MULTI-POV –
The afternoon sun knifed through Thornfield's cathedral-tall windows, turning marble floors into a mosaic of gold bars and razor-edged shadows. It felt less like daylight and more like an interrogation lamp: exposing, accusing, unblinking. Dormitory Four exhaled dust and secrets, the hush of ancient stone bracing itself for the inevitable break.
Room 143. Room 144. Room 145.
The numbers didn't just mark doors; they pulsed, almost alive—like a heartbeat quickening before confession. Five girls stood in that narrow corridor, held together by something neither friendship nor fate could fully explain. What had begun as stray glances and accidental collisions was hardening into something sharper, hungrier.
At Thornfield Academy, accidents were currency no one could afford. And friendships? Real ones were rarer than absolution—and twice as dangerous. Because the kind of alliance forming here didn't just survive secrets.
It promised to burn the world down with them.
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Annabelle stood outside Room 144, her housing assignment crumpled in a fist so tight the cheap paper had turned translucent with sweat. The words blurred from reading them on loop, as if sheer stubbornness could rewrite fate: she really was here, locked inside this marble crypt built for heirs and debutantes whose trust funds could buy absolution.
At her feet, the battered suitcase sat like a confession she couldn't swallow. Every dent and ripped seam whispered the truth she kept hidden behind practiced smiles: the frantic midnight flight from a foster home that smelled like bleach and bourbon, the hours spent in a bus station locker praying nobody would notice her entire life fit inside a single case, the scholarship interview where her borrowed dress felt like it might split from the weight of hope.
The hallway stretched ahead, a gauntlet of polished marble and quiet judgment. Oil portraits of past deans glared down, their painted eyes sharp with generations of privilege and expectation. The air felt heavy—polished wood, crushed lilies bleeding scent into the silence, and something older still, like secrets rotting behind locked doors.
Survival had taught her to memorize exits before unpacking a single thing. Side stairwell two doors down, window latch rusted at the corner, emergency stairs hidden behind a fire door that wouldn't quite shut. At Thornfield, she suspected knowing her escape routes might mean the difference between staying invisible and being devoured.
"Excuse me?"
The voice floated in behind her, soft as cashmere, and carrying that sweet, poisonous note only old money could master. Annabelle turned, shoulders instinctively tightening, feet shifting into the posture she'd perfected in group homes and courtrooms alike: wary, watchful, ready for whatever came next.
Piper had been rehearsing this introduction for weeks—mirrors in her mother's walk-in closet, the quiet reflection in a limousine window, even the tinted glass of her father's study. The smile—warm, but not so bright it reeked of desperation. The posture—spine straight, chin soft. The voice—sweet as bourbon, but grounded enough not to sound like empty air.
But now, standing in Thornfield's marble spine, the walls pressing in with generations of whispered legacy and buried scandal, that borrowed confidence felt as flimsy as cheap lace in a thunderstorm.
The girl by Room 144 was nothing Piper had scripted for.
Coppery hair that burned in the light, eyes hard and bright as cracked emeralds. Shoulders squared like she'd been waiting for someone to take a swing. No designer polish, no careful gloss—just raw edges and a thrift-store suitcase that screamed of nights spent running instead of dreaming.
And Piper hated that it rattled her more than any Tiffany-draped debutante ever could.
"Piper Abbott," she managed, hand extended, manicured nails catching the hallway's low light. The bourbon lilt surfaced in her vowels, softened by practice but still undeniably there. "Room 145. Looks like we're next-door neighbors."
The other girl's grip was blunt, unflinching—skin rough with calluses that spoke of scraped knees and jobs Piper had only seen from a car window.
"Annabelle Wilson. 144."
"Perfect," Piper blurted, voice cracking on the word. It sounded brittle, like she could hear it shatter in real time. Her carefully pressed accent frayed at the edges, vowels bleeding Southern as nerves overruled rehearsal. "I was terrified I'd end up stuck with no one to talk to. Are you… nervous?"
Annabelle's expression stayed marble still. But Piper felt panic bubbling under her ribs, and words tumbled out faster, cracking the varnish she'd spent years polishing.
