By the time the hallway cleared out, everybody was acting like nothing weird had gone down.
Emma walked over to the nurse's office, holding her scraped hand like it was about to drop off. The janitor mopped up the floor till that red smear was gone, just leaving this faint wet spot that caught the ceiling lights.
Too clean.
Too quick.
Classes picked back up like the fire alarm never happened, like the air hadn't felt all off just a few minutes before. Teachers rounded us up into rooms with short barks and fake grins.
I slipped into my seat in English, my heart still pounding way harder than it had any right to.
The chair behind me scraped really softly.
I didn't turn.
I didn't have to.
I could feel him there.
"The quiet boy, gold eyes, hot hands, don't whispered like a warning". He sat down behind me with deliberate care. The room got smaller right then, like somebody snuck off with all the extra space.
"Get a grip," I told myself.
I stared at the board and scribbled down the day's objective without really taking in a word. My wrist still tingled where he'd grabbed it, that heat stuck under my skin.
When the teacher started reading out loud, I snuck a quick look to my left.
Students were acting kind of strange.
Not everybody. Not in a big way. But enough that once I spotted it, I couldn't unsee it.
A girl by the window kept touching her throat, swallowing again and again. A boy a couple rows up bounced his knee like crazy, his eyes flicking to the door like he expected somebody to bust in.
Somebody else kept sniffing the air.
That one twisted my stomach.
I shifted in my chair.
The boy behind me hadn't budged since he sat. No fidgeting. No pen tapping. No paper shuffling. Like he'd become part of the chair.
Then I heard it.
A slow, steady breath.
Way too controlled for normal.
I glanced back this time.
He was staring right at the back of my head.
Not my hair. Not my neck.
Me.
The way he looked made my shoulders tighten up.
"What?" I mouthed.
His eyes snapped away right then, jaw clenching. He stared down at his desk like he'd gotten caught doing something illegal.
The rest of class dragged on.
When the bell rang at last, the room blew up with movement, too quick, too noisy. Chairs banged. Students bolted for the door harder than usual, almost tripping over each other.
Somebody laughed way too loud.
Somebody else bit at a friend over nothing.
I was packing up my stuff when I felt it again, that subtle heaviness in the air, like right before a storm hits.
The boy behind me got up.
I knew it without looking.
As we all filed out into the hall, I started noticing more stuff I really wished I hadn't.
A group of seniors huddled by the lockers, talking low, eyes all sharp. One of them stopped mid-sentence when I walked by, staring after me with straight-up curiosity, no, more like checking me out.
Like I'd walked into the wrong place at the wrong time.
A girl from chemistry brushed by me and just froze.
Her head turned slowly.
Her eyes dropped to my wrist.
I yanked my sleeve down without even thinking.
"Sorry," she mumbled, already moving on, her voice all tight.
My skin started prickling.
I kept telling myself it was just leftover adrenaline. Maybe embarrassment. The leftover buzz from the alarm. Something normal.
But normal didn't explain why people kept glancing at me.
Or why the quiet boy was suddenly everywhere.
At the end of the hall. By the stairs. Right outside the cafeteria doors.
Always just close enough that I noticed it.
Never close enough to say a word.
By lunch, the tension was killing me.
I plopped down at my usual table, poking at my fries while my friends griped about the alarm and the math test coming up. Their voices sounded far off, like I was hearing them from underwater.
"Did you see Emma fall?" one asked.
"Yeah, gross," another said. "Everybody lost it for no good reason."
No reason.
I nodded, faking a smile, while my eyes wandered across the cafeteria.
That's when I saw it.
A boy at the table way over there jerked all of a sudden, grabbing the edge like he was about to pass out. His eyes locked on me, wide and out of focus, before the girl next to him snatched his arm and whispered something in his ear.
He looked away.
A cold feeling crawled up my back.
Whatever kicked off in the hallway hadn't stopped.
It was just getting started.
And somehow, without asking, without warning...
I was part of it.