ONE
Mae
The hallway buzzed with morning footsteps, the scent of cheap coffee clung to the air, and I stood in front of that goddamn wall-my face stared back at me from a poster. Top Student of the Year. Every year since middle school. Every single year. But it was never just my face. It was always ruined. Right there, smeared across my picture, a thick black circle. Perfectly drawn. Right over my face like a curse. And I already knew who did it.
Zeke. Fucking. Sterling.
Nine years. Nine years of this childish, obsessive nonsense. He never missed. Even when he skipped classes, even when he was too busy crashing his bike into the campus gates, he still found time to come after my face.
The ink was fresh. He must've done it that morning. But there was no sign of him being here. Not in the shadows. Not behind a locker. Not watching from a hallway corner with that infuriating smirk he used to wear like armor. Just the silent evidence of his presence, his calling card, his signature act of rebellion.
I stared at it for a second longer, trying to decide if I felt anything new. Anger? Shock? Pain? Nah. Just the same exhausting tightness in my chest that always came when his name was mentioned or his memory brushed up against the part of me that still remembered.
He used to be my best friend. He used to braid my hair and bring me gummy worms in his pocket. He used to sit next to me in class and draw stars on my notebooks when I was too anxious to speak. He used to laugh like the world didn't weigh a thousand bricks on his shoulders, like there wasn't a storm waiting just around the corner.
We are neighbors-our bedroom windows faced each other, just a few feet and one shared rooftop apart. Our families were close too, the kind of close that meant cookouts in summer and shared birthday cakes when one oven broke.
Now?
Now he was a ghost wrapped in leather and ego. Now he was the boy with ink-stained hands and a vendetta he never explained. Our mothers died in the same crash. One minute we were kids riding our bikes, yelling about who would win in a water balloon fight, and the next... boom. Silence. Screaming. Blood. Glass and fire. Sirens. He survived. But something inside him didn't. And maybe something inside me didn't either.
After the funeral, he changed. Cold. Distant. Sharp around the edges like broken glass. I tried to visit him that night. I thought he might need me as much as I needed him, thought maybe we could grieve together like we used to build pillow forts together. But when I got there, I found our childhood pictures in his trash.
Black ink all over my face, scribbled like a target, like I was the villain in a story I didn't even understand. He didn't say a word. Just stared at me from his porch with eyes like stone, like he'd already buried me with his mother.
And I-I bent down, hands shaking, and took the pictures. Every last one of them. Because even if he'd thrown us away, I couldn't.
A voice cut through my storm.
“Him again?”
I blinked, pulled out of the memory like someone had yanked me from underwater. Harper, my best friend since high school, stepped up beside me. Her platinum hair was curled to perfection, and she held a matcha latte in one hand and deathly annoyance in the other.
The kind of casual anger only a true friend can carry on your behalf. She took one look at the poster and rolled her eyes like the weight of Zeke Sterling's existence was more than she could tolerate before caffeine.
I rolled my eyes and sighed, my voice dry. “Of course that bastard.”
She tutted like a mom watching her toddler eat glue. “Obsessed, honestly. If he spent half that energy actually studying, he wouldn't be hanging by a thread in every class. I mean, there's petty, and then there's... this.”
I smirked, a small curl of bitterness on my lips. “We all coped in different ways. His was just... vandalism.”
She gave my shoulder a squeeze and sauntered off toward her design studio, strutting like she owned the campus. I watched her disappear into the crowd, her energy leaving a gap in the hallway's rhythm, then exhaled slowly and grabbed my bag, each movement mechanical, practiced.
Home. Finally.
The sun was setting by the time I pushed open the front door of our empty house. The quiet wrapped around me like a too-tight sweater, itchy and unwelcome. I toed off my shoes, each step echoing too loud, and headed straight upstairs, the weight of the day clinging to my spine like bricks. The hall light flickered as I passed, casting long shadows that twisted like memories on the wall.
My phone buzzed. I didn't need to check it. I already knew.
Dad.
My entire face softened without permission. I didn't even realize I was smiling until I picked up.
“Hey, princess,” his voice came through the speaker, warm and familiar, like the comfort food of voices.
“Dad!” I flopped on my bed like a kid again, hugging the pillow against my chest, the scent of lavender detergent brushing my nose.“I missed you.”
“I missed you too, baby girl. How was school? You still top of your class?”
“Of course. Though I might've murdered someone soon.”
He chuckled. That deep, soft dad-laugh I hadn't heard in weeks, the kind that wrapped around my ribs and made things feel okay for just a second.
“Let me guess-Zeke?”
“Who else?”
“When I'm back, I'll give that boy a talk he won't forget.”
“You'll have to catch him first. He's like a shadow. A really annoying, fast-moving one.”
He laughed again, then his voice lowered to that gentle place he only used when it was just the two of us. “I'll be home soon, Mae. Two more days, okay? Then we'll get pancakes and go watch something stupid. Just us.”
Something in my chest eased like a knot loosening. I closed my eyes. “Promise?"
“Swear on my secret pancake recipe.”
“That's serious.”
“I know.”
The line went quiet. We didn't say anything for a few seconds. Just breathed together across the miles like that could stitch the distance between us.
Then, soft and careful, he added, “You were strong, Mae. You always had been. But it was okay to not feel strong all the time.”
“I know,” I whispered. “I love you.”
“Love you more.”
Click.
I stared at my ceiling for a while, the silence louder than before. The kind that made you notice the hum of your own breath. My throat tightened, and I got up slowly, heading toward my desk like a soldier back to war.
Before I reached it, I paused. My eyes fell on the edge of the mirror. A photo. Zeke and me. Aged seven. Mud on our faces and a tooth missing from my smile. The black mark was still there, slashed across my face like a scar.
I took the photo, shoved it in the drawer, and breathed. No tears. Not that day. But the ache was loud. It curled in my ribs and hummed under my skin, a grief I'd learned to carry like a second heart.
I sat down, pulled out my notebooks, and started studying like my future depended on it. Because it did. And I'd be damned if Zeke Sterling was the thing that broke me.
Not then.
Not ever.