"I mean—not nervous. Or maybe that's exactly it. Terrified, actually. This place—" She gestured at the oil portraits glaring down, the air heavy with cut flowers and quiet judgment. "It feels like walking into someone else's life." Piper rambled on.
The silence stretched, heavy as cathedral glass. Then—just for a flicker—Annabelle's lips twitched. Not a real smile, but the faintest break in the fortress. Enough to hint that beneath all that iron and barbed wire, there was still someone human.
Piper let out a shaky breath, only then realizing she'd been holding it like a prayer.
Lena heard them before she saw them—voices skittering like secrets across Thornfield's vaulted stone, echoes sharpened into confessions by the school's cathedral bones. Here, even whispered lies could sound like sermons.
One voice dripped Southern honey—old money sweetened with just enough practiced humility to sound almost believable. The other was steelier: Midwestern vowels filed down by survival, words chosen with the caution of someone who'd been punished for speaking out of turn.
By the time Lena rounded the corner, her mind had already sketched them in clinical ink: archetypes, pressure points, leverage waiting to be pulled like strings. A Garcia family legacy—reading people the way other families read scripture.
"Lena Garcia," she introduced herself before they could react, voice pitched low and velvety—a siren's invitation disguised as simple courtesy. "Room 143. I couldn't help overhearing—are you both new?"
Her gaze swept across them with deliberate, scalpel precision. The blonde was too perfect to be accidental: hair blowout, pearl earrings, a sweater soft enough to scream generational wealth. The other girl—auburn hair caught in an elastic, clothes a little too lived-in, posture that had learned to deflect trouble before it landed. A scholarship kid, Lena guessed. Possibly desperate. Definitely useful.
"Yes!" the blonde burst out, excitement spilling over like bourbon shaken loose from its crystal decanter. The accent thickened when she wasn't careful—proof she'd been trying to sand it down for strangers' approval. "Transferred from Sacred Heart in Louisville. What about you?"
Lena let the question hang. Her grandmother had taught her early that silence was a blade, anticipation the first cut. The longer they waited, the more they leaned in.
"Political obligation," she said at last, her words tasting faintly of old scotch and older grudges. "Garcia women have been at Thornfield since the Roaring Twenties. Family tradition."
She left the surname hanging like a loaded gun on the table. If they recognized it, good—they'd know the weight that came with it. If they didn't, better—ignorance could be bent into something far more useful.
A slow, curated smile curled on her lips, more predator than greeting. Thornfield Academy had just become a game worth playing.
The sting landed hard, a sharp punch behind Annabelle's ribs—the kind of ache that always rose when conversations turned to legacies she'd never inherit. Names etched in marble. Rings passed down. Things whispered like prayers in families she'd never been invited to join.
To these girls, surnames and prep schools were small talk. The casual shorthand of people born with golden skeleton keys to places Annabelle had to pick open with bloody fingernails.
Her grip on the suitcase handle tightened until the cracked vinyl bit deep into her palm, grounding her. She could've kept quiet, let them spin a harmless lie around her absence of pedigree. But Thornfield wasn't the kind of place where silence kept you safe. Here, silence made you prey.
"I'm on scholarship," she said, chin lifting just enough to turn confession into defiance. The words tasted like iron on her tongue—not an apology, but an unspoken dare: underestimate me.
The sentence detonated in the hush between them. Annabelle braced for the usual fallout: polite pity sliding into polished contempt, the calculation of her worth adjusting behind practiced smiles.
But Piper Abbott didn't recoil.
"That's incredible," Piper breathed, the words soft but startlingly sincere. "You must be brilliant to get one of those."
Annabelle waited for the twist, the blade hidden behind Southern sweetness. It didn't come from Piper—it came from the girl with the Garcia name, her voice dark velvet wrapped around something sharper.
"Intelligence," Lena drawled, slow and deliberate as a snake uncoiling, "is the only currency that truly matters here. Money can't buy the kind of mind it takes to survive Thornfield."
The words fell like stones into deep water, sending ripples down the marble corridor and cracking the calm just enough to reveal what lay beneath.
