❝ and darkness and decay and the red death held illimitable dominion over all.❞ 

➼ edgar allan poe

Students filled the front courtyard of Sabre College—Home of the Sabretooth Tigers: Enter to Learn; Leave to Achieve. The crowd blurred together in the Monday morning noise, the building behind them dull and square. A sign at the entrance, stamped with the school's tiger mascot logo, announced the upcoming football match in blocky letters.

It had rained all weekend. The humidity of it hung in the air, frizzing Charlie's chin-length, bleach blonde hair. She followed Peter to his usual group of football jocks, though she'd never have much of a place among them. After graduating high school earlier this year, she'd expected solitude at Sabre College. She was the girl with the 4.0 GPA holding her Hello Kitty binders to her chest, the girl never invited out to anything, the girl who, if mentioned to anyone, chances were they'd tilt their head and ask, "Who?"

Luckily, Charlie spotted her two friends standing under a tree as dead as the sky itself.

"Oh, hey," greeted Raquel Gonçalves in her usual soft, melodic tone that made it hard to believe they weren't still close.

Charlie forced herself to meet her gaze. "Hi."

"So, do you have the homework for Ortega today?" she asked. Her dark brown hair blew in the wind—the same color Charlie's once had been—and faux freckles covered her pale nose. Last year, during one of their high school's photography club meetings, she told Charlie, "I freaking love your freckles. Don't take this the wrong way, but I kind of wish I could just, like, slice off your skin and put it over mine."

Morbid, yes, but Charlie had been unable to get those words out of her head. Even now, apparently.

"Charlie?"

She blinked. "Oh, homework. We had homework?"

"That short response thing about Edgar Allan Poe; I think that's what it was? Either way, I didn't do it."

"I... I forgot."

"Charlie, Raquel," Quincy declared, rising from the grass. His fire-truck red hair was the only colorful thing Charlie had seen all day, surreal in the blurry gray of everything else. He wore a button-up shirt and ripped jeans—a look she admired paired with the many piercings covering his face. "You're in luck today, because I have the homework."

Raquel snorted. "Oh, seriously? Finally took your Adderall?"

"Nope!" He rummaged through his backpack and pulled out a crumpled sheet of paper. Raquel made a face as she attempted to decipher his handwriting. "The only drug I'm on is the power of the written word, Raquel. But I am selling my Adderall at a discount this week."

Charlie couldn't say she was surprised. Sabre College had a reputation as Florida's best liberal arts school, where many juggled athletics with full-time classes, and pill-popping to stay on track became part of many students' routines. Alcohol-fueled weekends were their escape from it, though Charlie never had the guts to touch more than a single vodka shot. Quincy King probably downed half a bottle for breakfast.

"It's a miracle you got through last week's drug inspection," Raquel said. "Or the football team at that."

"Corruption at its finest," Quincy laughed. "Coach needs his guys for the big game. And shit, I need them too. They're, like, half of my clientele. Except for our favorite flat-earth linebacker, am I right, Charlie?"

Peter's tendencies toward the conspiratorial had become an inside joke among their school's small student body. Charlie felt bad for the way his friends joked with him—"Tell us again why the government's lying to us about the earth being shaped like a ball, bro"—and when Peter did tell them, argued until he was blue in the face, they'd laugh and dismiss him with a few slaps on the back.

"He hasn't convinced me the earth is flat yet," Charlie murmured, "but he did say he'll let me into his doomsday bunker."

"Oh my gosh," Raquel laughed, and Charlie imagined it as a physical thing she could pluck from the air—reassurance that she could still make her smile. "That's kind of hilarious? And sad at the same time. Yeah, mostly sad."

Quincy wriggled his pierced brows. "Letting you into his doomsday bunker sounds like dirty talk to me."

"He's too... conservative for that," Charlie said.

"You mean stick-up-the-ass."

Raquel rolled her eyes. "You're just bitter because he's the only guy on the team who doesn't have a crush on you, Quincy."

"What! Don't even start. Maybe if anyone did 'have a crush on me', I'd have a date by now." He motioned to his assignment still in Raquel's hands, his cheeks slowly turning as red as his hair. "Are you going to plagiarize my shit or not?"

She snapped a picture with her phone, and Charlie proceeded to do the same. As she handed the paper back to Quincy, his large blue irises trained on her cross necklace—something she'd bought only so Peter could see and never would've otherwise. Her atheist mother hadn't been too pleased to see it either.

Charlie tucked it into her shirt, and by the time they got to their first class, it started raining. Droplets trickled down the large window, the football field and track outside softening to smudges of green and red. The fluorescent lights cast a harsh glow on Charlie's desk, where she finished copying Quincy's homework. Dr. Ortega, their Survey of Gothic Literature professor, came to collect it a moment later, and Charlie turned in the paper with words that weren't hers. Not that it mattered now. Not when she'd found a note with a phrase only she could know outside her door.

It wasn't like she'd written about it in her now-stolen diary. She'd burned the diaries from before long ago, her teenage years erased from history.

She was half-paying attention to the story the class started reading—something by Poe about a man who gouged his cat's eye out with a knife. Growing increasingly sick at the imagery, she tuned it out entirely until someone called her name: "Charlie? Charlie?"

Quincy turned to nudge her arm, and her heart jumped to her throat.

"Charlie, would you like to read?" Dr. Ortega was asking. "Page 248, second to last paragraph?"

No, she thought, but she flipped her textbook to the correct page. The low rumble of thunder outside pounded in her head. "In the meantime, the cat slowly recovered. The socket of the lost eye presented, it is true, a frightful appearance, but he no longer appeared to suffer any pain."

Reality frayed as she read. The man in the story tied a noose around the poor cat's neck and hung it from a tree. Charlie's eyes watered reading it, a deeper nausea stirring in her gut—how was this type of story okay at all?—but she forced herself to continue and not cause a scene: "On the night of the day on which this cruel deed was done, I was aroused from sleep by the cry of fire. The curtains of my bed were in flames. The whole house was blazing. It was with great difficulty that my—"

A loud knock sounded on the classroom door. Then another.

Bang... bang... bang.

And her insides went up in flames.

Dr. Ortega got up, footsteps too slow and too fast at the same time, the room smaller... smaller... smaller until she swung the door open.

And someone stepped inside.

All eyes drifted to the newcomer—some confused, others curious, Charlie's horrified.

It must've been his features that drew the attention at first—sharp, lean, angular. Bronze skin glistened with raindrops falling off the ends of his black curls. Then everyone stared at the brace around his left leg and the crutches he used to walk into the room—each step deliberate, his chain raised. It was as if he was introducing himself while simultaneously giving them the finger.

But Charlie needed no introduction.

Seeing things. She knew she was seeing things. Like how she would sometimes think she saw him—lingering at the edges of her vision, at the foot of her bed until she blinked and the shadow disappeared.

Her hand went to the knife tucked in the waistband of her skirt. The earth, flat or not, toppled and rolled on its side, taking her with it.

Then she noticed his knuckles. Bloody. No bandages. Scabbed over in various shades of red.

"Sorry I'm late," he said. "I just registered." 

●   ●   ●

a/n: our boy is BACK!!!

also does anyone remember quincy?? he's back too. 

at the time of posting this i am still only 46% done with final edits for this book LMAO. there's these few chapters that always absolutely destroy me whenever i go back to them. can't wait for you to read :P