Jamie
The first thing I feel is heaviness.
It's like my head's been stuffed with so much sand that I can't even get up, and somehow, my body's forgotten how to exist.
The second thing I feel is pain.
Fuck.
So much pain.
A sharp, pulsing throb that radiates from my arm all the way up to my neck.
And the third thing I realise...
I'm in bed.
What the fuck?
I sit up on the bed, and that heaviness hits me again. Last I remember, I was in the woods with Matt. There was a camping party. I went to pee by a tree...
something happened.
I was attacked...left to bleed out.
Right?
The ceiling of my dorm room stares at me like it knows something I don't. My sheets smell like detergent and grass. My clothes are still on. Filthy, torn, crusted with dirt and dried blood.
"How the hell..." I whisper. My voice sounds hoarse, like I swallowed smoke.
I try to stand up, but my head spins. My vision blurs in and out, my stomach flipping like I'm on a boat that hates my fucking guts. There's a heaviness in my chest, and my heart is beating a mile a minute.
"Shit."
My phone buzzes somewhere on my bed. I rummage through the sheets until I find. The screen lights up and I see fifty-seven unread messages. All from Matt.
Matt: Dude, where are you?
Matt: Jamie, answer me right now.
Matt: I've been looking for you for hours. Tell me this is a joke, and you left the camp?
Matt: Did you go home?
Matt: Please tell me you're not dead.
Matt: I'm calling the cops.
Matt: I swear to God, Jamie, if you're ghosting me because you wanted to go back to school and play video games.....
I scroll through them all, my chest tightening. He called a bunch of times, too. The last message said he had called the cops. The last text came at 3:47 am.
Fuck.
I glance around the room again, and my head is still spinning. Everything's where is should be. My desk, clustered with energy drink cans, the string light above me flickering weakly, the same poster I've had since I moved in, peeling off the wall.
It's all normal.
It doesn't seem like anyone has been in here but me.
I don't even have any memories of coming to the room.
None.
The last thing I remember is...the fucking camping trip. The flashlight I used to go into the woods. The growl. I'm so certain there was some sort of creature out there.
Finally, I get up from the bed and walk to the mirror. Everything looks normal. I'm a little paler than usual, but I'm still me. I feel a sting on my arm, and when I check, there's a bandage around my arm. One I don't fucking remember putting on.
I should be panicking right now.
Something happened to me last night, and I can't remember.
"Okay," I breathe out loud. "This is some sort of fever dream. I must have had too much to drink last night. I must have hit my head and not remembered getting back here. Everything's fine."
I peel the back of the bandage to get a better look at whatever made me, or whoever put the bandage on. There's dried blood on my arm. But no mark, no injury.
"What the fuck..."
The air around me suddenly feels different, too. Cooler. Sharper. I can hear the hum from the fridge in the small kitchen down the hall of the dormitory. A door slams in the far end, too. Everything's too clear.
I shake my head and walk to the door that leads to the bathroom, nearly tripping on a hoodie that I must have thrown on the floor. My stomach growls loudly, startling me. I feel wired, tired and restless at the same time. Like I could run a marathon, at the same time, I also feel like I've not slept enough.
Plugging my phone close to the door, I text Matt.
ME: Alive. Don't freak out.
Matt: BRO.
Matt: WHERE WERE YOU???
Matt: I thought you were kidnapped by like… squirrels or something.
I drop my phone and walk into the bathroom, glad that I don't have to share with others in this moment. Opting for a private room was a good idea.
"Okay, Jamie," I mutter to myself. "Shower. Food. Pretend you didn't almost die."
Except when I close my eyes, I can still feel it. The echo of something wild under my skin, something alive and waiting.
And for the first time in my life, the quiet of my dorm room feels too quiet.
After a shower, two granola bars, and three cups of coffee that taste like sadness, I start to feel human again.
Sort of.
I keep waiting for the headache to go away, but it doesn't. It just hums quietly behind my back like a dying car engine. My arm still aches, but the skin doesn't look infected. It's just a purple bruise.
Matt calls me while I'm putting on a black hoodie.
"You're alive," he says, voice angry but with a hint of relief.
"I think so."
"You think so? Dude, you disappeared! We looked for you until two in the morning! I had to call 911. Apparently, you can't declare someone missing until after 24 hours. It almost looked like you just wanted to escape from camping."
