I woke up to my phone buzzing against my face like an overly enthusiastic wasp.
6:47 a.m.
I was approximately twelve minutes away from dying in my sleep, but no—technology had other plans.
Raven:
> "You survived the night or nah?"
I stared at it for a second, brain lagging like Windows XP booting up in 2025.
Me:
> "Barely. I coughed twice and saw a shadow figure. Might've been the cat. Might've been death."
Raven:
> "Nice. I saw a ghost in my hallway. Either that or my mom before coffee."
Okay. So this is how we're starting the day: ghost moms and sleep paralysis demons. I could work with that.
I dragged myself out of bed like a depressed Victorian child. Shirt twisted around my ribs. Hair doing a weird devil horn thing. I looked like the kind of person you'd see in a true crime documentary reenactment but blurrier and sadder.
Downstairs, Dad was still passed out in the recliner. ESPN blaring. A pizza box balanced on his stomach like a tragic paper tombstone.
I grabbed a slice. Cold. Greasy. Perfect.
Back in my room, I stared at myself in the mirror. Pale. Tired. Slightly possessed. Basically Timothée Chalamet if he gave up.
Then I remembered—school.
Right. The place where trauma goes to be ignored.
I threw on a hoodie that probably had ketchup trauma and mascara stains from 2022. Grabbed my bag. Tried to mentally prepare for the war zone that is public education.
Right before heading out, my phone buzzed again.
Raven:
> "See you at school, ghost boy."
Me:
> "Prepare for awkward eye contact and emotionally constipated vibes."
Raven:
> "So, just another day then?"
I grinned.
For the first time in a long time, school didn't feel like a punishment.
Just a mild inconvenience with fluorescent lighting and a high chance of public humiliation.
I walked into school like I was entering a crime scene. Which, to be fair, wasn't that far off.
The halls smelled like puberty and floor wax, and every fluorescent light buzzed like it had beef with humanity. I kept my head down, hoodie up, earbuds in—but of course, my luck is cursed. You can't walk into a building where half the population's addicted to drama and expect to be invisible forever.
Especially not after The Bridge Thing.
The rumors had already started. I heard whispers as I passed by:
"She was crying."
"He grabbed her."
"I think they kissed or something."
"My cousin said she had a knife."
A knife.
Jesus. Next thing they'd say I proposed marriage and we jumped into the river for a The Notebook cosplay.
I tried not to let it get to me. Tried to stay chill. But it felt like every eye was made of judgment and every whisper was a dagger dipped in high school bullshit.
Then came Jason, AKA the human equivalent of a concussion.
"Yo, Eli," he shouted across the hall, walking toward me like he was about to bro-hug me and steal my soul.
I sighed. "Jason. What fresh idiocy are you bringing into my life today?"
He grinned like a toddler who just learned a new cuss word.
"You and that new goth chick, huh? Heard you caught her mid-suicide like some sad-boy superhero."
I blinked at him.
"That's... not even remotely okay."
"What? I'm just saying, if I knew being emotionally unstable got you girls like that, I'd have been depressed sooner."
"Jason," I said slowly, "you sound like the deleted scenes of 13 Reasons Why—but worse."
He laughed, totally unfazed. I swear he runs on protein powder and zero empathy.
"She's hot though. Like, in a spooky way. Bet she bites."
I clenched my jaw. Not because I was, like, suddenly knight-in-shining-armor invested—but there was something about the way he said it. Like she was a punchline. Like her pain was a costume.
"Fuck off," I said, and walked past him before I did something heroic and suspension-worthy.
He whistled behind me. "Ooooh, someone's got a dark princess now."
I kept walking. Fast. Angry.
By the time I reached my locker, my pulse was tap-dancing in my ears.
Then—of course—she showed up.
Raven.
Black hoodie. Smudged eyeliner. Headphones around her neck like they were armor. She leaned against the lockers like she'd been summoned by the power of sarcasm and moonlight.
"Hey," she said.
I blinked. "Did you teleport?"
"No. I exist outside of linear time."
I smirked. "Cool. Same."
She raised an eyebrow. "You good?"
"Jason said you probably bite."
Her mouth curled. "I do. But only idiots."
"Good. I gave him rabies with my mind."
We stood there in silence for a second. Kids still watching. Whispering. But I didn't care as much now. She was here. And somehow that made it suck less.
"Wanna skip lunch later?" she asked casually, like she was asking if I liked grilled cheese.
"Where would we go?"
She shrugged. "Anywhere but here."
I thought about it.
Then nodded. "Yeah. Let's vanish."
Skipping lunch sounded like some rebellious, Ferris Bueller-level shit. In reality? It just meant ducking out through the back hallway while the lunch monitors pretended to care about their minimum wage jobs.
We didn't exactly sprint out of there—we just existed with intent. Intent to disappear. Intent to not eat mystery meat while being stared at like we were the school's newest rom-com disaster.
We ended up behind the gym, near the loading dock. The kind of place where broken vending machines go to die and pigeons hold mafia meetings.
Raven sat on an overturned milk crate like she belonged there—like some cryptid queen of cracked concrete and discarded Doritos bags.
"This is… scenic," I said, taking a seat on a beat-up metal bin that probably had tetanus.
