L I R A

The hallway shouldn’t feel this cold. Not with fifty kids shoving past and lockers slamming and someone spraying half a can of body mist like they’re trying to fumigate the place. But the cold slides under my collar anyway. Down my spine. A thin, mean line of air that feels… intentional.

I keep walking. Pretend I don’t feel it. Pretend Ezra’s voice isn’t still stuck in my ears telling me to stay away from the stairwell, just in case. Callen said the same thing. Of course my brain remembers his voice first. Because I’m an idiot.

I pull my jacket tighter even though it won’t help. The cold isn’t weather. It’s something breathing down the back of my neck. At first I think it’s just glare, someone left a water bottle open and it spilled, or maybe it’s some dumb senior prank. But then I see it move.

Actual frost. Threading across the metal of a locker two feet from me. Slow at first, like it’s testing the angle. Then it jerks sideways, like it realized I noticed. I stop. Stupid. I should keep moving, pretend it’s nothing, pretend I didn’t spend last night watching Ezra try to explain away something he couldn’t even look at.

But the frost curves again. A half-letter. Then another. Not a word. Not yet. Like it’s waiting for me to get closer. My chest tightens. No. Not again. Not here. I back up until my spine hits another locker.

A scream cracks the hallway in half. Not a horror-movie shriek. The real kind—sharp, ripped out of someone’s throat because their body didn’t know what else to do. A group of girls near the stairwell scatter like birds. Someone yells for a teacher. Someone else keeps saying, “No, no, no, he was right there, he was RIGHT THERE.”

My stomach flips. The cold behind my ear clicks. Not soft this time. Sharp. Like metal teeth snapping shut. The crowd churns forward, but I can’t make myself move. There’s this horrible feeling that the space where that student was standing is… wrong. Too empty. Like a shape got cut out of the air.

I don’t want to look. I look anyway. There’s nothing there. Not even a backpack dropped on the ground. Just absence. And the air feels thinner around it, like something took a breath on the way out. The frost hits the floor.

Literally hits it—like it drops from the ceiling and splashes into a spreading web across the tiles. Students gasp and jump back. A few laugh like it must be some kind of special effect. But it crawls toward me. Fast. Someone bumps my shoulder. Another kid pushes by me. But the frost doesn’t care about them. It reaches my shoes.

“Stop,” I whisper, because I’m apparently the kind of person who thinks ice listens to reason. The frost jerks sideways, like it actually did hear me, then pulls itself into shape. Thin white scratches on the dark tile. Curved lines. Angled edges.

A number. Then another.

DUE / 2

My throat closes. It feels like the hallway tilts under me. Someone vanished. And the cursed countdown updated like it was waiting for me to witness it. My hands shake so hard I have to tuck them into my sleeves. I can’t breathe right. Everyone around me keeps shouting, calling for teachers, pushing, backing up.

But all I can think is. It changed because I’m here. This thing, whatever it is, started at 3 when it spelled the first message near me.  Now a student is gone.  And the number is 2. Not random. Not coincidence. Not weather or condensation or whatever excuse I fed Ezra and myself.

This is a countdown with my name written under it. I back up until I hit the lockers again. Cold spreads from my spine like something touching me. A shadow cuts through the chaos, and for a split second I think the frost is moving again. But then Callen steps into view, and it’s worse than the frost because my body reacts before my brain catches up.

He’s scanning the hallway like he walked straight into the middle of a battlefield. His jaw tight, eyes sharp, shoulders squared like he’s ready to take a hit. And then he sees me. Something changes in his face.  Barely.  But enough.

He moves fast, shoving past people who don’t even have time to yell at him. His eyes flick down to the frost near my shoes, then back up at me. A muscle jumps in his cheek.

“Lira,” he says, low. Not a greeting. A warning. The frost twitches. I don’t even get a chance to ask what’s happening. The frost lunges—yes, lunges—skittering over the tile like it’s trying to wrap around my ankle.  Callen reaches me first.

His hand clamps around my waist and he pulls me back so hard my breath leaves my body. My chest hits his, heat meeting heat in a snap that feels electric, too bright, too much. I gasp.  He doesn’t let go. The frost skids across the floor where I was standing a second ago. If he hadn’t moved me— I don’t want to finish that thought.

