The Crescent Moon.

The Cafeteria.

~Aria~

The bell hadn’t rung yet, but the cafeteria had started to empty in that slow, unspoken way it always did. The clatter of trays softened, chairs scraped less often, and the smell of warm bread and overcooked pasta began to fade into the background, replaced by the sour tang of ketchup smears and the lemon-zap of cleaning spray. The lunch ladies moved like ghosts behind the counter, their hairnets sagging as they stacked trays with mechanical efficiency. One of them—Dolores, according to her name tag—hummed the same four notes of a song I’d never been able to place, a habit that made the back of my teeth ache.

Marla nudged me with her elbow, her tray already empty except for a single, defiant apple core. She’d taken exactly three bites out of it, leaving the rest to oxidize into a graveyard of wasted fruit. “For the rats,” she’d said earlier, though we both knew the school’s rats were mythic creatures, spoken of but never seen.

“Come on,” she said, jerking her chin toward the exit. “If we don’t leave now, we’ll be stuck behind the stampede.”

I rolled my eyes, but she was right. Lunchtime at our school was like a tide—predictable, relentless, and capable of swallowing you whole if you timed it wrong. The last stragglers always paid the price: freshman clinging to the walls like barnacles, seniors bulldozing through with the confidence of those who’d already survived three years of this. I’d learned to ride the current—stay close to Marla, keep my elbows in, and never, ever stop moving.

We slid our trays into the metal slot with a clank. Dolores didn’t look up. Her hands were red and cracked, the skin around her nails peeling from too much bleach. I wondered if she’d had dreams once, if she’d imagined herself anywhere but here, wiping down tables while teenagers sneered at her meatloaf.

The hallway outside was cooler, the air fresher, though tinged faintly with disinfectant and the musk of wet sneakers. The floor gleamed under the fluorescents, a fake kind of clean that couldn’t hide the gum wads fossilized near the lockers or the scuff marks from last week’s fight between the soccer team and the band kids. Our footsteps echoed, cushioned by the hum of the lights overhead. They buzzed like a trapped fly against glass, a sound so constant you only noticed when it stopped—like now, as they flickered once, twice, before steadying.

We passed a window. Weak winter sunlight spilled across the corridor, painting the linoleum in watery gold. Dust motes floated in the beam, lazy as sleepwalkers. i imagined them as tiny spies, collecting our secrets before dissolving into the cracks in the walls.

Marla kept talking, her voice threading through my thoughts—homework, the quiz, the radio report. The broadcaster’s voice had been too calm when he mentioned the missing dog. Like he was reading a grocery list, not a warning.

“…and then Mrs. Grant said she saw something out by her bins,” Marla said. She tugged at her backpack strap, the frayed threads catching on her chipped nail polish. Black, like always. The same color she’d worn since her parents’ divorce, as if mourning a life she hadn’t gotten to keep. “Could’ve been a raccoon, but she swears it was too big. Said its eyes were glowing.”

“Maybe it was just the streetlight,” I offered.

“Maybe.” But her tone said she didn’t believe it. She chewed her lower lip, a habit she’d picked up when she stopped biting her nails. “You heard about the fox, right?”

I stiffened. “What fox?”

She opened her mouth, but the stairwell door groaned open ahead of us, cutting her off as a pack of juniors shoved past. Their laughter was too loud, the kind that came from pretending you weren’t scared of anything—least of all this place, with its flickering lights and whispers of things that didn’t belong.

The stairwell railing was cold under my fingers, the metal sweating condensation. I traced the dents where generations of students had kicked it, a timeline of rebellion in aluminum. My bag thumped against my hip with each step. Inside it, my unfinished homework whispered accusations, but I ignored it. The fox was louder.

I thought about it again—not the animal, but the idea. A wild thing slipping through the edges. Mrs. Grant’s backyard was a tangle of oaks and ivy, the kind of place where shadows pooled thick enough to drown in. If something was out there, it wouldn’t need glowing eyes to hide.**

By the time we reached the second floor, the hallway was busier. Students leaned against lockers or hurried to class, their phones glowing like tiny altars. Locker 217 had a gum wrapper stuck in its vents, fluttering like a distress signal every time the heat kicked on. A teacher’s voice cut through the noise: “Move it, Rivera. You’re not paid to loiter.”

Our classroom door was propped open with a battered copy of To Kill a Mockingbird.The spine was split, the pages swollen with humidity—like the book had tried to absorb every tear shed over its ending. The smell of dry-erase markers and old paper hit us, undercut by something earthier. Pencil shavings, maybe. Or the ghosts of a thousand yawns.

The room buzzed with pre-class chatter. Desks sat in neat rows, though no one obeyed the seating chart. Mine had initials carved near the edge—J.T. + L.N—a relic of some long-dead romance. I wondered if they’d made it, if they ever thought about this place when they lay awake at night.

Sunlight slanted through the high windows, striping the floor. It was the kind of light that made everything look staged, like we were all actors in a play no one had bothered to name.

I slid into my seat. Marla dropped into hers behind me, still talking as she dug through her backpack. It was a black hole of crumpled receipts and half-dried pens, but she always found what she needed—usually at the last second, like she was punishing the universe for rushing her.

I pulled a pen from my bag’s zipped pocket. The zipper caught, as always, and I wrenched it free with a sound like a gasp.

That’s when Elia leaned over.

“Hey,” he said, voice low. “Got a spare pen?”

I glanced at him. His hair was messy, like he’d run his hands through it too many times. Ink stains dotted his hoodie cuff, a constellation of blue-black that matched the smudge on his thumb.**

“Yeah, hold on.” I dug through my bag. My fingers brushed the folded note he’d passed me last week—the one I still hadn’t answered. The paper was soft at the creases, worn from how often I’d unfolded it.

He waited, elbow on his desk, eyes scanning the room. But his fingers tapped a rhythm on the desktop—tap-tap. Pause. Tap-tap-tap. Morse code for I’m fine, I’m fine.

I handed him the pen. Our fingers brushed, just for a second. His skin was warm, his calluses rough. Guitarist’s hands. I wondered if he’d played the song from the note yet, if he’d practiced it in his room with the door closed, the way I’d imagined.

“Thanks,” he said, already turning away. But not before I caught the flicker in his gaze—something restless, something hungry. Like he was waiting for me to say the thing we both knew I wouldn’t.

The noise swelled as someone told a joke, laughter bursting like fireworks. It died just as fast, smothered by the creak of Mr. Harlow’s chair as he walked in, tie loose, coffee steaming in his chipped World’s Best Dad mug.

I opened my notebook to a blank page. But instead of notes, I drew foxes in the margins, their tails curling around the holes in the paper like they were hiding in the lines.

The fox. The radio. Elia’s fingers against mine. They tangled together in my mind, threads of a day that wasn’t over yet. And beneath it all, a quiet certainty: something was coming. Not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon.