PROLOGUE
Physical Education at North Hills’ open stadium in May was my personal circle of hell. While the rest of the class was grinding through drills on the field, the dust kicked up by hundreds of feet choked my lungs, and the sun beat down until the red track felt like molten lava.
Coach Miller’s sharp, jarring whistle sliced through the air, making me flinch.
“Everyone, in! Now! To the locker rooms!” he roared, waving toward the gym. “Ten minutes for showers! Move it!”
A wave of teenagers surged forward. It was a goddamn stampede—a hundred sweaty, shouting guys lunging for the doors, digging elbows into ribs and knocking each other off balance. I intentionally slowed my pace. I couldn’t afford to be in that crush. I needed to be the last one in, entering only when everyone else had dressed and cleared out.
Gradually, the shouting died down, replaced by the heavy thud of doors and a dull hum from deep inside the building. The stadium emptied fast. The roar of a hundred voices faded into nothing but the rustle of the wind blowing empty plastic bottles across the bleachers. I was finishing my sixth lap in what I thought was total solitude. This was my way of outlasting the crowd.
My shoulder-length hair, soaked with sweat, clung to my face and neck in grimy streaks, but I didn’t even think about pushing it back or tying it up. It was my only armor—a fragile curtain I used to hide what the sun wasn’t meant to see. Under the layers of hair and the thick fabric of my grey hoodie, the scar on my neck burned like a hundred red-hot needles digging into my skin. That dead tissue always let me know it was there whenever I overheated, pulling at my throat and shoulder blade in a tight, suffocating knot.
“Brooks!” From the shade of the bleachers, Miller shot a frustrated look at his watch. “This isn’t a stroll in the park! Finish up and get to the showers, or you’re staying for the second shift.”
I didn’t look up. My eyes stayed locked on the cracked track. In that empty stadium, washed in dead-bright light, every step I took echoed hollowly. It felt like I was the only person left in the universe.
But the illusion of silence shattered the moment I heard that familiar, mocking jeer.
Mocking whistles drifted down from the front row of the bleachers. Scott Reynolds and his pack of football lackeys weren’t in any hurry to leave. They were the only ones left out in the heat, lounging like kings, watching my solo laps like they were betting on a beaten-down horse at the track. Scott let out a jagged laugh when I tripped over my own exhaustion, nearly skidding off the track into the gravel.
To them, I was “Frankie.” The morons clearly hadn’t read Mary Shelley, pinning the creator’s name on me instead of his nameless creation. But in their hollowed-out skulls, Frankenstein was the monster—a freak stitched together from scraps of dead meat. A freak who wouldn’t strip off his hoodie even in ninety-degree heat, desperate to hide his “seams.” They were just waiting for the moment I finally snapped under that burning sky.
I slipped into the locker room just as the roar of voices began to fade. The guys were finishing their showers and heading to class. Inside, the air tasted like bleach, stale dampness, and cheap, aggressive body spray. It was a typical concrete graveyard: rows of iron lockers with peeling dark-blue paint and that godforsaken open shower bay at the far end. No stalls. No curtains. Just the harsh glare of overhead lights that made every shadow on my body unnervingly sharp.
Once I was sure the room was empty, I finally yanked the hoodie over my head. Tangled strands of hair instantly fell over my shoulders, veiling the scar, but I could still feel its weight. I shed the rest of my clothes, leaving them in a heap on the bench by my locker, and ran barefoot across the slick, cold floor to the corner shower head.
The ice-cold water slammed into me, knocking the air right out of my lungs. I pressed my forehead against the cold tile and squeezed my eyes shut. Here, in the silence broken only by the drone of the water, I finally let myself breathe. Pushing my wet hair aside, I carefully rinsed the scar. Deep burgundy, lumpy and jagged—it looked like a raw, unhealed wound against my pale skin. It started at my jaw, coiled around my neck, and slashed diagonally across my shoulder blade, while the other end dragged like a crude stitch across my stomach and side. The tempered glass shards that night had acted like shrapnel, turning my skin into a torn-up map.
I hated this body. I hated mirrors. I hated this place.
I hadn’t even reached for my towel when the locker room door slammed open with a deafening metallic crack.
“Oh, look at that, boys! Our monster’s decided to preen his feathers!” Scott Reynolds walked in first, twirling the keys to his pickup around his finger.
The rest of his crew piled in behind him, flooding the space with noise and the stench of the outdoors.
They swarmed me in seconds. I froze by Bradley’s locker, feeling like a cornered animal. A dozen smartphones shot up. Camera flashes blinded me, capturing every inch of my nakedness—my thin, shivering ribs and the very thing I had fought so desperately to hide.
“Jesus, Frankie, look at that face... I mean, look at that back!” Scott stepped toward me, his face glowing with a kind of primal, twisted excitement. “You really thought you could hide this shit under those greasy locks? We already knew you were a freak—inside and out.”
