The Lost Girls || Bbangsaz

IV

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I wrapped my hand around the front-door handle, my fingers tingling against the grooves in the metal like a half-remembered dream. "I can't do this."

"You can." Dani straightened my shoulders and pushed against my lower back, jutting my chest out. "Act like you belong here, and no one will question it." She pulled open the other door and passed through with her head held high.

Haerin followed her inside, and I brought up the rear. The halls of Glen River West still smelled like Lysol and pencil shavings, but the metal detectors were new. I eyed them as a sickness rolled through my stomach. The same school, but in a lot of ways, not the same.

Dani's heels clicked against the cement floors. Haerin dragged her nails along the lockers. They'd been mud brown in my day but had since been painted red, the color dry and faded. A whole generation had come and gone since I'd last been here. The remnants of whom we'd been lingered in the old brick walls and dusty trophy cases.

Second period was still in session, but Haerin and Dani had been doing recon all week and timed our arrival perfectly. The bell rang the moment we hit the senior hall. Even in the chaos of students rushing to their next classes, they gave us wide berth. As if the three of us were rocks in a rapid river, splitting the flow of the tide.

This place fit wrong, like an itchy wool sweater a size too small. I scratched at my neck, rolling my shoulders to shake off a feeling that didn't really exist.

Haerin leaned in closer to me and pointed to a pretty girl with shoulder-length black hair and a splash of freckles across her nose.

"There's Hanni. Follow her to her next class."

"What are you going to be doing?" I asked.

"Dealing with Frankie." She jerked her chin toward a bulky guy I'd recognize anywhere. He had terrible bangs and dark hair that curled just past his collar, a popular style in the decade he'd been turned. His thick eyebrows hung low over his eyes. The nostrils of his wide, flat nose flared as he caught sight of Haerin.

I spun around before his slow gaze could move toward me. If Frankie roamed these halls, Elton couldn't be far behind. I wasn't ready to deal with Elton yet. I said l'd give killing him some thought, but that didn't mean I wanted to see him, talk to him, or think about him in a concrete sense.

With my orders given, and no idea where else to go, I followed Hanni to her next class. She wore a thin sweater with red, navy, and gray stripes, and I counted the colors down the curve of her spine.

Four navy, four gray, five red.

I'd gotten so caught up in the ridiculous game to distract myself, I ran into her back when she stopped in front of a door. "I'm so sorry."

She turned her head, the side of her check resting against the contour of her shoulder peeking out from the wide neckline of her sweater. She responded with something I couldn't hear because her smile, full and without reservation, had knocked me back a step. Bee-stung lips turned up at the corner gave her the look of being mid laugh. She had a straight row of teeth, minus a slight overlap on her bottom front tooth, and the imperfection made it all the more perfect. If we'd met in these same halls a generation earlier, I would've done everything in my power to sit at her lunch table. She had a certain kind of magnetism.

It surprised me that Elton went for her. If she went missing, people would notice, the way they'd notice if the sun blinked out.

     He didn't bother with the bright girls, the ones who had their own gravitational orbit. Far easier to turn the girls no one would miss.