Chapter 6- Evidence
973 Words
Damian's POV
The ink isn’t red.
I know it isn’t. It was blue when she threw it at me. Blue like her cheap pen, blue like the veins in her wrist when she grabbed my collar.
But now it’s red.
And I can’t stop staring at it.
Mrs. Carrow’s voice cuts through the lab. She’s standing in the doorway, the one Shade left open. Her eyes go from my face, to the stain, to the empty room.
“You’re supposed to be in detention. Not…” She waves at the lab. “Whatever this is.”
I want to explain. That Shade Viretti threw ink at me. That she called me by my full name like she knows me. That she says she thinks about me every night.
But my throat’s locked. Because if I open my mouth, I’ll ask the wrong question. Like _“Why does blue look like blood?”_ Or _“Did you know she’s been in my head too?”_
So I just say, “Sorry.”
Mrs. Carrow sighs. “Go home, Virelli. Clean yourself up.”
*Virelli.* Not Damian. Not Mr. Virelli.
Just Virelli.
Like Shade said it.
---
I don’t go home.
I go to the bathroom and scrub the shirt until my knuckles are raw. The ink doesn’t come out. It fades from red to pink to a sick brown, like an old bruise.
I throw the shirt in the trash.
Walk out wearing just my undershirt. It’s June, but the hallway AC makes me shiver. Or maybe it’s the fact that I can still smell her. Cheap shampoo and chemicals and something underneath I can’t name.
Something that smells like trouble.
*She’s leaning against my locker.*
Sketchbook hugged to her chest. Eyeliner smudged. Looking at me like she expected me to come here.
“You threw away the evidence,” she says, nodding at my bare arms. No apology. No _hey_. Just that.
“You stained my shirt,” I shoot back. My voice comes out rougher than I want.
She shrugs. One shoulder, slow. “Now we match. I’ve got stains too.”
She holds out her hand. There’s ink under her fingernails. *Blue.*
Not red.
I stare at her fingers. Then at my trash-can shirt in my head. Then back at her face.
“Why did you say that?” The question tears out of me. “In the lab. That you think about me every night.”
Shade Viretti smiles. It’s not nice. It’s the kind of smile you give before you knock over a king in chess.
“Because I do,” she says again. “Every night I wonder what you’d look like if someone finally made you bleed, Damian Virelli.”
My stomach drops. Again.
She pushes off the locker. Steps so close I can count her eyelashes. Close enough that her cheap shampoo drowns out everything else.
“And now I know,” she whispers. “You look scared.”
She walks away.
Leaves me standing at my locker.
With the smell of her shampoo. With my hands shaking.
With the name _Virelli_ echoing in my head.
Because nobody calls me that.
Nobody except my father.
And he’s been dead for three years.
Shade's POV
I knew he’d throw the shirt away.
Damian Virelli likes things clean. Clean hands, clean records, clean lies. He scrubs at blood like it’s sin.
Too bad for him.
I’m not blood. I’m ink. And ink stains.
I wait by his locker because I want to see it — the moment he realizes I’m under his skin. Literally. The blue under my nails isn’t from the pen I threw at him.
It’s from the one I used last night. To write his name. Over and over. Until the page tore.
_Damian Virelli. Damian Virelli._
He comes out of the bathroom in just his undershirt. His arms are goosebumped from the AC. Or from me. I like thinking it’s from me.
He smells like soap and rage. Good. Rage is better than fear. Rage I can use.
“You threw away the evidence,” I say.
He doesn’t deny it. “You stained my shirt.”
I shrug. Let him see the blue under my nails. Let him think it’s the same ink. It isn’t. But Damian doesn’t know that yet.
Damian doesn’t know a lot of things.
Like why I said his name in the lab. Like why I think about him every night. Like why his father used to call him _Virelli_ too, like it was a sentence, not a name.
He asks me anyway. Voice cracking like a boy’s. “Why did you say that? In the lab. That you think about me every night.”
I smile. The one Mom says makes people uncomfortable. The one that got me sent to three different therapists before they gave up.
“Because I do,” I tell him. “Every night I wonder what you’d look like if someone finally made you bleed, Damian Virelli.”
His face does this thing — it empties out. Like someone pulled the plug.
Good.
I step closer. Close enough to see the pulse in his throat jumping. Close enough to smell the soap he used to wash me off. He didn’t get all of me. He never will.
“And now I know,” I whisper. “You look scared.”
I leave him there. Because that’s the rule. You strike, then you vanish. Leave the wound open. Let it fester.
I walk down the hall counting my steps. One. Two. Three.
At seventeen, I hear him.
Not his voice. His breath. Shaky. Caught.
Like he just realized something.
I don’t turn around.
I already know what he realized.
Nobody calls him _Virelli_.
Nobody except his dead father.
And me.
- Writer
