The paper airplane had been sitting in Juno's locker for only a few hours now, crumpled between her chemistry textbook and a granola bar she'd forgotten to eat. Every time she saw it, a mixture of hope and disgust churned in her stomach. Someone was playing games with her—had to be.
Probably one of Kaitlyn's friends, setting up some elaborate humiliation that would unfold the moment she showed up at some cemetery like a complete idiot.
[Come to where even silence forgets its name.]
What kind of pretentious bullshit was that? And yet... the handwriting had been beautiful. Old-fashioned. The kind that belonged in love letters from centuries past, not cruel pranks in the hallways of Brooklane High.
She'd almost thrown it away twice. Almost.
But something about it kept pulling her back, like a splinter working its way deeper under the skin. The paper felt different—too smooth, too white, like it had never been touched by anything ordinary. And the way it had appeared, floating down from nowhere like it had been waiting specifically for her...
No. She was being ridiculous. Desperate people saw signs everywhere, read meaning into coincidence because the alternative was admitting they were truly alone.
Juno slammed her locker shut with more force than necessary, the metallic clang echoing down the hallway. She had bigger problems than mysterious notes. Like surviving another day at Brooklane without completely disappearing.
She made it exactly fourteen steps before her world imploded.
"Oh look, it's our little ghost girl."
Kaitlyn's voice cut through the hallway chatter like a blade through silk. Juno's blood turned to ice water in her veins, but she kept walking.
Maybe if she ignored them, maybe if she just kept moving—
"I'm talking to you, freak."
A hand slammed into her shoulder, spinning her around. Kaitlyn stood there in all her terrible glory, flanked by her usual chorus of disciples. But something was different this time. Her smile was sharper, hungrier.
Her eyes held a predatory gleam that spoke of carefully planned destruction.
"I've been thinking about you," Kaitlyn continued, her voice sweet as poisoned honey. "About how sad and pathetic you are. About how you probably go home and cry into your discount pillow every night."
Juno's mouth went dry. "I don't know what you—"
"Shut up." The words cracked like a whip. "I wasn't asking you to speak. God, even your voice is annoying. Like nails on a chalkboard."
The hallway was filling with spectators now, students slowing their pace to watch the show. Some pulled out their phones, already angling for the perfect shot of someone else's misery. Juno felt their eyes like physical weights, pressing down on her until she could barely breathe.
"You know what I realized?" Kaitlyn stepped closer, her perfume cloying and overwhelming. "You're not just ugly. You're not just poor. You're nothing. Like, literally nothing. A waste of space and oxygen that would be better used by someone who actually matters."
"Kaitlyn, please—"
"Please what? Please stop telling the truth?" Kaitlyn laughed, a sound like breaking glass. "Look around, Juno. Look at all these people watching you. Do you see a single person who cares? Even one person who thinks you matter?"
Juno's gaze swept the crowd unconsciously before she knew it. Faces stared back at her—some amused, some bored, some actively filming. Not one showed even a flicker of sympathy. She was entertainment to them, nothing more.
"That's because you don't," Kaitlyn continued, her voice dropping to a whisper that somehow carried to every corner of the hallway. "You're a placeholder. A background character in everyone else's story. The kind of person who disappears and leaves no mark, no memory, no reason for anyone to even notice you were gone."
Each word hit like a physical blow, driving the air from Juno's lungs. Because the worst part—the absolutely devastating part—was that Kaitlyn was right.
Juno had spent seventeen years trying to matter to someone, anyone, and had failed completely.
"I bet your own parents can barely stand to look at you," Kaitlyn said, and now her smile was purely carnivorous. "I bet they count the days until you turn eighteen and they can finally be free of their biggest disappointment."
"Stop," Juno whispered, but the word came out broken, barely audible.
"Why? Because it hurts? Good. Maybe pain is the only thing that will make you feel real for once in your miserable little life."
Kaitlyn reached into her designer purse and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper—Juno's history essay, the one she'd worked on for weeks, the one that had earned her first A+ of the semester.
"Oh, and I found this in the trash," Kaitlyn said, though they both knew she'd taken it from Juno's desk. "Apparently even the teachers think your work belongs in the garbage."
