Static
ISABELLA POV
The first bell hadn’t even rung, and I was already hiding.
Well, “hiding” was a strong word. I was... fleeing. Fleeing from a guy I’d never seen before, down a hallway I didn’t know, in a school I’d only been in for ten minutes.
A stellar start to Senior Year.
My new sneakers squeaked on the linoleum as I rounded a corner, my heart thudding a sick, heavy beat against my ribs.
Just blend in. Don’t make a scene. Don’t be the weird new girl.
It was the same mantra I’d been repeating for a month, ever since... after. Ever since the doctors, the police reports, and my parents’ frantic decision to “get a fresh start” in this tiny, middle-of-nowhere town.
A fresh start. Right.
The problem was, I was still me. And I was still sick.
The hallway I was running from had been an assault. The noise of a thousand slamming lockers and shouting voices felt like it was coming from inside my skull. The smells—a nauseating wave of cheap body spray, floor wax, and something metallic, like old pennies—were so thick I’d felt like I was gagging.
My doctor called it “sensory overload,” a fun little parting gift from the “animal attack” that had shredded my shoulder and my old life.
I called it “static.” A constant, high-pitched ringing in my brain that spiked into a migraine whenever I was stressed. Or tired. Or, apparently, just trying to find my homeroom.
But the hallway hadn’t been the worst part. He had.
He’d been leaning against a locker, talking to a girl with bright pink streaks in her hair. And he hadn’t just looked at me. He’d... stared. His head had snapped up, his conversation dying instantly, as if he’d heard a sound only he could hear. His eyes—an intense, impossible blue—had locked on me from fifty feet away, and it felt like I’d been physically punched in the stomach.
It wasn’t a “checking out the new girl” look. It was a “what-the-hell-are-you-doing-here” look. A look so full of hostile, possessive authority that I’d frozen solid.
And the smell that had rolled off him... it wasn’t cologne. It was something else. Something wild and dangerous, like ozone and pine and wet fur. It had cut through all the other smells in the hall and made the “static” in my head scream.
He’d said something to the girl next to him, his eyes never leaving mine. He pushed off the locker and started to take a step toward me.
And I ran.
“Hey, are you good?” a girl with a friendly smile called out as I rushed past her. I think it was the same girl who’d been with him, the one with the pink hair. I just ignored her, my head down, my anxiety cold and sharp.
I’d just turned a corner, my breath hitching, when I saw the sign: English 12.
My first class.
I didn’t slow down. I just... dove for the door, shoving it open and stumbling inside, the first bell shrieking, loud and painful, right over my head.
