The next day at school, the rain hadn’t stopped.

  It beat against the windows in steady sheets, turning the world outside into a shifting blur of grays and greens. Inside, the hallways smelled of wet coats and muddy shoes, and the fluorescent lights buzzed faintly overhead, like a chorus of invisible insects.

  I tried to tell myself it was nothing.

  That my mind was pying tricks on me.

  That grief was a stubborn thing, curling up in the corners of your vision, waiting for a moment of weakness.

  But by third period, I knew better.

  It started small.

  A shape at the end of a hallway.

  A glimpse of long, dark hair vanishing around a corner.

  The feeling of eyes on me — cold and weightless — when no one was there.

  I sat at my desk in history css, staring down at my open notebook without seeing a word of it. Mr. Ellis droned on about something — trade routes, maybe, or ancient wars — but his voice felt muffled, like I was listening to him through a wall of gss.

  Iris Caldwell.

  My name on the attendance roll.

  It echoed strangely, as if the room itself didn’t recognize me anymore.

  When I finally gnced up, my stomach twisted into a knot.

  There she was.

  Standing just outside the cssroom door.

  My sister.

  Or — something thatlookedlike her.

  But not the way I remembered.

  Her skin was pale, almost translucent under the flickering hallway lights. Her hair hung limp around her face, dripping as if she’d just stepped out of a storm. Her clothes clung to her frame, too thin, too dark, soaked through with something that wasn’t quite water.

  She didn’t move.

  She didn’t speak.

  She just stared at me with wide, hollow eyes.

  A gasp tore itself from my throat before I could stop it.

  Several heads turned. Mr. Ellis paused mid-sentence, his brows knitting together.

  “Iris? You alright?”

  His voice sounded far away, stretched thin.

  I blinked.

  She was gone.

  The hallway was empty again, just the rain against the windows and the distant cng of lockers smming shut.

  I sank lower into my seat, my hands trembling under the desk. I could feel the slip of paper in my pocket, the edges damp and soft from my restless fingers.

  It was burning against my thigh, like it was alive.

  Remember.

  The word pulsed behind my eyes like an afterimage.

  But rememberwhat?

  What was she trying to tell me?

  And why now, after all these years?

  The rest of the day passed in a haze.

  I kept catching glimpses — fshes of a figure disappearing behind the cafeteria doors, standing at the edge of the soccer field, reflected for a split-second in the bathroom mirror.

  Always just far enough away that I could doubt myself.

  Just far enough that no one else seemed to notice.

  But deep down, I knew.

  I wasn’t imagining it.

  Something had followed me.

  Something that wore my sister’s face like a memory stretched too thin.

  And it was getting closer.

  I kept my head down the rest of the day, moving through the hallways like a ghost myself.

  If I didn’t look too hard, maybe I wouldn’t see her again.

  Maybe she would melt back into whatever pce she had come from.

  The final bell shrieked overhead, rattling through my teeth.

  I waited until most of the students had cleared out before making my way to my locker, dragging my feet the whole way. The hallway stretched long and empty in front of me, puddles of rainwater slicking the tile floors.

  My fingers fumbled with the lock. The numbers blurred — left, right, left — but the combination slipped out of my head like water through a sieve.

  Come on, Iris, I muttered to myself. Focus.

  A shiver crawled up my back.

  The hair on my arms prickled.

  And then I felt it.

  The cold.

  Not just the drafty, wet-air chill that clung to the school walls this time of year — but something deeper. Sharper. Like stepping into a room that hadn’t been touched by the sun in years.

  It pressed against my skin, an invisible weight, prickling at the edges of my senses.

  I turned my head.

  She was there.

  Leaning against the lockers a few yards down, her head tilted slightly, strands of soaking hair hiding half her face.

  Her clothes dripped onto the floor, forming dark, sticky puddles that spread toward my feet.

  She didn’t move.

  She didn’t speak.

  She justwatched.

  For a heartbeat, neither of us moved.

  The hallway buzzed and flickered with the dying lights overhead.

  Then something inside me snapped.

  Panic surged up my throat like bile, and before I knew what I was doing, I was running — sneakers spping wet against the tile, the breath tearing out of my chest in ragged gasps.

  Doors blurred past.

  Exit signs glowed dimly at the ends of corridors.

  I wasn’t thinking.

  I just needed to get away.

  The first door I found was half open — a narrow supply closet jammed between two cssrooms. Without a second thought, I stumbled inside, smming the door behind me.

  Darkness swallowed me whole.

  The smell of dust and old mop water hit me like a sp.

  I pressed my back against the door, squeezing my eyes shut, my chest heaving.

  It’s okay, it’s okay, you’re safe, you’re safe—

  I opened my eyes.

  And froze.

  She was there.

  Standing no more than a foot away, crammed between shelves of cleaning supplies, her face pale and shining in the dim light that leaked under the doorframe.

  Up close, I could see everything.

  The water dripping from her hair.

  The faint, bluish tinge to her lips.

  The way her eyes stared right through me, empty and endless.

  I stumbled backward, knocking over a bucket with a metallic cng.

  The sound didn’t even make her flinch.

  Her mouth moved — a slow, broken motion — as if she was trying to say something.

  But no words came out.

  Only the faintest sound, like wind moaning through cracked gss.

  I pressed myself against the door, fumbling for the handle. My fingers scraped uselessly at the knob — slick with panic, useless with fear.

  The lights above the closet door flickered.

  The temperature dropped another impossible degree.

  The world tilted sideways — and for one terrible moment, I thought the whole school might colpse inward like a dying star.

  Then, without warning, she stepped backward.

  Melted into the wall of shelves like smoke curling into cracks.

  Gone.

  The closet was empty again.

  But the chill remained — a wound in the air itself, invisible and gaping.

  For a long time, I didn’t move.

  I couldn’t.

  I just stood there in the darkness, the code in my pocket burning hotter with every passing second, my heart thundering against my ribs like a desperate animal.

  Somehow, I knew:

  This time, she wasn’t going to leave me alone.

  Not until I remembered.

  Not until I found the truth buried beneath the years of silence and forgetting.

  And for the first time since it had all begun, I wasn’t sure I wanted to find it.