Cove college classrooms felt purposefully built to be as uncomfortable as possible. Hell, this is what Hunter must’ve felt like all his life with his weirdly long legs. The chairs had unlockable wheels on all four legs, and the tile was slick, forcing her to plant her feet hard into the ground until they cramped to stop the chair from sliding. Instead of desks, tall tables fit for two stood at just the wrong height to align with the angle of her arms. To top it all off, everything stunk of the stale, potentially moldy air conditioning units.

The room was full of half-asleep students. Professor Mandelle deserved to burn in hell for deciding to hold an economics course at 6am.

Marcie took a seat towards the back of the room. It occurred to her that favoritism might play a role in Mandelle’s grading, but she was never going to sit up front. Not with Grant and Curt there. It was bad enough they were here to begin with. She’d painstakingly curated her schedule for the first two semesters so she avoided any and all contact with any of her past tormentors. But she’d missed her enrollment period this time around and had to take what she could get to fulfill her credit requirements. So there she was, saddled with Tweedledee, Tweedledum and the Queen of Hearts for the next three hours.

As if on cue, Annabelle Warren threw open the door. For her, there was no sneaking into class thirty minutes late. She was the embodiment of the color red; her fashionable red bag, red clacking heels, and all-red accessories accentuating her flaming ginger hair. She was the spitting image of an American Girl doll and Marcie never cared for them.

A nightmare unfolded as Annabelle scanned the room and realized, in the same moment as Marcie, that there was only one seat left in the room. With no other choice, she pulled out the chair directly to Marcie’s right and plopped herself down.

If Marcie was unable to pay attention before, she certainly couldn’t now. Her chest tightened and her lungs felt as though they were expanding beyond the barriers of her ribcage. Somewhere beyond the borderline panic attack that had overtaken her senses, she heard Professor Mandelle address her general vicinity.

“Ms. Warren! Your arrival is as timely as it is tardy.” He called, exhaled deeply, then turned to the rest of the class. “Alright everyone, turn to the person seated next to you at your desks. These will be your project partners for the rest of the semester. Go ahead and introduce yourselves.”

With mounting anxiety, Marcie turned to confront the girl in red. Annabelle’s face looked just as she remembered: freckled and with an expression of malice and sadism. Her smile was that of someone who loved to watch the person under her piercing gaze crumble and cower to her. Her beguiling blue eyes pulled Marcie in, like Annabelle Warren was hiding more secrets. Things Marcie needed to know.

“Do you know how I was murdered?” Marcie asked. Her balled hands fidgeted under the table, waiting resolutely for her answer.

Annabelle didn’t pause from her task of getting her laptop and notebook out from her bag as she coldly responded, “What did you say to me, freak?”

What did she say?

“I said my name is Marcella Portillo,”she repeated confidently.

“I know your name.” Annabelle rolled her eyes. “How could I possibly forget?”

She spoke as if Marcie was being annoying. That she was the one being difficult. And the utter ridiculousness of it nearly evaporated Marcie’s anxiety. Irked, she squinted her eye towards Annabelle, trying to determine if this girl was still entirely devoid of human decency.

“You’re not going to ask to be placed in a different group or something, are you?” Annabelle asked with the raise of a single perfectly-plucked eyebrow.

Marcie screwed up her face in disbelief. She nearly laughed, “Hah, if anyone would, it’d be you.”

Annabelle finally stopped shifting all her belongings around to meet Marcie eye to eye. “Look, I may be a bitch, I’ll be the first to admit that. But I am not a petty bitch.”

Never before had falser words been uttered.

A sudden pounding force clanged in Marcie’s head, beating like a drum. Her body felt like it was floating out of the four-legged rolling chair. The knot in her chest tightened further and further. She cried out.

In the blink of an eye, she was in a new room. A bedroom. Not her own or Hunter’s, but somewhere she only recognized in the recesses of her hazy mind. The bed she found herself sitting on had a canopy straight out of a Victorian period piece and all furnishings followed suit, like they were ripped out of the past. However, everything else—from the bedsheets, to the decorations, to the fluffy floor rug that tickled as she threaded the material between her exposed phalanges and metatarsals—was all fit for an ultramodern girly girl fashionista’s aesthetic.

Pop punk began to play from somewhere beyond the bedroom.

“C’mere girl!” Annabelle’s voice called.

Marcie got up from the bed and followed the voice. She found Annabelle in a walk-in closet brimming with more outfits for one person than most families of four. It was sort of disgusting how much there was. Most of the pieces were some shade of pink or red. The girl certainly had a theme and she stuck to it.

This wasn’t the first time she’d stepped in to see its glut of garments, but it was the first time Annabelle had seemed so excited about it. Her typically devilish smile had been replaced with something that almost looked genuine.

“All the other parties, it was fine or whatever for you to wear your dumpy goth stuff. But a Lovett yacht party is a formal event.” Annabelle held several dresses to Marcie’s frame, grimacing in visceral disgust with every one that didn’t pass her unreasonably high standards. “No. No. No. Ew.”