Before I could even try to cover myself, Scott lunged. He grabbed a fistful of my soaking wet hair and yanked—hard enough to make white spots dance in my eyes—forcing my head back until I was staring straight up at the buzzing fluorescent lights.
“Look at those fucking stitches! It’s like some drunk medical examiner sewed him together in a basement,” one of the guys barked, stepping closer to catch a macro shot of my scar. “Brooks, you don’t even need a Halloween costume, man. Just show up naked—every kid in town will shit themselves. You belong in a goddamn freak show, floating in a jar of formaldehyde until you rot.”
The camera flashes hungrily feasted on the jagged edges of that crimson tissue, which looked almost inflamed under the harsh overhead lights. The scar wasn’t just there—it felt alive with every move I made, stretching and warping the contours of my body. I looked like a crude imitation of a human, something hacked together in a hurry without a shred of mercy.
“Give me my clothes, Scott,” my voice cracked, reduced to a pathetic rasp. I tried to cover my groin, attempting to turn away, but the guys behind me started shoving my back, forcing me to spin under the glare of their lenses.
“Hey, Brooks, can you drop by my brother’s place tonight? He needs a good scare, and I’m pretty sure he’s never seen a nightmare like you before!” someone yelled from the back of the pack, followed by a roar of laughter.
I realized that standing there waiting meant letting them finish me off for good. I lunged forward. No strategy—just raw force. I slammed my shoulder into Scott, catching him off guard, and bolted out of the locker room straight into the hallway.
The chilled air of the school corridor burned my wet skin. My bare heels slapped against the linoleum, drumming out the rhythm of my shame. I ran, shielding myself with my arms, feeling droplets stream down my face—I couldn’t tell if it was the shower water or tears of pure, unadulterated rage.
The hallway wasn’t empty.
Someone was coming toward me. A whole group of them. I froze for a heartbeat, and in that same second, a tomb-like, suffocating silence fell. Then, the world exploded.
That shrill, female laughter hit me in the gut like a physical blow. All I could see were dozens of raised hands holding phones—black rectangles of lenses hungrily drinking in my nakedness. I jerked to the side, trying to hide my back, trying to shield my neck, but the laughter was everywhere. It crawled under my skin, stealing the very air from my lungs.
And then, I saw her. She stood right in the center of the madness. I saw only her face. Cold, flawless, and infinitely distant.
Michelle Morgan.
While the others were choking with delight, filming my escape, she just watched. Her gaze slid slowly down my trembling knees, across my sunken stomach, and locked onto my neck. Right where my darkest secret burned beneath the wet strands of my hair.
Michelle wasn’t laughing. She slowly lowered her eyes, taking in my shaking legs, my thin ribs, and finally, her gaze began its slow, deliberate crawl across my body. She saw everything. The white, lumpy cord across my stomach, the mangled skin on my side, and finally, the thing I had so desperately hidden under my hair—my neck.
She wrinkled her nose. It was the look you’d give a dead, rotting rat found rotting on your doorstep. There wasn’t a single grain of pity in her eyes—only icy, pure disgust. It made me want to claw the very skin off my bones.
Scott burst out of the locker room behind me, breathing hard. He draped an arm around Michelle’s waist with a proprietary air, pulling her close. His voice boomed down the hallway. “So, what do you think of our Frankie, babe? Think he’s earned the lead in a horror flick?”
Michelle looked me dead in the eye.
“Ew...” she exhaled, turning back to Scott with a look of deep suffering on her face. “That is so gross. Get him out of here, Scott. I’m actually gonna puke. It’s... physically repulsing.”
They laughed. The entire hallway filled with that laughter—it dug into my scars deeper than any shards of glass ever could.
I didn’t stay to hear the rest. I ran blindly until I found an empty classroom at the end of the wing. I lunged inside and slammed the bolt home. My legs gave out, and I hit the floor hard, nearly taking the teacher’s desk down with me. Driven by a single instinct—to vanish—I tried to crawl into the cramped space beneath it. It was too tight; my spine cracked painfully against a drawer, the sharp metal edges of the legs dug into my thighs, and there was barely enough room for my head in the dark. My body was slick with cold sweat, my skin was burning, but inside, I had turned to ice.
I wrapped my arms around myself, trying to shrink, trying to hide that deep burgundy, pulsing horror on my body. But the scar felt like it was growing. It pulled at my skin, soaking up every word, every snicker, and that icy, disgusted exhale from Michelle.
Physically repulsing.
I started to sob—silently, because I had no strength left to scream. My body was wracked with heavy, violent shudders. I dug my nails into my own skin, right next to the ridges of the scar, wishing for only one thing: for this desk, this school, and this entire goddamn building to collapse into the abyss right now.
It was so quiet in the empty room that I could hear my own ragged, wheezing breath. I sat there, curled into a ball, naked and completely destroyed. On that day, under a desk at North Hills, the boy who believed that someone could see the human behind the scars died.
This was all that was left. The cramped darkness, the smell of dust, and the echo of her voice that would now play in my head every single night.