She smirked. "I like it. No cheerleaders. No cafeteria food pretending to be food. Just mild biohazard and the smell of failed dreams."
"You say that like it's romantic."
She shrugged. "Romance is dead. This is just postmortem affection."
I let out a half-laugh, half-sigh. "That sounds like an album title. 'Postmortem Affection.' Track one: 'My Therapist Blocked Me.'"
"Track two," she said, "is 'I Found God in a Walmart Parking Lot.'"
We both cracked up. That kind of laughter that bursts out fast and messy, like we forgot how much we needed it.
Then the quiet came.
But not the awkward kind.
The kind where the silence feels like it belongs. Like it's not empty—it's just waiting.
Raven broke it first. "So… what are people saying?"
I looked down at my shoes. "Depends. Some think we're in love. Others think you tried to kill me. Jason thinks you're a vampire and I'm your emotional blood bag."
She laughed, but it was thin. Hollow.
"Cool. Love that for us."
"You okay?" I asked, voice softer now.
She picked at the frayed edge of her hoodie sleeve. "Not really. But I wasn't before either, so it's not a plot twist."
I nodded. "Yeah. Same."
We sat there, shoulders not touching but closer than before.
"I don't get why people think it's romantic," she said. "The bridge thing."
"Because people are fucking weird," I muttered. "They see a moment of actual pain and turn it into a love story because it's easier to digest."
"Exactly," she said, eyes sharp. "They don't know shit about me. About how heavy that moment was. They just want a headline. 'Sad girl meets sad boy. They save each other. The end.'"
"Too bad healing's not cute," I said. "Or linear. Or TikTokable."
She looked at me, really looked. "You ever think about doing it?"
I didn't answer right away.
Then: "Yeah. Sometimes. Not always in, like, a big dramatic way. More like… if I just disappeared, would anyone actually notice? Or would my mom just bitch about the laundry I didn't fold?"
She nodded slowly. "That's the scariest part. Not dying. Just being... replaceable."
"Shit," I said. "That hit harder than it should've."
"Sorry," she said. "I say depressing shit like other people make small talk."
"I like it," I replied. "Small talk is the devil."
She smiled a little. "Guess that makes us hellbound."
We sat like that for a while. Not saying anything else. Just being.
And somehow, that felt more real than anything I'd done in weeks.
Art class was the only period where I didn't actively want to shove a crayon into my jugular. Probably because the teacher, Mr. Evans, looked like he escaped a Fleetwood Mac tour in the '70s and never emotionally returned. He wore paint-splattered Doc Martens and always smelled vaguely of sage and existential dread.
Raven and I walked in together, and the room practically tilted from the stares.
Someone whispered, "There they are," like we were fucking urban legends.
"Should've brought fog machines," I muttered.
Raven deadpanned, "Or garlic, since apparently I'm undead now."
We sat down at the back table, away from the overachievers painting still lifes of sad fruit and emotional trauma.
Mr. Evans announced we'd be starting a new unit on "emotional landscapes." Whatever that meant.
Then he dropped the nuclear bomb.
Group projects.
Kill me.
"Pick a partner," he said, sipping from a thermos that may or may not have contained whiskey. "Someone you connect with emotionally. Someone who gets your inner chaos."
Everyone immediately turned to their friends. Meanwhile, Raven and I were already stuck in what I guess was an unspoken trauma marriage.
She looked at me. "Guess it's fate."
I shrugged. "Could be worse. Could be partnered with Madison. She'd try to turn my depression into a glitter collage."
"Oh God," Raven gagged. "With inspirational quotes in Comic Sans."
We shuddered in sync.
Mr. Evans handed out giant sketch pads. "Your first task," he said, "is to draw each other's mental state. Without using words. Use color, shape, space. Don't be literal. Be ugly. Be real."
I swear I saw one freshman start crying on the spot.
I glanced at Raven, who already had her charcoal pencil in hand like a weapon.
We got to work.
At first, it was quiet—just the scratch of pencils and the occasional muttered "shit" when something went wrong.
Then, the incident happened.
We both reached for the same red pastel at the exact same time.
Our fingers brushed.
It was literally nothing. A blink of skin. A half-second of contact.
But I felt it.
Like a goddamn spark.
I yanked my hand back like I'd touched a hot stove.
Raven raised an eyebrow. "You good?"
"Yeah. Just… static. Or my soul trying to crawl out of my fingernails. One of those."
She snorted. "Been there."
We kept drawing.
Mine was chaotic, jagged lines circling a black hole in the center. Her's was a crooked house floating in space, bleeding out from the corners. It looked… familiar. Like the one she sent me.
When class ended, we sat back and looked at what we made. I felt exposed. Like she'd seen something in me I hadn't meant to show.
Raven just nodded. "I like yours."
"Yours makes me want to cry and punch drywall."
"Good. That's the vibe."
Then Mr. Evans came over, looked at our pages, and whispered, "Holy shit," like he wasn't expecting teenagers to hit that hard before lunch.
He gave us an extension on the project. "You two are… working through some stuff," he said, as if that wasn't obvious.
As we packed up, Raven touched my arm—just briefly.
"Thanks for not being scared of my mess," she said.
I wanted to say something cool, something profound.
But all I managed was: "It's kind of my natural habitat."
She smiled at that.
And for once, I didn't feel like a complete failure of a human being.