8
892 Words
Emma’s POV
There are names people whisper like curses. Names too heavy for gossip, too dangerous to be repeated in daylight.
At Blackhurst, that name is Paige.
And now it’s stitched into the inside of Jace’s blood-stained shirt on my bed.
I don’t ask the obvious question, not out loud. Not yet. I do what every smart girl does when she’s afraid of the truth.
I listen.
The next day, I kept my head down and my ears open. What I heard was never said directly, but it circled around me like smoke — impossible to catch, impossible to ignore.
“She was his girlfriend.”
“Not just any girl. She was the girl.”
“She went missing.”
“No one talks about her.”
Some say she dropped out. Some say she overdosed. Some say she’s dead. But the one thing they all agree on?
She was Jace Kingston’s, and after she vanished, he was never the same.
I don’t know which rumor scares me more — that she died, or that she didn’t.
That night, I walked past the art studio on my way back from the library. I didn’t expect Elias to be there, but he was.
Brush in hand, charcoal on his fingers, sleeves rolled up. It should’ve made me feel at ease.
It didn’t.
Because the second he looked at me, I saw it — not warmth, not familiarity, but concern.
He stood. “Emma.”
“Hey,” I said quietly.
He studied me like I was a puzzle someone had put back together the wrong way. “You look like you haven’t slept.”
“I haven’t.”
“You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Maybe I have.”
He stepped closer. “You’re still seeing him.”
I didn’t respond.
Elias’s jaw tightened. “Emma… there’s a reason people avoid the Kingstons.”
“Rumors aren’t truth.”
“No,” he said. “But sometimes they’re warnings.”
I folded my arms. “You think Jace is dangerous.”
“I know he is.”
“You don’t know him.”
“I knew her.”
My breath caught. “Paige?”
Elias nodded slowly. “She was my friend. And she’s gone.”
“What happened to her?”
“She got involved with him. Started acting strange. Paranoid. Said someone was following her. Said she was being watched.”
“And then?”
“One night, she didn’t show up to class. Never came back to her dorm. Her stuff was still there. Her ID. Her laptop. Everything except her phone.”
My chest tightened.
“No one filed a missing person report,” Elias said. “No investigation. Just… silence.”
“Why?”
“Because when it’s the Kingstons, people forget how to speak.”
I didn’t sleep that night either.
Every creak in the walls sounded like a warning. Every shadow felt like it had eyes. But I stayed in my room, curled up with my laptop open and my hand resting against the cold outline of the bullet Jace left behind.
I should’ve walked away.
I should’ve listened to Elias.
But I couldn’t.
Because something deeper than fear was growing inside me now, a need to understand why a name no one speaks could make someone like Jace break.
And why someone wanted me to find her.
The thumb drive appeared in my locker the next morning.
No name. No note. Just a plain black stick, barely the size of my finger, tucked between my books like it belonged there.
I didn’t tell anyone.
I waited until the campus library emptied out around midnight, locked myself in a computer booth, and plugged it in.
The screen blinked once.
Then flickered.
Then played.
Security footage.
Timestamped from last year.
A girl. Slim. Dark hair. Wide eyes.
She walked quickly, glancing over her shoulder.
Her hands were shaking.
I couldn’t hear her, but I didn’t need to. Her fear was visible.
Behind her, just out of reach, a black car crept into view.
No license plate.
No headlights.
It followed slowly, like it had all the time in the world.
I pressed pause.
Zoomed in.
My heart stopped.
I’d seen that car before.
Last night. Parked across from my dorm. Engine running. Windows tinted.
I thought it was a rideshare.
I thought I was being paranoid.
But now I wasn’t sure.
I rewound. Played it again.
The girl’s face tilted up, caught in the camera glare for just a second.
Paige.
I knew it was her.
I didn’t know how.
I just did.
I left the library shaking. My phone buzzed three times. I didn’t look.
The campus was dead silent.
Every sound felt wrong. Every rustle felt like it had a name.
I made it to my dorm and locked the door twice. I shoved a chair against it out of instinct.
Then I sat down on the floor, thumb drive still in my hand, and whispered to the room.
“Why me?”
No answer.
Only silence.
Only heat rising in my chest.
Only the name Paige burned into my thoughts like a brand.
And in the darkness, behind the safety of a locked door, I knew something I couldn’t un-know.
Whatever happened to Paige… was starting to happen to me.
- Writer
