When star falls

BENEATH THE SKIN

CHAPTER THREE - BENEATH THE SKIN

By the third day of knowing Leo Hale, I knew three things:

He never ate anything, not even the cafeteria’s safest food packaged applesauce.

He could appear and disappear in a hallway faster than anyone I’d ever seen.

He knew more about me than I was comfortable with.

What I didn’t know was why. And that question was becoming harder to ignore. In biology class, I sat two rows behind him, close enough to see how still he was. Not just still like someone paying attention but like he was listening for something else, something outside the room. Like he wasn’t fully there.

When Ms. Carter asked about our dissection project, Leo answered with a calmness that unnerved even her. His voice was low, thoughtful. “There’s more to anatomy than what we see. Everything’s layered. Veins, nerves, instincts.” Instincts? Who even said that during frog dissection? I stared at him a little longer than I meant to, and he must have sensed it, because he turned slightly, just enough to glance at me. His eyes met mine gray, unreadable and I looked away too fast.

Rachel elbowed me. “Girl, you are so into him.”

I shook my head. “I don’t trust him.”

“Which means you’re into him.”

“He’s weird.”

Rachel smirked. “Maya. Look at us. We’re in a small town that thinks chain restaurants are exotic. We need weird.”

But I wasn’t sure Leo Hale was the good kind of weird. I wasn’t sure he was even the human kind. The woods behind Greystone Hollow High were dense and old, full of mossy stones and whispering leaves. Most students avoided them. There were stories, of course creatures, shadows, things with claws but every town had those. Except here, they didn’t feel like stories. They felt like memories. I didn’t plan to follow him again. It just happened.

He left campus through the fence gap behind the gym, moving fast and quiet, like he’d done it a hundred times before. I stayed back, careful with each step. Branches tugged at my sleeves. The wind grew colder the deeper I went. I found him in a small clearing I didn’t even know existed. He was standing still, head tilted back toward the canopy. Listening. Like he was waiting for something. Then he moved. So fast it was almost a blur. One moment he was still, the next he was crouching by a tree trunk, fingers pressed into the dirt like he could read it. He whispered something not words, just sounds low and rhythmic. I took a step back. And stepped on a twig. Snap. Leo turned instantly. “Who’s there?”

I froze. His eyes found me in the shadows before I could duck behind the tree.

“Maya?” I stepped out slowly, heart hammering.

“I wasn’t following you,” I lied.

He arched a brow. “You just happened to wander into the most isolated part of the woods?”. “You’re not the only one who needs space,” I shot back. He studied me for a long beat, then relaxed just enough to look less like a threat and more like a very tired statue.

“You shouldn’t be here,” he said quietly.

“Why?”

He didn’t answer. Instead, he walked past me toward the path, motioning for me to follow. “Come on. It’s getting dark.” That wasn’t true the sun was still high. But I didn’t argue. We walked in silence, boots crunching over leaves, birds chirping faintly overhead.

Then I asked, “What were you doing back there?”

He glanced at me. “Thinking.”

“Looked like more than thinking.”

“I think hard.”

I rolled my eyes. “You’re avoiding the question.”

Leo’s jaw tightened. “Maybe you’re asking the wrong ones.”

There it was again him turning the conversation inside out before I could get anywhere. “You’re not like other people,” I said carefully. “You move differently. You hear things no one else does. You knew about my car before I told anyone. How?” He didn’t stop walking, but his pace slowed.

“I’m observant.”

“That’s not it.”

He didn’t reply. I stepped in front of him, forcing him to pause.

“I’m not stupid, Leo. Something’s going on.”

For a moment, he just looked at me. And I wondered truly wondered if he might finally tell me. But instead, he said, “Curiosity’s dangerous in the Hollow, Maya.”

I narrowed my eyes. “Are you threatening me?”

“No,” he said, voice soft. “I’m warning you.”That should’ve scared me.But it didn’t. Not because I wasn’t scared. I was. Just not of him.

Later that night, I stood at my bedroom window, looking out at the woods. A part of me expected to see him again Leo, alone under the trees, listening to something only he could hear. I pressed a hand to the glass. Something had shifted. Not just in the town, but in me.

A part of me was waking up. And whatever Leo Hale was hiding I had a feeling it was tied to whatever I was becoming. I heard voices downstairs my mom and someone else. A man. Their voices low, urgent. I crept to the top of the stairs.

“I saw her near the woods again,” my mom was saying. “She’s getting too close.”

“She has to know eventually,” the man replied. “She has the blood.”

Not just “blood.” The blood.

I backed away before I could hear more. Everything in me wanted to run downstairs and demand the truth. But I already knew they wouldn’t give it to me. Not yet. Maybe not ever. But Leo might. And if he didn’t want to tell me… I’d just have to figure it out myself.