She tore the paper in half. Then in half again. The pieces fluttered to the ground like dying leaves, and with them fell the last remnants of Juno's hope.
"Clean it up," Kaitlyn commanded. "Like the janitor you're destined to... become."
The hallway erupted in laughter. Phones captured every second of Juno's humiliation as she knelt on the floor, gathering the pieces of her destroyed work with shaking hands. Tears burned behind her eyes, but she refused to let them fall.
Not here.
Not in front of them.
When she finally stood, the crowd had already begun to disperse, moving on to more interesting entertainment. Kaitlyn was gone, vanished like a nightmare at dawn, leaving only the echo of laughter and the taste of shame.
Juno stood alone in the hallway, clutching the fragments of her essay, and felt something inside her break beyond repair.
She didn't go to her next class. Or the one after that. Instead, she found herself in the library again, hiding in the same corner where the mysterious note had found her. The paper airplane sat before her on the table, no longer crumpled, somehow pristine despite her rough handling.
[If your wish still lingers beneath your skin,come to where even silence forgets its name.]
The words seemed to pulse with their own light, calling to something desperate and broken inside her chest.
What if it wasn't a prank?
What if someone really was offering help, offering change, offering a way out of this endless cycle of humiliation and pain?
But even as the thought formed, reality crashed back down. This was real life, not some fantasy novel. People didn't get mysterious notes from supernatural saviors. They got cruel pranks from classmates who thought their suffering was entertainment.
"A cemetery," she whispered to herself, shaking her head. "Because that's where all the well-adjusted people hang out at midnight."
Whoever had written this note was probably some creep who got off on vulnerable girls. Some sick pervert who lurked around schools looking for broken, desperate targets. Who knew what twisted plans they had for anyone stupid enough to show up.
But what if it's real?
The thought slithered through her mind like smoke, impossible to grasp but equally impossible to dismiss.
What if someone really could help her?
What if there was a way to stop being invisible, to stop being nothing, to finally matter to someone?
"God, listen to yourself," she muttered, crumpling the paper again. "Answers in a graveyard? From some perverted sicko who probably gets off on desperate teenage girls?"
She was about to throw the note away when words appeared in the margin—elegant script flowing across the paper like ink through water, writing itself before her eyes:
[Ew. Girl, I have standards.]
Juno's blood turned to ice, but not from just fear—but confusion too. She looked around the library wildly, searching for the source of the impossible writing. Her mind immediately went to the worst possibility: whoever this pervert was, he was watching her right now, reading her thoughts somehow, responding to her suspicions about his motives.
How is he doing this? she thought frantically. Is this some kind of hidden camera prank?
The paper grew warm in her hands, and more words appeared:
[Though I admit, your standards for potential solutions are impressively low.]
"This isn't real," she whispered, but her voice shook with the knowledge that something fundamental had just shifted in her world.
[Reality is subjective. Desperation, however, is quite concrete. And yours is practically radioactive.]
She stared at the words, her heart hammering against her ribs. This was impossible. Papers didn't write themselves. People didn't have conversations with mysterious notes. This was the kind of thing that happened to people who'd finally snapped, who'd retreated so far into fantasy that they'd lost touch with the real world entirely.
[You're not insane,] on the paper, as if reading her thoughts. [Though I understand the confusion. The mind struggles to process experiences outside its established parameters.]
"Who are you?" she whispered, barely breathing.
[Someone who keeps his promises. Someone who understands that sometimes the only way out is through. Someone who's been watching you slowly die in this fluorescent purgatory and finds it... wasteful.]
The words hung there, pulsing with their own dark light. And despite every rational thought in her head, despite every warning bell screaming in her mind, Juno felt something she hadn't experienced in months:
Hope.
Because whoever this was, whatever this was, they saw her. Really saw her. Not as a ghost or a placeholder or a waste of space, but as someone worth saving.
Even if the price might be her soul.
[Midnight,] appeared on the paper one final time. [If you're ready to stop being nothing.]
The words faded like smoke, leaving only blank paper behind. But the warmth remained, spreading through her chest like liquid fire, burning away the last of her rational objections.
Somewhere in the library, invisible among the stacks, Pryce smiled and closed his notebook. The hunt was almost over.
And his newest client was finally ready to make a deal.