Callen’s breath brushes the side of my face.
“Don’t move,” he murmurs, voice tight, like holding me is costing him something. But he’s holding me anyway. And I’m not pulling away. Not yet. He’s too close.

That’s the first thing. Not the frost, not the screams, not the kid who disappeared three minutes ago. No. My brain, traitorous and useless, zeroes in on the fact that Callen’s breath is touching my cheek like it belongs there.

His hand stays firm on my waist. His other arm braces in front of me like he thinks the frost might try again. And maybe it will. Maybe I should be afraid. But all I can feel is the heat of him. The sharp, stupid thud of my pulse. The way his chest rises against mine like he’s breathing for both of us.

“Lira,” he says again, softer this time.

I look up. I shouldn’t. Because looking up means seeing his eyes, and seeing his eyes means everything inside me tilts. He looks furious and terrified and something else I can’t name. Something that makes my breath stick in my throat.

His nose brushes mine. Barely. A ghost of a touch, accidental or not, I can’t tell. My body freezes, like the frost finally won, like it climbed inside my ribs instead of around my ankles.

Callen’s fingers tighten just a fraction at my waist. That tiny pressure shoots straight through me. I don’t know who leans in first. Maybe both of us. Maybe neither. Maybe it’s just gravity, or shock, or the part of me that’s been pretending not to want this since the night he found me in the stairwell.

My lips part. His do too. It would take nothing to close the distance. One breath. One mistake. I almost do it. God, I almost do. Then the hallway crashes back into focus. Someone shouts my name. A locker slams. The frost on the wall cracks like glass under a hammer.

And I pull away. Too fast. Too obvious. Callen’s hand slips from my waist like he didn’t expect me to let go. His face shutters. He steps back once. Only once. But it feels like he just walked a mile. I turn, still breathless, still shaking, still stupid, and that’s when I see him.

Ezra.

 Standing at the far end of the hallway. His eyes go straight to my face. Then to Callen. Then, god help me—to where Callen’s hand was. His expression doesn’t change. That almost makes it worse. If he yelled, if he looked angry, if he looked anything, I could handle it. But his face goes still. Too still. Like he’s rewriting the moment inside his head and trying to make sense of a version of me he doesn’t recognize.

He doesn’t say a word. He just turns away. Not fast. Not dramatic. Just… gone. Taking something warm with him. My chest caves in. I grip the strap of my bag until my fingers ache. I want to run after him. I want to explain that nothing happened. Except something did. Even if it didn’t touch the air between our mouths, it touched everything else.

I feel sick. Hot and cold at the same time. Like the frost got inside me and started rewiring parts I didn’t consent to. Callen shifts beside me. I don’t look at him. I can’t. If I look, I’ll see everything I nearly let myself fall into.

“Lira..” he starts.

“Don’t.” The word snaps out of me before I can soften it. His jaw flexes. But he nods like he expected that answer. More teachers arrive. Students crowd. Someone cries. Someone insists they saw the missing kid “glitch,” whatever that means. Someone else swears there was a shadow, or a hand, or nothing at all.

A girl near me whispers, “This school is cursed.”  A boy answers, “It’s been cursed.”

I want to scream that they’re right. That the frost is alive. That a number changed because someone vanished and the thing doing the counting can spell our names. But I swallow it. Like always.

My legs feel unstable, but I force myself to walk, pushing past groups, avoiding Callen’s gaze, avoiding the empty space where Ezra stood. I make it four steps before the temperature plummets.

Frost snakes across the nearest wall. This time I don’t pretend it’s nothing. This time I watch every jagged line, every twitching movement, every deliberate scrape of white that carves into the surface like a knife pulled by invisible fingers.

RUN

The letters pulse once, like they’re breathing.  Then they crack apart. Shatter into powder. Gone. My throat closes.

“Okay,” I whisper to no one. “I’m listening.” But the frost isn’t the one answering. The hallway empties around me. Noise fades. The air thickens. The metallic click snaps behind my left ear, so sharp, so close it feels like something brushing my skin.

I spin around.  Nothing. Just cold. Too much cold. Another click. Then a word that isn’t a sound so much as a pressure under my ribs:

Listen.

My breath stops. My heart does something painful. And for the first time, I don’t know who I’m more afraid of losing— Ezra, walking away from me. Or Callen, standing too close. Or myself, pulled into something I can’t outrun.

BLACKOUT…