Chapter 55 Kristen
I slipped into Dean Horowitz’s office with the kind of breath‑held silence that felt like waiting for a trap to spring. The door clicked softly behind me, and immediately the scent of old paper and antiseptic polish hit my senses, sharp and cold. The room felt heavier than it should, like every inch of carpet and wood and glass had soaked up authority and secrets over decades and wasn’t interested in letting any of it go.
Anna was posted outside, her back pressed against the wall, eyes scanning the hallway like she could read every footstep before it landed. She gave me a tiny nod, the kind that said she was ready to back me up but wasn’t going to speak unless it mattered. I let out a slow breath that didn’t feel like it left any room for doubt.
I moved toward the cabinets, each labeled with neat handwriting that held a promise of order and explanation. My pulse hammered like it had a secret it was desperate to spit out. My fingers touched the spines of brown folders, some cracked at the edges, some clean as if hardly touched. Every name was someone else’s story, and somewhere in that stack was mine — or so I thought.
I found it deeper than I expected. Near the back, tucked between files labeled with things I barely understood. “Kristen Lockwood.” My name in neat, typed letters on a folder that should have been ordinary.
I pulled it out and forced myself to flip it open.
The pages inside made my stomach drop the second my eyes hit the first line. It was all blacked out. Thick bars of ink that swallowed sentences whole, obliterating whole sections of what should have been coherent text. Test results, personal evaluations, notes on aptitude, lineage — all of it covered until it was unreadable, like the words had never existed at all.
My breath hitched and I leaned in closer, eyes scanning page after page. This wasn’t redaction like they blacked out a name here or a number there. This was erasure. Every single corner of every page had wide swaths of dark, like someone had taken a marker and just gone to town, crossing out meaning, history, identity.
I closed my eyes for a moment, heart thumping so hard I was sure my ears would start ringing. I opened them again, trying to make sense of what I was seeing, because there was no logical explanation for something like this in a school file. Not at Phoenix. Not anywhere.
My hands shook. I didn’t realize they were trembling until I caught a reflection in the polished surface of the desk and flinched.
What the fuck?
I snapped the folder closed and slid it back into place, trying to keep my composure. I replaced every file exactly where I found it, the paper edges brushing together with tiny whispers as they settled into their slots again. But everything felt rewritten now — even the air in the room felt like it was holding its breath with me, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
I took a step back, breathing shallowly, and just as I reached for the door handle I heard Anna’s voice outside. Not a whisper, but loud enough that it carried just a little into the room, that nervous, desperate tone that meant distraction was in full swing.
“Dean Horowitz,” Anna was saying, voice tightly cheerful, “I swear I am not making this up. I haven’t slept in three days and the Professor’s syllabus didn’t even say anything about this assignment being due today. Not to mention that seminar he’s holding at 8 a.m. isn’t even on the official calendar!”
The Dean’s gravelly reply was inaudible, but it sounded curt and possibly annoyed. Anna was a mess of chatter out there, clumsy and panicked and exactly the perfect distraction.
I replaced the last file and then just stood perfectly still, letting the hum of the building and the shuffling words of Anna’s voice outside fill the silence. The second footstep I heard approaching in the hall, I exhaled slowly, turned, and walked out with measured calm as if I had been nowhere near a cabinet of secrets.
Anna and I stepped into the corridor together, the door clicking softly behind us. She shot me a look that was equal parts excitement and concern. “Well?” she asked, her voice low and intense.
My mind was still reeling, adrenaline knitting its way into my muscles. I tried to sound collected, but my voice came out quieter than I intended. “There wasn’t anything I could read,” I said. “It’s all blacked out.”
Anna stopped walking mid‑stride. “What do you mean ‘blacked out’?” she asked, eyes wide.
I invited her into the quiet bathroom alcove just off the hallway so we could talk without anyone overhearing. Once the door closed behind us, I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding.
“Every page,” I said. “My entire file. Redacted. Nothing makes sense. It’s like there was something important there and someone erased it.”
Anna’s face shifted, careful and serious — the part of her that was done playing it cool and funny. “That’s not normal,” she said. “Ever.”
I nodded, the gravity of it settling into my bones like a cold weight. “I almost felt like someone didn’t want anyone to see anything about me at all.”
She studied me for a moment, eyes narrow with thought and concern. Then she exhaled in that slow, resigned way she does when she’s not just scared for me but also a little bit scared of what we’re stumbling into.