I let out a sigh. "Yeah," I say, rubbing the back of my neck. "Sorry about that. I... don't remember much after going to take a leak. I must have blacked out."
"Blacked out? From what? You only had soda."
"Right. Maybe the soda was spiked. Do you think that could be possible? Or it could have just been hunted."
He groans. "You're such an idiot."
"An alive idiot," I say, forcing a laugh because nothing about this is funny. "I'll see you on campus, okay?"
I hang up before he can lecture me again.
Campus feels louder than usual.
Every sound hits sharper. Footsteps, laughter, the flicker of pens in lecture halls. It's like the world's volume got turned up without my consent. The cafeteria smells like grease and heaven, and I nearly inhale my breakfast sandwich in less than a second. Even the taste is stronger.
Sweeter. Saltier. Too fucking much.
I try to ignore it. Try to pretend the world isn't spinning and buzzing under my skin like I'm a phone left on vibrate. After class, Matt corners me near one of the vending machines.
"You sure you're okay?" he asks. "You look pale. Like zombie chic."
I roll my eyes. "Yeah, thanks. That's my fall aesthetic.
I don't know how to tell him that something happened to me last night, and now everything feels weird. I must be losing my mind, but I feel different.
"You're impossible.
I'm about to retort when I smell it. Something different. crisp and electric, like rain on pavement and clean soap and... something else I can't describe. My head snaps toward it before I even realise I've moved.
That's when I see him.
Tall. Athletic. Brown skin glowing under the fluorescent lights. His hair is cropped short, and his track jacket fits him like it was tailored just for his body. He's leaning against the vending machine with a few teammates, laughing about something, and I swear the sound hits me like a punch to my ribs.
I know who that is.
Of course I do.
Everyone knows Adrian Vega.
He's a god walking on Earth.
Crosshill's golden boy.
Track captain, poster child for good fucking genes, and the reason half the school shows up to meets.
I've seen him before. From a distance, usually when Matt drags me to the games. But this feels different. Like he's brighter, closer and the most real thing I've experienced today. He glances up mid-laugh and, for a heartbeat, our eyes meet.
Everything goes quiet.
The sounds that have been bugging me all day. the noise I've tried to silence. There's just a stillness. My pulse skips, stutters and then slams back into motion. His expression shifts, the easy grin vanishing, and something sharper replaces it, like he's more focused. I don't know what this is, but he feels it too.
And before my brain can tell my body to move, he's walking toward me. Each step feels like it's stretching the air tighter. My skin prickles.
"Uh," Matt mutters, snapping me out of the daze. "Why is Adrien Vega walking over to us. What did you do last night?"
"I don't know," I whisper.
Adrian stops in front of me.
Up close, he's all height, and the kind of power that doesn't need to be loud. His presence makes everything fade out again. His hair is still damp from a shower, a dark curl falling over his forehead, and when his eyes land on me, it's like the air changes.
For a second, neither of us says anything. People move around us, laughter, footsteps, voices, but it's like we're both standing in a pause that no one else can hear.
"You okay?" he finally asks, voice low and unreadable.
I nod, too fast. "Yeah. Great."
His gaze flicks over me. My face, my clothes, the faint mark on my arm that I didn't bother covering properly, and there's something sharp in his expression. Curiosity. Recognition. Maybe even worry.
Does he know what happened to me last night?
He doesn't say anything about it, though. Just a quiet hum that seems very weird in this moment.
I try to look away at first, but I can feel him watching me even when I do, the weight of it, heavy and strange, like being studied by something that doesn't quite understand what it's looking at. This is all fucking weird, and I don't know how to react right now.
Matt mutters something at my side, cracking a joke that I don't catch. Adrian barely looks at him. His eyes are still on me, and it's not friendly. Not unfriendly either. Just... curious.
Then just as suddenly, he takes a step back.
"Maybe don't stare at people next time," he says, not harsh but just distant.
And then, he's gone. Walking off like this conversation, or should I say encounter, never happened.
Matt mutters, "Well, that was intense."
I can't answer. I'm still staring after Adrian, pulse too fast for no reason I can explain.
There's something about him, something that hums against my skin, that makes my blood feel too warm.
And I swear, for one split second before he turned away, his pupils had narrowed like an animal's.