The day was ordinary. Too ordinary.
A breeze slipped past her on the way to class, brushing her hair into her face. Someone's coffee burned her nose as they passed, another girl laughed too loud at something dumb, and her boots tapped evenly against the cracked pavement outside the Humanities building.
This was her new normal.
Beth didn't like the word. It felt wrong in her mouth.
Normal was what people used when they were trying to pretend nothing ever happened. Like slapping paint over a crime scene. The "Landlord Special".
She shifted her backpack higher up her shoulder and pulled her hoodie tighter around her face. A bruise still bloomed across her jaw, pale yellow and soft purple now, like a watercolored reminder.
New normal, she thought bitterly.
She thought about the alleyway again.
Tico. That smug little bastard with his too-tight jeans and his sleazy laugh and the gang colors stitched into his sleeves. He'd smiled like he thought he couldn't be touched. Like the world owed him something and he could take it without consequence.
She remembered the moment the knife slid in—quick, quiet, efficient. Brandon had been there, watching. A ghost in the shadows.
She hadn't needed him, but he'd insisted. Said she needed a target, a purpose, a rule set.
She'd gone along with it, for now.
But God… that rush. The way Tico's last breath clung to the air like steam on glass. The way her heartbeat drummed in her throat. That was real. That was something.
Even with Brandon hovering like some moralistic gargoyle.
Beth chuckled to herself, low under her breath. She passed two sorority girls who shot her a glance. She didn't care.
She remembered what she'd said at the club meeting.
"We're dating."
She'd meant it to be a jab, a joke. A way to shut Liv up and maybe mess with Brandon a little.
The look on his face had been worth it. Like he'd just tasted something sour but didn't know how to spit it out.
It was fun.
Not because she actually wanted to date him.
That was ridiculous.
It was because it mattered to him.
That made him different from Jamal.
Jamal had understood her. Had seen her.
They'd been twisted in the same way, wired wrong but aligned. Their bond had been one of shared darkness. A secret. A sickness.
Brandon, though…
Brandon looked at her like he wanted to fix her.
She hated that.
She liked it.
She wasn't sure.
She sat under the same tree she always did, her back against the bark, her journal resting open on her knees. A few names had been scribbled out. Others had been circled.
None of them felt right. Not now.
Her pen hovered over a blank line.
She didn't write anything.
Later, she walked past the library steps and saw Brandon talking to some freshman girl. He wasn't flirting. He never flirted. He had this way of looking like he was listening too closely, like everything the other person said might be a secret confession.
It unnerved people.
Beth smirked. She kept walking.
Back in her dorm, the light from the window spilled across her desk, warming the wood but not the room. Ashes—the damn cat that had somehow moved in without her permission—was curled on her bed, tail twitching, eyes half-lidded.
She meowed once, lazy and indifferent.
Beth tossed her bag onto the floor and flopped into her desk chair.
She stared at the ceiling for a long while. Her thoughts were loud today. Too loud.
Tico.
Brandon.
That night.
The knife in her hand.
The rush.
The stillness after.
She leaned forward, resting her chin in her palm. Her fingers drummed against the desk.
She hadn't felt guilty.
She'd felt… right.
Brandon had asked her how it felt. She hadn't answered him then. But the truth was, it felt clean. Like pressure being released from a pipe that was about to burst.
And for the first time in weeks, she hadn't woken up in a sweat.
No dreams of blood. No flashes of Jamal's face behind the Ghostface mask.
Her heart skipped.
Jamal.
Her breath caught.
She hadn't thought about him. Not since the night Brandon saved her. Not even once.
She sat up straighter, eyes wide.
How?
How had she forgotten him?
The boy who'd started it all. The one who whispered in her ear that the world was broken and the only way to live in it was to kill the ones who broke it first.
The one who wore the mask with her.
Her partner. Her lover. Her co-conspirator.
Dead. Slaughtered by some other faceless psycho with something to prove.
And she hadn't thought of him. Not even when the blood hit her shoes.
Beth stood, suddenly restless. She paced the room once, twice, then stopped at the window.
The quad was lit in sunset gold. People walked, laughed, lived. Like nothing had happened. Like there wasn't a silent war being waged in the shadows.
She exhaled sharply.
What did it mean? That she'd forgotten Jamal?
Did it mean she was healing? Moving on? Or was she just replacing him with Brandon?
No. No, that wasn't it.
Brandon wasn't a replacement.
He was… a reflection. A cracked mirror.
Something that showed her who she could've been if things had gone just a little differently.
And maybe that was worse.
Beth turned from the window and flopped onto the bed beside Ashes. The cat rolled over and pressed against her arm.
She didn't push her away.
She just stared at the ceiling again.
And for the first time since Jamal's death, she let herself feel the absence.
Not the pain. Not the rage.
Just the absence.
It was quieter than she expected.