Fowler

Chapter 1

The students of Golden Nest High collectively pranked me every day.

It was the only explanation for why I felt like the new kid at a school I'd been going to for two years. I mean, the dingy green lockers were the same, the water damaged floor, the one fluorescent light that flickered at the entrance like you were a character in a teen slasher walking into a place you shouldn't be walking into.

But the people? They were different. I swear. Because I never recognized any of them. That's why the entire school had to be in on it. Every day new students were bussed in (some of them paid actors to fill the hallways) just to mess with me. To see if I noticed. There was probably a camera crew hiding too, and the camera would zoom in real close when Principal Hollis jumped out to tell me they'd been doing it since Freshmen Year.

That probably made me a narcissist. To think the whole school was banding together to fool little ol' Rhinedd Bello. But if they were, it was definitely working. Every morning as I walked the halls, faces blurred like a water color nightmare; the accompanying bodies slamming into mine until they realized I was an unstoppable force.

An unstoppable force that was tired of barreling through the same day over and over again.

Once I made it to my locker, I sparred with the combination lock, opened the door and instinctively dodged the paper and food wrappers that came spilling out. I stepped around the small pile and reached in to grab a lukewarm Red Bull from my 12 pack.

"She's so freakin' dirty," A guy mumbled on his way past me.

I ducked my head, shoulders lifting until they almost brushed my ears.

Intrusive Thought #4: I stick out my leg and trip him, and he busts his face open on the floor. I turn him over, straddle him and spit Red Bull in his face, then pour the rest up his nose until it bleeds from the sockets of his eyes.

I shook my head to dislodge the violent thoughts. It probably wouldn't come out of his eyes. I paused. Or maybe it would? That was something to Google later. I downed the 16 ounce can in a couple long gulps before shoving it back into my locker with the rest of the stuff that fell out. I couldn't remember where the nearest trash can was, but I did remember how long it took a Red Bull to hit. In ten minutes my blood pressure would start rising. In twenty, the caffeine levels in my blood stream would peak, and in thirty I'd be a fully functioning human being. Well, mostly. The grogginess from the sleeping pills I took every night would fade, and it wouldn't feel like my head was filled with soft, scratchy cotton balls.

Ugh. Fade, fade, fade.

I pressed my forehead against the cool metal of my locker, hoping it would help wake me up. Instead, it was a feeling that did the trick. A crawling sensation that raked its fingers up my spine until the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I glanced over my shoulder. Was someone watching me? Turning, I looked around the busy hallway, but nobody seemed to be paying attention now that my crap was back in my locker.

The uncomfortable feeling lingered, but all I could do was hike up my backpack and head to first period. It was going to be a long day, but days tended to feel longer when you were up nights too.

***

I was found dead in the cafeteria by lunch. Sort of. I was breathing, but barely. I'd taken off my hoodie and bunched it up under my head on the table. I had Steph's AirPods in and the noise cancellation was on, so it drowned out a fair amount of the chaos.

Sitting at a lunch table alone, head down on my hoodie-pillow listening to music, I probably looked like a character from an edgy Indie movie about adolescence. Or the show Euphoria. But the truth was my music taste wasn't "good" enough to be that person.