wings ↣ w. worthington iii

0. prologue ✓

"Guys... where the hell is Lilli?" Sam asked, looking around the packed school courtyard for his friend. He stood up in his chair, his eyes trailing from table to table, but it was to no avail. He couldn't see Lilli anywhere in the courtyard, even though she had been sitting at his table just moments before.

"Good question," Emily replied, furrowing her brows as Sam slowly sat back down. She sat up straighter to see better, but, as with Sam, she couldn't find her best friend anywhere. "She was right here..."

Lilliana Smith had been peacefully eating lunch with her friends when she had accidentally made eye contact with Josh, that hot guy in that popular clique. She'd panicked and smiled shyly, forgetting that she'd been eating a salad. He'd laughed, and Lilli had started to laugh with him when she realized he was laughing at her, not with her. In horror, she'd touched her teeth and realized she'd had a piece of her salad right in between her two front teeth.

Then Lilli had just... disappeared.

"Very funny. I wish I could disappear right now," Lilli's miserable voice said from her spot on the picnic table. Two sets of wide eyes shifted to where her voice had came from, but there was nothing there except air. Her seat was empty. "You guys are good," Lilli remarked, noting how well her friends seemed to look right through her. She put her elbow on the table and rested her chin in her palm as she stirred her salad with her fork in misery. She'd lost her appetite and wanted nothing more than to melt into the soft grass.

"Did you hear something?" Emily asked, turning to look at Sam with a bewildered look on her face. Sam nodded as he continued to stare right through Lilli. Lilli sighed.

"Okay, you guys can stop now. It's not really that funny," Lilli frowned, her gray eyes flickering up from her salad and looking between her friends. Her frown deepened as they continued to stare right through her with gobsmacked looks on their faces. They were being really convincing— they should try out for the school musical. "Okay, that was fun, but let's just stop now, please."

"Dude... I'm freaked out," Emily said to Sam. Her face had paled considerably and her lower lip was trembling. "Lilli, come on, you're scaring us."

Confusion washed over Lilli. How was she scaring them? They were the ones pretending she was invisible. "What are you talking about?" Lilli asked, setting down her fork. Sam and Emily both jumped at the sudden noise, their gazes locking onto the fork.

"Oh, my God. She died and became a ghost," Emily whispered, her wide eyes not moving from the fork. She sounded terrified.

"What the hell?" Lilli asked. "I'm not invisible!" She looked down at herself to prove it, saying, "Look, see? I'm right... here..." her voice trailed off as she stared in shock down at her body.

Her whole body had turned translucent and looked like a watery mirror image of what it was supposed to look like. She was blurry around the edges, making it seem like she was melting into her surroundings. She could see the wooden picnic bench underneath her like it was under a few inches of pool water.

Lilli's breath hitched in her throat as she felt her arms. They were still there; she could still feel them. But they looked so strange. Lilli's breathing started to quicken. What was happening to her? Had she died? Was she a ghost?

"Lilli?" Emily asked nervously. Lilli's head snapped up to look at her, but she was looking straight through Lilli.

And that's when it hit Lilli—neither of her friends could see her.

The second Lilliana Smith disappeared, she knew she was in a lot of trouble. Even if no one could see her. Especially if no one could see her.