While the rest of Lincoln High buzzed with fear and morbid curiosity, four students huddled together at the far end of the football bleachers — their usual refuge, half-swallowed by fog and forgotten by the rest of the world. Out of sight, out of mind. Just how the town liked them.
There was panic all around. Sirens had faded into the distance, but their echoes lingered in people's minds, sharp and cold. Emergency tape fluttered near the school entrance, barely visible through the mist. Rumors moved faster than facts — Tyler was dead, it was suicide, it was a stabbing, it was an accident, it was something worse.
None of the four said anything at first.
Eli Carter tugged the hood of his sweatshirt further down over his face, as if the fabric could shield him from what was happening. Seventeen and thin as a willow switch, he looked like a boy still waiting for the world to ease up — and being constantly disappointed. A fresh bruise spread like an oil slick under his left eye, courtesy of a hallway shove he hadn't even seen coming.
Next to him sat Chloe Harper, arms crossed, chin raised in defiance. Her eyes were all edges — the kind that had seen too much too soon and never stopped cutting. She picked at the frayed cuff of her sleeve, fingers twitching like they missed holding a weapon. If Harper had a blade, someone would probably be bleeding.
"Tyler Grant's dead," she said finally, her voice cold and blunt. "Somebody finally did it."
Jonas Morales stiffened beside her. He scanned the fog nervously, his hands jammed deep in his jacket pockets. Jonas was tall, broad-shouldered, the kind of kid everyone assumed would grow up to be a linebacker — except he barely spoke above a whisper and read poetry behind the dumpsters at lunch.
"You shouldn't say stuff like that," he muttered.
"Why not?" Chloe shot back. "It's true."
"It's dangerous," Jonas said, his tone sharp with unspoken meaning. "You think they'll listen to context when they hear someone like us talking like that?"
"It's been dangerous for us since sixth grade," Chloe replied, voice flat. "You remember what they did to Maya at the Spring Carnival? Or when Eli got shoved into the lockers so hard last fall he blacked out? Nobody cared then."
Jonas didn't respond. He didn't need to. They all remembered. Pain and humiliation had stitched them together over the years — invisible scars making up the only club no one wanted to join.
The fourth in their quiet circle, Maya Lewis, sat cross-legged beside Jonas. Petite, with a curtain of curly hair half-hiding her face, she hadn't spoken since the sirens had first wailed that morning. Her earbuds hung around her neck, silent. She stared at her knees, hands gripping the edge of the bleacher like it might disappear out from under her.
"You think they'll blame us?" Eli asked finally, voice small and tight.
They all knew what he meant.
In a town like Alder Creek, where the parents of the popular kids ran the bank, the town council, and the school board, justice was rarely about facts. It was about appearances. And when one of their golden children died, the blame didn't climb up the social ladder.
It rolled downhill — right to the freaks and the broken kids.
"They already do," Chloe muttered. "Remember last spring? Jason finds a scratch on his car, and suddenly it's our fault. They pulled us all into the principal's office and made us sit there while he screamed at us for an hour."
"This is different," Jonas said, eyes fixed on the mist rolling across the field. "This is murder."
That word settled over them like a lead weight. Not bullying. Not pranks. Murder. Tyler Grant wasn't a loudmouth jock anymore. He was a body on the pavement. A news headline. And soon, he'd be a ghost haunting every hallway.
Eli's gaze shifted toward the building, where adults bustled in and out of the gym entrance. Detective Marcus Langley stood talking with a cluster of teachers and officers. His coat flapped behind him like a shadow, his voice low but commanding.
But Eli wasn't looking at Langley. His attention snagged on a man standing off to the side — tall, dark overcoat, hair neatly combed, posture too still. He wasn't panicked like the others. He was watching.
"Who's that?" Eli asked, nodding toward the stranger.
Chloe followed his gaze. "New teacher. Mr. Cross. Showed up two days ago."
"He defended me yesterday," Maya spoke for the first time. Her voice was so soft it barely reached them through the fog. "Jason knocked my books down again. Mr. Cross saw. Told him to pick them up."
"Did he?" Chloe asked, sounding genuinely surprised.
"He did," Maya whispered. "Called Mr. Cross a psycho afterward, though."
Jonas sighed. "Great. Now they'll think it's him too."
The silence that followed wasn't comfortable. It was thick. Heavy with the understanding that things had changed.
The rules of their daily survival — don't be noticed, don't speak up, don't retaliate — no longer felt like enough.
Something had broken in the heart of Alder Creek, and now there was blood in the cracks.
And for the first time, the four of them weren't just dodging locker room punches or cruel whispers in the cafeteria.
There was something out there now.
And it was killing people.