Marcie groaned. “You could have just told me to wear a nice dress.”

“I couldn’t have. Anything you own would not be Lovett yacht party appropriate.” Annabelle said.

“Can I at least wear something black? Also, do you know where I put my eyepatch?” Marcie asked.

Weird. She must have put her eyepatch down somewhere in the bedroom. No…maybe the classroom? Or the beach. Wherever it was, she knew that Annabelle wasn’t supposed to see the hole in her skull.

Annabelle skipped over to the furthest rack in the back of the closet, underneath a bold sign titled ‘Nevers’. “You’re absolutely right. Red is not your color.” She held a sleek black dress up to Marcie’s body. “Okay,” she said, making a determination. “Put this on.”

“Wait.” Marcie felt more disoriented by the minute. She held a hand up to shield her eye and gripped her shirt around her chest. Her foot, only bone, tendons, and sinew, was all that was left to hide. Shyly, she tucked it behind her other leg. “I don’t want you to see me like this.”

“Oh it’s fine. We’re both girls, go ahead and get changed.” Annabelle started to strip.

Her skin was a warm ivory, dotted with freckles along her shoulders and down her back. In her worst moments, this is who Marcie wished she looked like. Light-skinned, straight-haired, filled out around the hips and chest. She never used to think that way. She grew up so proud of having her abuela’s hazel eyes and her father’s perfect brown skin. To think, Annabelle was one of the girls who almost stole that away from her.

Marcie looked at herself in the mirror. She was beautiful in her own way…right? She still had her abuela’s eye and even if her skin tone had faded slightly from the decomposition of her old body, she was still all that her father gave to her. Sand poured from her eye socket and started to collect in her chest cavity. The cavernous tear through her torso showed all the internal parts of her that teeming inside her as if they were alien creatures. What the hell was going on? She slipped the dress on quickly to cover the dead parts.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Damn Marmar! You're slaying that dress! Ugh, I’m so glad I didn’t let my cousin wear it to prom, she would have stretched the material,” Annabelle sang. She ran a hand through Marcie’s hair. When she pulled away, her fingers were covered in more wet sand. “Hmm. Gotta do something about the hair.”

Annabelle pulled a red hair clip off of her own head, letting a bundle of loose red hair cascade down her neck. “Here.” She used a finger to brush Marcie’s hair out of her face and secured it with the clip. “Okay, thank God. You finally look fucking presentable.”

“Uhh, thanks, oh queen of fashion and correct opinions,” Marcie said with biting sarcasm.

“Pfff, c’mon! You love it!”

She couldn’t help but nod in reluctant agreement. She did look cute in Annabelle’s skin-tight black dress and the pop of red in her hair worked surprisingly well. She just wished Hunter were there to see it.

Oddly, she heard his voice as Annabelle raised her phone to take a selfie.

“Marcie?” Hunter asked from out of nowhere, sounding desperate. “Marcie, can you hear me?”

“Sorry. I think the connection is really bad out here,” she said. Her phone jittered, struggling to receive Hunter’s response.

Marcie leaned over the railing of the Lovett yacht, looking out towards the lightly rocking waves of the docks. The yacht had several rooms, each sporting different decor and very different vibes. She felt welcome in exactly none of them.

Somewhere in the room that’d been converted to a dance club, she’d left Annabelle behind. She would have taken the time to let her know she was stepping away, but she’d found her in the middle of a one versus two argument with Edith and Julie. So instead, she sent her a quick text. Who knows if it went through.

Through glitching frames, Marcie recognized the back walls of Hunter’s dorm room. He had posters up of his favorite TV shows and games. His side of the room was just like his bedroom in the Cove, like he’d moved home to Berkeley. Without her.

“T–Tha–nnnnng–That clip looks new. And have you always had that dress?” His voice finally came through clearly.

“Oh, I got them both recently.” She looked down at the dress. Annabelle was right to lend it to her. The way its sleek fabric clung to her body felt like a tight hug. It made her feel confident. At least confident enough to even come in the first place.

“Well, you look amazing. I can’t believe I’m not there to see you in it,” Hunter said with a longing smile. “Where are you even?”

Marcie peered around, trying to keep the extravagant decor out of frame and hoping that the graininess of her audio obscured the conversation of Redwood Cove elite behind her. That night, she was a sheep in wolf's clothing and it would be too much to explain to him.

“A family event!” She feigned enthusiasm.

“O–O–Oh. Great!” Hunter said. His end of the call cleared just long enough. “Tell your brothers I say hi. And tell Carmen I haven’t seen that Fall Out Boy cover she sent me, but I’ll get to it soon.”

“I will,” she promised, though it alleviated none of the guilt she felt for lying to him.

Out of the corner of her eye she spotted Julie coming up to the deck with Annabelle in tow. The two girls looked about ready to murder each other, but it was Julie who was quietly berating Annabelle. Neither seemed to notice her as they turned a corner. Annabelle had been nice enough to support her through the night so far. Despite not really having many female friends before, she figured it would function under some law of girl code that she go and help her newfound friend out.

