The Lost Girls || Bbangsaz

V

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It had been decades since I'd wandered these halls, yet I could still find my way to the lunchroom. Hanni and Elton probably took their lunches outside or off campus, but it was a place to start. I turned a corner in the hall and a door shot open. Someone grabbed my arm, pulling me inside. Before I could scream, they clamped a hand over my mouth.

"It's me," Dani said. She stood inside a darkened and empty classroom that held only a scarred wooden desk, a whiteboard, and gray walls. "Where have you been?"

"Haerin told me to follow Hanni to class."

"And?" Dani leaned toward me a bit, anticipation vibrating off her skin.

"I'm in."

After what Elton had said about me, and the way I'd been able to evaluate our relationship outside his influence, I likely would've eventually agreed to Dani and Haerin's plans to kill him, anyway. It was the only way to be completely free of him. I told myself that Hanni wouldn't have any bearing on my decision, but when I saw flashes of myself in her, I understood why Dani and Haerin wanted us to meet. She was one of us. A lost girl who still had time to find herself, and she deserved the chance we never got.

Dani blew out a breath. "You have no idea how happy that makes me. We need you."

"Don't get too excited. I had no instruction on what to do with Hanni—thanks. Now she doesn't trust me, either." I felt a twinge of regret and brushed it off. I liked Hanni. Haerin and Dani had been correct in having me meet her, but she was still one of the living. I didn't need her to like me or want to be my friend. I just needed to keep her alive..

"Give it time." Dani patted my arm. "She'll come around."

"And if she doesn't?"

Dani studied me for a few beats, her gray eyes darkening to the color of choppy lake water. I could see her mentally weighing how much to tell me. "Then we'll have to act faster."

I didn't appreciate the secrets or coded language. If she truly needed me to finish Elton, she owed me the full story. "When are you going to tell me everything?"

"As soon as I know everything. No sense in making you worry over theories." When I crossed my arms with a huff, she squeezed my shoulder. "Haerin has Frankie right now. If she's successful with him, we'll have more information today."

"I want to know everything or I'm out."

"Understood. I promise you the full story once we return home." Dani hopped up on the desk, crossed her legs, and leaned back on her hands. "How does it feel being back here?"

"I don't like it." I pulled on the cap sleeves of my dress, as if the fabric was trying to squeeze the life out of me. "It feels wrong. Like we shouldn't be here."

I couldn't explain the sensation that had been scratching at me since we walked through these doors, similar to the way my skin used to feel after a sunburn, tight and itchy. At first, I thought it was old memories, a sense of mourning for my previous life. But that wasn't it. This wasn't an emotion I could put my finger on. It was more like being shoved in a thousand directions at once.

Dani held my gaze, the decades passing like shadows in her eyes.

"It's time."

I looked around. "It's time for what?"

She shook her head, her shoulders bowing under the weight of whatever she'd been carrying for nearly seventy years. "It's time, that makes us feel wrong in this place. It pushes at us, tries to push us out, because it knows we don't belong here."