“Then something’s wrong,” she said. “And we need an unredacted copy.”
My heart sank at the idea. A database search, the dean’s secure system — that was a much bigger risk. Much more noticeable. But it was the only next step that made sense.
Anna grimaced at my expression, but she didn’t argue. We both knew what that meant.
We walked out of the bathroom alcove slowly, merging with the flow of students wandering the hallways, normal jazz conversations floating around us like hazy background noise. If they knew what we just tried to peek at, they would either think we were insane or dangerous, and neither choice was reassuring.
I was halfway back to the dorm when Clarissa crossed my path in the hallway.
She didn’t walk like anyone else. She didn’t even move like part of the crowd. She entered space with the assumption that it already belonged to her — that the world should make way for her feet before they even touched the ground.
Her eyes locked on mine with that same calculated calm.
“You’ve got nerve showing up here,” she said, voice cool and precise like she was reading a script she wrote for a performance. “After killing Caleb.”
My pulse stuttered, blood retreating like ice water in a river. I stared at her for a moment, unsure whether she was trying to provoke me or simply reciting campus gossip like it was fact.
“What?” I breathed out, careful with my tone.
Clarissa’s gaze didn’t waver. “After killing Caleb,” she repeated. “And now acting like nothing happened.”
Anna was right behind me now, shoulders squared, ready to snap back, but I held up a hand to keep her quiet.
“I didn’t kill him,” I said, voice firm.
She laughed then. Not soft. Not warm. A sharp, flat sound like metal scraping stone. “Of course you didn’t,” she said. “But people talk. A girl disappears with a boy no one’s seen since. And now you act like everything is normal.”
I felt the floor tilt under my feet — not with fear, but with that internal shift you feel, the one that tells you someone is lying and they want to make you believe it too.
“I’m here to go to class,” I said, even though that felt like the most ridiculous explanation in the world.
Clarissa smiled — a thin, slow smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “Just stay out of my way,” she said. “I know exactly what you are now.”
Her tone wasn’t curious. It wasn’t cautious. It was threatening in the way someone says something obvious and expects you to be afraid of it.
Anna took a step forward. “She didn’t kill anyone,” she said.
Clarissa’s eyes flicked to Anna with a look that was half amusement, half disdain. “I don’t care what you think,” she said coolly. “I don’t stop until people are ruined.”
That was final, and it was brutal in its simplicity.
I didn’t answer. I didn’t need to.
I walked away, trying to keep my breathing steady, but my chest felt too tight, like every word she said pulled at something inside me.
Anna stayed close beside me, silent and solid. We walked the rest of the way in a kind of quiet tunnel, where every footstep echoed a little too loud and every breath felt too sharp.
I needed to call Patricia. I needed someone who wasn’t Clarissa or a dean or someone who thought they had the right to pass judgment on my life based on gossip and half‑truths.
I called her on the way home, phone pressed to my ear. Her voice came warm and familiar, and for a second I almost believed that everything could still be normal.
“Are you okay?” she asked.
I didn’t want to tell her the truth. I didn’t want to make her imagine Clarissa’s accusation or the emptiness of my own file or how deeply unsettled I felt.
“I just… can’t wait for you to come back,” I said instead.
It was a lie. It was also the closest thing to honesty I could manage in that moment.
She said she’d be back soon, that she loved me, and then the call ended.
The silence that followed was heavier than it had any right to be.
At home, I tried to distract myself with a shower, telling myself the steam and warm water would chase down the tension that had dug claws into my nerves.
Steam filled the bathroom and I stood beneath it, letting the hot water run over my skin. My thoughts kept replaying Clarissa’s words like a mantra I didn’t want to hear. What was she talking about? What was she trying to say?
Then — a spider, tiny and still, perched on the tile not far from my foot.
Before my brain registered decision, fear snapped through me like a strike. I screamed — sharp and instinctive — and grabbed the closest bottle, smashing it against the tile near its legs.
Heart racing, breath shaking, I turned to step out and the towel snagged on the bed frame.
I slipped.
The towel fell from me like it was too heavy to hold on any longer and cold air hit my skin in a rush.
I landed on the floor with a startled gasp, bare and exposed and hyper‑aware in that vulnerable instant.
And then the door slammed open.
Leo stood there.
His eyes were wide, something unreadable flickering behind them — disbelief, concern, possibly shock — and that was the last thing I saw before everything tilted again.