See How They Run (Nightmares on Lull Lane #4)

Chapter 1

The morning air bites against my skin, sharp enough to wake but not sharp enough to matter. I stand at the edge of the curb, staring up at Wisteria High like it’s a cathedral built just for me.

Red brick, tall windows, banners snapping in the breeze - all of it waiting. Waiting for me to step inside and turn the day into something worth remembering.

Because today is not any day. Today I pull a thread and watch a girl’s life unravel, and the quiet exhale in my chest is not relief; it’s anticipation.

My lips curve. I savor the weight of the moment, the way it swells like a held breath. Students trickle through the front doors, their chatter spilling out in waves. They don’t know what’s coming. Not yet.

I push through the glass doors, knowing every single pair of eyes is going to be on me, just like always. As I strut past, they part ways, giving me space to truly glide.

The lobby lights turn my reflection into a haloed apparition as I pass the glass trophy case, and I don’t need to look to know my hair is immaculate, my posture sublime and my bone structure worthy of a literal goddess.

Kass peels herself off the wall near the attendance office as if she’s been there all morning. She always waits somewhere. She has lips like a valentine, and lashes like small domestic animals. She adores me in the manner some people adore a god—fearfully, imaginatively.

“You look insane,” she breathes, which is our code for perfect. “Your skin is like… are you actually airbrushed?”

“Sleep and money,” I say, flicking my hair.

My mother sang it through a tousled kiss before my driver opened the car door for me; perfect princess, don’t let the peasants scuff your shoes.

“Tell me,” Kass says, vibrating with gossip the way little dogs vibrate with excitement at a new bone. “What happened after I left? You texted those dots and I didn’t sleep.”

I tilt my head so my hair spills in a calculated, careless cascade, and we both pretend we don’t hear the stingy scrape of Ms. Little’s flats on the tile.

“Not here,” I murmur. I may play the game better than anyone, but I also know when to admit it and when I should play dumb. Right now, there are too many sycophants. Too many eyes.

She pushes me for more details, so I give her just another to tease.

“Maya Ortiz,” I whisper the name like a sugar cube dissolving on my tongue. It’s always more delicious to say it sweetly. “Poor thing had quite a night.”

Kass’s pupils expand. Maya is the new girl. Well, new this year anyway. She’s bookish, plump, and prim as hell. She’s the kind of girl who mistakes careful politeness as some sort of a shield. She thinks if she keeps her mouth shut and her head down, no one will bother her.

Such a shame she had to cross paths with me, isn’t it? Such a shame the stupid bitch took the last pink doughnut when I wanted it.

“What did you do?” Kass asks, the question itself an offering.

I grab her arm, yanking her into a nearby bathroom and tell all the girls inside to fuck off.

Kass watches them with equal amusement and amazement as they all duck their heads and do as they’re told. As soon as they’re gone I pull my phone from my bag, feeling my own excitement at the fact I’m about to show off my hard work.

Half the school must have seen it by now, but this will be the only time I can truly relish in my accomplishments.

For a moment, all you can hear on the video is laughter and bass shivering through someone’s already-ruined subwoofer. The phone’s camera lurches across the patio; showing fairy lights strung like entrails, a beer pyramid, the pool sparkling, before it finally settles on Maya.

Stupid fool was only too desperate to tag along when one of the boys messaged her. Of course, I encouraged him to do it. To flirt, to bring my little target out to play.

She’s smiling too hard, trying to be included.

Her mouth forms a little pink oval around a red cup.

She tips it, drinking the contents so easily.

She doesn’t even hesitate, doesn’t even question it.

Why she’s here, why we invited her. But then, why would she?

People like her are raised to be trustful. It’s adorable. It’s pathetic too.

Kass inhales. “God.”

“She was thirsty,” I say. “I was generous.”

Kass cuts me a look; half-accusation, half-arousal. “Briar.”

“What?” I shrug, smirking. “I told her she looked pretty. I put my hand on her arm, and I slipped something in so easily it was barely worth the effort.”

On the screen the party’s noise cracks open into a different sound; Maya’s voice is wobbling between a laugh and cry, like a bowstring frayed and about to snap. Hands come into frame—not mine, obviously. I don’t need to get mine dirty when I have enough minions to do it for me.

There’s a silver flash of clippers and someone says “hold still” in a voice young men use when they’re pretending to be in charge. The sound of hair coming off is intimate in a way I wish I could bottle; a tiny, hungry buzz that begs for more, more, more.