“Okay, I gotta go. I love you so much,” Marcie said and hung up before Hunter could glitch out another word.

“Hey! Marcie.” A voice came running up to her.

It was Marty Gillman. His hair had been straightened and combed down, which somehow managed to look worse than his usual unkempt brown curls. Red veins made his eyes look sinister and he reeked of weed.

Wired, he asked, “Have you seen Annabelle?”

Of course. Marcie rolled her eyes. “She’s probably in the bathroom or something. Maybe check the lounge or the dance floor.”

“I already checked there,” he whined.

Marcie needed to divert him. She couldn’t let this fuckwad catch wind of Annabelle and Julie around the corner. That could only spell disaster. “Well I don’t know dude. Go fuckin’ ask someone who cares.”

“Fine!” Marty threw up his hands. “Whatever, bitch.” He stormed off.

As soon as he was out of sight, Marcie approached where she last saw the girls. The deck rocked with the waves, throwing her off balance in the heels Annabelle insisted she wear. She found her bearings in time to soften her steps up to the corner where she heard a hushed voice.

“I just know you brought Marcie just to get back at me,” Julie whispered, identifiable by the jangling bracelets of her outfit. Marcie quickly hid back behind the corner to listen. Curiosity got the better of her good faith. She was already suspicious of Annabelle’s intentions in wanting to become her friend, and hearing those suspicions voiced allowed that doubt to flood back into her.

Julie kept harping on Annabelle. “If you have a problem with me, you should say it to my face instead of being an underhanded bitch. Do you have any idea the kind of people my dad has here tonight? If your latina lap dog steps one foot out of line, it’ll be your funeral.”

“Oh no, you caught me,” Annabelle responded, and the words sent Marcie’s stomach spiraling into her bowels. It was high school all over again. Had she really grown so naive so quickly after graduation, that a mere year alone in the Cove made her forget what these people did to her?

Annabelle spoke up again, a bit louder than Julie. “I made friends with someone we all used to fucking torture, gained her trust and dressed her in my designer, just to piss you off. Do you have any idea how narcissistic you sound? Don’t you think that maybe it might be more likely that one of us in our stupid clique grew a conscience? Ohhh sorry Jules, a conscience is when someone with a soul feels bad about being a piece of shit.”

Julie raised her voice to match Annabelle’s. “You’re such a liar!”

Then, Marcie heard the commotion of clashing jewelry and the whimpers of a poorly concealed catfight. This tension she had around Annabelle’s true feelings hadn’t gone away. Something about the way she spoke to Julie was so vitriolic, so spiteful. Regardless of what Marcie had heard, she was still unconvinced. But, she had to hand it to the girl in red. They used to be the trio. Julie, Edith and Annabelle. If Annabelle was willing to throw that away on her account, she would at least stop her from making an unnecessary scene. Girl code or something.

Marcie turned the corner and saw the two girls going at it. Their hits were soft—clearly neither of them had ever been in a real fist fight—though they were doing a bang-up job of getting their rings caught in each other’s hair.

“¡Ya párale!” She halted, approaching the two girls. She grabbed Annabelle to take her back to the party, or better yet off this God-forsaken boat. Julie had other ideas,grabbing her wrist, her own golden brown hair still partially wrapped around Annabelle’s fingers.

“What are you doing?” Julie yelled.

The sensation of this girl’s fingers wrapped around her felt so odd. Like she was overwhelmingly cold to the touch. Then she noticed a slow trickle of sand spilling out from under Julie’s nails and pooling on the wooden floor beneath them. Horrified, Marcie realized her whole body was pouring with sand, burying her feet.

“I asked you! What the fuck are you doing?” Julie growled.

Marcie looked up to see Julie no longer angry but wide-eyed with panic. Then she looked back down immediately. Fifty-seven feet below her, she saw the carousel. They were both past the railing that separated the parking lot of Cove Beach from its dangerous cliffside.

More and more sand continued to pour from her body. In her own state of panic, Marcie realized she was turning into sand. No, not sand. Black ash. Starting at her fingertips, she began to disintegrate. Slowly at first, working its way up until Julie held nothing but the dark flakes that used to be her flesh and bone.

“Fine,” Julie spat, turning away and storming off. “See if I care if you break your legs, you fucking lunatic.”

As Marcie faded further, she had trouble maintaining her balance. Her vision was failing her and heavy particles flaked off of her like a waterfall. They dragged her down with them until she felt a force thrust her over the cliff.

She fell. The carousel came towards her. Faster and faster. Closer and closer. As her body faded further, her vision got darker. The world was becoming a void. Black, first at its edges, and then swallowing her whole.

But it wasn’t over. Through the darkness, she felt the wind. She felt the sand still clinging to a body she no longer had. And she heard dogs barking in the distance. And more voices.

“Mar, wake up.”

“Marcie, please you can’t die on me again.”

“Diablilla. It’s not your time. Not now. Tu caballero andante está aquí.”