The blood was gone, Sarah had scrubbed the bedsheet until her fingers ached, working the small copper-colored smear out of the fabric with cold water.
The stain had been stubborn, but she had been more stubborn. She'd rubbed until her knuckles turned red, until the sheet was damp and pale again.
But cleaning the sheet didn't clean her mind. The blood was still there in her memory, bright and accusing.
She could still feel it on her palms, sticky, unreal, a ghost of a touch. She could still taste it, too, a faint metallic tang at the back of her throat that water couldn't wash away.
The worst part was that there was no wound. No cut, no injury.
Nothing that explained it.
Just a single drop of red in a place it shouldn't have been, like a period at the end of a sentence she didn't remember writing.
She sat on the edge of her bed, staring at her hands.
They looked clean now, but she knew better. She felt like a glass doll that had been dropped one too many times, no longer smooth, no longer whole.
The showcase the night before had cracked her in places she didn't know existed.
She had wanted to play well. She had wanted to reclaim something.
But the music that had poured from her fingers hadn't been hers.
It had been… wrong.
Twisted.
Like something had stolen her melody and warped it into a monster wearing her skin.
And Mr. Finch....
She could still see his smile, sharp and satisfied, like someone who had been waiting for this exact moment. It hadn't just been her failure he'd seen, it was her breaking.
Her room felt smaller than usual.
The air was heavy, thick with silence. The mirror on the wall was still covered, but she could feel it watching her through the cloth.
The loose floorboard she'd pried up for the hidden journal seemed louder now, like it was calling to her.
And the journal itself, tucked deep in the velvet lining of her violin case, felt heavier than it should have, like she was keeping a ghost alive.
She couldn't stay here. The walls pressed too close. The silence was too loud.
Sarah pulled on her coat and slipped into the cold morning.
The world outside Blackwood's dorms was quiet.
A thin mist clung to the ground, and the sky was a flat sheet of pale gray. The air smelled of wet earth and the faint rot of fallen leaves.
Her boots crunched on the gravel path as she walked without any real direction.
She just needed distance from the room, from the sheet, from the feeling in her chest.
She passed the perfectly trimmed lawns and the neat rows of hedges.
Blackwood's beauty felt fake this morning, like paint over rotting wood. Her steps carried her further, to the edge of the campus where the order of the school gave way to something wilder.
The grass here grew long and uneven.
The trees were old and thin, their bare branches stretching upward like brittle fingers. And ahead, she saw it; the chapel.
It was small, made of dark stone, with narrow stained-glass windows that seemed too dim to let in light.
Its steep roof and shadowed doorway made it look less like a place of prayer and more like a tomb.
The heavy doors were closed, their iron handles cold and black.
That's when she saw him.
Julian.
He was sitting on a crumbling stone wall near the chapel, the structure half-swallowed by moss and ivy.
His back was partly turned toward her, his posture hunched in concentration. In his lap was the worn sketchbook she'd seen before. His hand, stained with charcoal, moved slowly, steadily across the page.
He looked like he belonged to the morning's stillness, carved from the same gray stone as the wall beneath him.
Sarah stopped behind the sweeping branches of a willow tree. Its pale leaves made a curtain between them.
She shouldn't be here. The last time they'd spoken, his words had been clear; Stay away from me.
But she couldn't move. Something in her rooted her to the spot.
Julian didn't fit here, just like she didn't.
And maybe that was why she felt pulled toward him.
There was a kind of quiet understanding between them, even without words. A recognition of something damaged.
She watched him.
He wasn't sketching the chapel or the trees. His eyes were fixed somewhere deeper, on something that lived inside him.
He was so absorbed that the world around him seemed far away.
For a moment, she felt a pang of jealousy.
Her music used to do that for her, make the rest of the world fall away.
Now it was just another room she was afraid to walk into.
Sarah took a slow step back, deciding to leave before he noticed her.
But her boot came down on a fallen twig, and it snapped under her weight; a sharp, quick sound in the quiet morning.
Julian's hand froze.
His shoulders tensed.
He turned his head slowly, and his eyes found her instantly through the willow's hanging branches.
He didn't look surprised, or angry.
Just… tired.
Like he'd been expecting this.
Sarah's chest tightened.
She should leave.
She knew she should.
But instead, she stepped out from behind the tree, shoving her hands into her coat pockets.
"I was just walking," she said quietly. Her words felt small in the open air.
Julian didn't answer.
His gaze dropped to the sketchbook in his lap, and something flickered in his expression, almost like fear.
His fingers twitched toward closing it, but he hesitated.
She took a slow step closer. "What are you drawing?"
"Nothing," he said, his voice low and rough.
It was a lie.
She could feel it.
Before she could stop herself, she stepped nearer, her eyes catching a glimpse of the page.
And then she froze.
It was her.
But not her as she looked in a mirror.
This face was raw, jagged, desperate. Her eyes were wide and dark, two pits of fear staring at something unseen.
Her cheeks were sharp, almost hollow.
Her mouth....
Her mouth was stretched open in a scream.
A scream so silent it was almost worse than if she'd heard it.
Sarah's stomach turned.
The image was wrong in the same way her music had been wrong. It wasn't just a drawing of her, it was a drawing of everything inside her she couldn't name.
Julian saw her expression change. He saw that she understood.
With a sudden, violent movement, he slammed the sketchbook shut. The sound made her flinch. He stood, the book pressed tight to his chest.
"I told you to stay away," he said sharply.
Her throat felt tight.
"How did you…?" she began, her voice shaking. "How did you know?"
His eyes met hers, cold and unyielding.
"Know what? That you're falling apart? Everyone can see it. You walk around here like you're already dead."
The words hit hard, but she didn't turn away. Because under his anger, she saw something else, pain.
The kind that mirrored hers.
He turned from her. "Go home, Sarah."
And then he walked away, disappearing into the mist at the edge of the woods.
She stood there long after he was gone, the image of that drawing burned into her mind.
He hadn't just drawn her face.
He'd drawn the scream she was trying so hard to swallow.
And the most terrifying part was that he'd recognized it.