My fingertips go numb as my pulse slams so hard I can feel it in my teeth. I open it anyway. Because apparently fear and nosiness cancel each other out.
UNKNOWN: u at the park?
UNKNOWN: u got the orange board right?
Ice slips down my spine. I scan the crowd. Kids grinding rails. Two dudes filming tricks. A couple on the bleachers sharing a slushie like nothing’s wrong with the world.
Normal. Normal. Normal.
Except the woods behind the park look blacker than they should. Trees packed tight, staring back.
ME: who is this?
Three dots.
UNKNOWN: friend of a friend. don’t freak out.
A laugh punches out of me. My ribs feel strapped tight. I’m the epitome of silently freaking out each and every day.
“Don’t freak out,” I mutter. “Yeah, great advice, dude.”
I flip to the chat with Jules. New girl. Pit bull in a flower crown for a profile pic. She’d slid into my comments after I posted about finally finding this park. Said she skates. Said she needed someone who could handle dark humor without flinching.
Soulmate material, maybe.
ME: here. ramp by the bowl. orange board.
Sun’s still up but dropping fast, throwing long shadows across the ramps like fingers reaching.
My phone buzzes nearly startling me. I almost drop the board, but I glance around the park and nobody notices me. No one ever does.
UNKNOWN: look behind u
Everything locks. The hairs on the back of my neck stand on end. I turn slowly. Controlled. Refusing to let panic win the sprint.Fuck.
Nothing. Just concrete and noise and people who belong here.
I glance back to the screen.
UNKNOWN: not there. woods.
My throat clicks when I swallow. Every true-crime podcast I’ve ever binged is screamingdon’t. Logic screamsdon’t. But something else—something tired and pissed—stands up inside me.
Tired of Carl’s hand “accidentally” grazing my waist. Tired of Mom’s glassy eyes when I say his name. Tired of scraping together grocery money when I should be stressing about algebra and who likes who.
With the board under my arm, and my phone clenched in my fist, I walk. One foot in front of the other. I walk straight toward the tree line. My heart pounds in my ears, but I ignore it.
Behind me someone yells “Salem!” like they know me. But I ignore that too.
One step past the boundary and the park sound cuts off like a door slammed shut. The air turns cool, damp. The asphalt smell is gone. Just pine needles and that coppery bite—like blood on your tongue.
I stop and listen.
A leaf rustles. This is the part of the movie where I should return to the safety of the skate park. I should head home. I’m twenty-two and not a kid anymore.What am I doing?
But I keep walking. I keep moving. Something shifts between the trunks. Low. Quick.
My pulse hammers in my throat. My face burns, then drains cold.