I laugh as it plays. I can’t help it. Her auburn hair falls down in big chunks and she’s staring at the remnants, her eyes wide, transfixed like she’s half paralysed with fear.

Kass watches with all the concentration of a child pulling legs off a spider. The video tilts and catches Maya’s reflection quivering, her now prickly head shown in all its disgusting glory, and her cheeks shining with tears and sweat.

The scene cuts out, cuts from the patio and then focuses on the street, on a lamppost, to where a girl is slumped over, clearly unconscious.

Plastic tape wrinkles around her wrists, around her dress, around that stuttering little chest. Somewhere, somebody says her name like a prayer, and then like a joke.

A hand jabs at her.

Another yanks her frilly sundress up to show her bright pink panties and her chubby thighs.

No one steps forward and says stop.

Kass presses her fingers to her mouth, and her nails leave little half-moons in the skin. “It’s…a lot.”

“It’s effective,” I say, shrugging before putting my phone away.

Kass is still staring, like she wants me to give her permission to breathe again. She’s a good dog. She needs commands. That’s why I keep her around.

“You spiked her,” she says, lower. “You actually—”

“Of course,” I say, bored now that she’s caught up.

“Do you think she’d be brave enough to have fun otherwise?

” I let my voice turn dreamy. “She cried so easily, like somebody just pressed the right button. It’s a public service, really.

Letting people learn what they are. Imagine if she went to college thinking she wouldn’t fold. ”

Somewhere outside a bell rings, calling for class.

Kass drags her gaze from the screen. “What do you want to do?”

That’s the sweetest question in the world. My father asks his clients versions of it over lobster. My mother asks me that when she’s planning a party. What do you want to do?

“We let it breathe,” I say, fixing my hair in the mirror though in truth, it’s immaculate already.

“Start with the junior girls. They’re insecure and fast-fingered.

Include those two boys with perfect teeth who like attention, but need deniability.

You know who. By lunch it’ll be on everyone’s tongues, like a metallic taste they can’t get enough of. ”

Kass nods, mentally making a list of my instructions. She’s quick; I do respect that. I let my hand rest on her shoulder for exactly one second, which electrifies her. Positive reinforcement.

“And Kass?” I say. “Do not route it back to me.”

“As if I would,” she says, frightened, thrilled. “You think I want to die?”

“You’d be surprised.” I murmur because it’s funny, and true. I know enough people have a death wish, considering they’ve tried to bring me down over the years. The sad thing is, none of them have even come close.

My shoes click toward homeroom in a rhythm I’ve long ago trained everyone to recognize.

Around the corner, a girl with a backpack bigger than her torso is examining a C taped to her essay, clearly trying not to cry.

When I pass her, I let my bag swing and clip the paper from her hand. It flutters into a puddle by the water fountain.

“Oops,” I say in a tone that means anything but, and when she stoops, she does it with mortification that makes my skin buzz as pleasantly as if I’d drunk a magnum of champagne.

She looks up at me with the expression of a rabbit that’s been alive too long, and I keep walking. I don’t look back. When you look back, they sometimes mistake it for mercy and we wouldn’t want that, would we?

In the corridor window, the late fall sun makes the ivy outside look like slow fire. I can feel the school’s blood pressure rise as I see all those phones out. The little shiver that means it’s happening begins in my sternum and spreads through my veins like the most delicious poison.

My heart is steady as a metronome. I don’t rush. Only the desperate rush, and I am the opposite of desperate.

It’s almost a pity that Maya won’t be here to see how she’s the centre of attention for the first time in her entire pitiful life.

No doubt the coward has called in sick, and will be sick for a while.

But growing her hair back will take months.

Will she wear a wig in the meantime? I smirk, imagining how everyone will love yanking it off and playing fetch with it while she scrambles, pleads and cries.

Kass pings my phone with a single blue dot, our private yes. Another. Another. Across the hall, a pack of girls erupts in synchronized squeals that could be about anything, but I know what it is. I can feel it in the air; the delicious taste of shared humiliation.

I imagine Maya’s hair, all swept up now and tossed away in a trash bin, and laugh again lightly under my breath.

Damn, it’s good to start the week with an accomplishment.

The destruction of a life has the clean, satisfying click of a puzzle piece dropping into place.