Chapter 1

      I noticed her about halfway through my first year of high school. I was meandering in the hallways, trying to find any excuse to not get to class early when I felt the hair on the back of my neck stand up. The beige halls are adorned with all manner of banners and awards for school spirit while doors to various classrooms dart the walls.

      Looking the opposite way, I find a girl staring into her locker. Well, that is the impression she wanted to give. But I could tell, she hasn’t moved in a dozen minutes. She’s kept her attention laser-focused on one thing the entire time: me.

      She’s petite, hardly more than five feet tall. She wears an adorable bob-cut, tapering off just under her chin. She seems to finally notice I’ve caught her as she quickly runs her slender fingers through her silky, shiny, auburn hair before closing her locker and marching off to class. She pays me no mind as she passes, although I am now the one watching her every move.

      And so we remain, for months. I never approach her, and she never approaches me. However, near the end of the semester, I noticed she definitely carried more sway to her hips.

      The real shock came when she wound up sitting behind me in the next semester’s classes--all of them. It was rare for a single person to have even a couple of classes changed, let alone all seven of them.

      It was hard, at first, concentrating on the blackboard. The dreary lights lead to a sleepy atmosphere as the teacher droned on about this or that. I felt my eyelids growing heavier as the monotonous lecture continued, and I stopped fighting the urge to rest.

      A small shaking woke me, and I came face-to-face mere inches from the girl. In a panicked state, I jumped back and fell out of my chair. This was the first time we had ever been so close. A small jingle fell from her lips. “Are you all right?” she asked. I had never clearly heard her voice before. It was quiet and higher-pitched than I’d imagined. Her brown eyes twisted a knot in my stomach, my throat clenched, and my heartbeat increased in thunderous increments. She gave a small, cute tilt of her head and held her arm out to help me up. “Rose, right?”

      I smirked. “As if you don’t know, Kay.”

      A blush crept across her cheeks before she seemed to remember why she’d woken me. “School is over.”

      “No one else bothered to wake me up? What assholes.”

      Kay points to herself, earning a laugh from me, and I tell her I meant everyone else were the assholes. My stomach growled. Nervously I rub it, and mention her grabbing food with me as a thank you. She was reticent at first, seemingly afraid of finally closing the gap between us. It was then that I knew I would have to be the one to push us closer.

      I want to say this was the beginning of a long line of evil, but evil had found its way to me long before I was even aware of Kay. Evil plans in advance, and it came in a beautifully sadistic package.

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