Shards of Memory [English - Under Revision]

Chapter 7: Fractures

Skylane

Crystal is loud at noon and devoutly, almost religiously, quiet after six.

By the time I finished signing the last two discipline slips Tim should've handled (emergency clinic run—fine), emailing the club approvals Harice wanted yesterday (he claims calendars are prayers; I'm starting to believe him), and uploading the vendor receipts Ryder swore he'd alphabetized (he did not), the campus had changed faiths. Hallway chatter, the metal chorus of lockers, the cafeteria's tinny speakers—all gone. What remained was the hush of a place that had tucked itself in and expected me to do the same.

I locked the detention room and felt the key drag like a yoke. Fluorescent tubes jittered above in nervous bursts, painting long, twitching shadows that reached and clawed along the tile. The air had that over-clean smell—disinfectant and old paper—sharp in the nose, dull in the bones. Someone somewhere had shut a heavy door; the sound traveled the corridor like a warning and died.

I hugged my folders to my chest. My footsteps echoed back at me, a half-beat behind, like a smaller, more suspicious version of myself was following. My mind, unhelpful, started being a theater: all the bad shorts I'd ever seen about girls alone in empty schools queued up for a festival. The quiet wasn't silence; it was attention. The building was listening.

There are no ghosts, I told my pulse, which refused to be homeschooled. There are no ghosts at Crystal, just tuition, tradition, and expensive lighting that needs replacing.

CLINK.

The sound pinged off tile and skidded. A soda can rolled into view, wobbling past my shoes with a hollow clatter and kissing the baseboard like it knew the place.

"Hell—cra—" The curse detonated itself before my brain could claim it. I slapped a hand over my mouth. Another breath, sharp enough to bite.

I looked down the length of the corridor: a long throat of lockers, the green EXIT sign two lifetimes away, the glass doors at the far end reflecting a faint version of me that looked more haunted than I felt. The can settled. The quiet reasserted itself.

Wind, I decided, which made no sense inside but helped anyway. Janitor's cart. Budget poltergeist. Move.

I sped up, shoes squeaking accusations with every step.

"Easy on the swearing, missy."

I stopped so fast my bag slung forward and punched my hip. The voice came from behind my shoulder—low, edged, too near—as if the air had learned to speak.

"Not funny," I said to nobody, turning with that careful, horror-movie slowness I'd always mocked.

Empty hallway. Shadows behaving. No one.

My brain, unhelpful, rebooted with the speed of a government computer. No one there, then who—

"Ghost!" I yelped at a volume both undignified and effective, and sprinted for the stairwell.

Three steps from safety, something snagged my foot.

Except I didn't eat floor. Hands—strong, certain—caught me mid-tilt, spun me upright, and held. My folders crumpled against a chest that smelled like clean sweat, soap, and something colder, like night air stored in cotton.

"Let go," I said, shoving without opening my eyes.

"Sky." The voice wasn't the air's anymore. It was a person's—rough where it always was, the edges sanded by hours and something that wasn't sleep. "It's me."

I opened my eyes like defusing a bomb. Tousled hair. T-shirt damp at the collar. The watch he wears too tight. That storm pulled into a face.

Blaise.