn't say it aloud.
But her hands tightened on the cone, knuckles going white.
Lorena looked over. Saw the silence. Read it like a poem.
"You wanna tell me what happened? Back then?" she asked. "You never really... said."
Elija didn't answer right away.
The air got heavier. The night leaned closer.
And then, finally-
"When I was fifteen," she said, voice barely above a breath, "I tried to die."
Lorena didn't move. Didn't speak. Just waited.
"I thought it'd be quick. Easy. Like falling asleep and forgetting to wake up."
A pause.
"But it wasn't. Life... stopped first. It just-paused. Like it looked at me and said, 'Not yet.'"
Elija stared at the sky.
"And then something pulled me back. I don't know what. Or who. But... sometimes I think I never really came back."
Lorena looked at her for a long time.
And then she whispered, "Fuck."
Elija laughed, bitter and broken. "Yeah. That about sums it up."
Another silence.
Then Lorena took a deep breath and handed Elija the last bite of her cone.
"I was saving that," she muttered. "But you just played the 'I almost died' card, so now I legally have to be soft with you."
Elija took it. Smiled. Something almost human.
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it. Seriously. I have a reputation for maintaining it."
But just as they started to laugh again, a gust of wind swept through the trees - sharp and sudden.
And with it, a sound.
Not loud.
Just... wrong.
Like a whisper made of teeth.
Lorena sat up straight. "Okay what the fuck was that?"
Elija turned toward the shadows.
Something moved. Quick. Too quick.
The park lights flickered once.
And then the notebook in Elija's backpack started to hum.
Like a heartbeat.
But not hers.
Not anymore.