Then, somewhere down the hall, a door slammed—hard enough to rattle brass numbers against oak, like teeth chattering before a storm.
Vickey came down the corridor like a storm rolling over glassy water—combat boots striking marble in a tempo that sounded like defiance made flesh. Her paint-splattered messenger bag swung at her hip, fraying canvas whispering stories of abandoned rooftops and basement galleries. Dried cobalt blue stained the hem of her vintage army jacket, a silent fuck-you to anyone expecting a clean slate.
She didn't bother glancing back at Room 167. Her new roommate—another Nikki Clark clone with monogrammed sheets and curated innocence—was probably already texting her parents in panic: get me away from the scholarship psycho with purple streaks and opinions.
The trio by the arched windows snagged her attention like a crash on the highway—something beautiful and broken you couldn't look away from. A blonde queen bee with a smile too sweet to trust, an auburn-haired fighter whose every muscle read as 'touch me and bleed,' and a dark-eyed tactician who held herself like secrets were a currency she'd spent her whole life collecting. Thornfield liked its hierarchy neat, orderly. This wasn't that.
And Vickey had never met a mess she didn't want to stir.
She stopped dead in front of them, ownership rather than apology in every square inch of posture.
"Vickey Harris," she declared, Brooklyn edge sharp enough to leave marks. "Yes, the purple's real. No, I don't give a damn about your little handbook of don'ts. And yeah, I'm that art freak your parents warned you about—the one who'll make your legacy portraits look like kindergarten macaroni collages."
It came out like a dare—unapologetic, unsweetened, armor built from every gallery sneer and scholarship committee raised eyebrow. Better they see the teeth first; then decide if they wanted to test the bite.
The reaction was quick and telling.
The blonde blinked, composure fracturing just enough to let something real peek through. "I love it," she blurted, half laugh, half confession. "The color, the attitude—like you just don't give a damn what any of us think."
Vickey tilted her head, curiosity pricking past cynicism. "Most trust-fund girls see me and triple-check their locks."
The auburn-haired girl's mouth quirked, humor dry as old whiskey. "I don't even own anything worth locking. And if I did, I'd probably sell it for tuition."
That cracked Vickey's first honest grin of the day. "Now we're talking."
Lena stayed where she was, leaning in her doorway like a ruling class in exile, eyes sharp and amused. "Neighbors," she murmured, syllables wrapped in velvet threat. "Looks like Thornfield still enjoys an inside joke."
For a breath, the four of them stood caught in that strange hush before alliances form—where you see your reflection not in sameness, but in shared scars and hungry ambition.
It was Piper who named it first, voice softer than she meant, the words falling like an unwanted truth. "This place feels built to chew people up," she whispered, eyes wide and terrified and thrilled all at once. "And spit out whatever's left."
Whitney Stephens appeared at the corridor's far end like a question mark stalking its answer—shoulders squared, chin high, eyes shadowed by a story she hadn't finished telling. Her battered messenger bag pulled at her spine, stuffed with dog-eared notebooks, yellowed clippings, a recorder with a cracked screen, and a single framed photograph: a boy whose smile belonged to sunlit afternoons and whose eyes mirrored her own.
Their conversation—more hush than chatter, more strategy than small talk—drew her like a needle finds a magnet. The shape of the four of them together looked less like friendship, more like conspiracy: heads angled inward, backs braced against the marble and the ghosts Thornfield couldn't quite bury.
"Excuse me," she called, her voice steady despite the pounding in her chest. She lifted her housing slip, the paper soft from too many readings. Credentials in place of armor. "I'm trying to find Room 144."
Four pairs of eyes turned, that familiar Thornfield flicker passing over her: weighing bloodlines, bank accounts, and usefulness. Whitney held her ground, refusing to shrink under the scrutiny. Rooms could be read as easily as files; this one buzzed with potential energy waiting to spark.
"Whitney Stephens," she declared, words clipped but not cold. "Transfer student."
The auburn-haired girl—sharp edges softened by something wary but alive—shifted just enough to show a sliver of welcome. "Annabelle Wilson. Room 144. Looks like you found your roommate."
Whitney let a real smile ghost across her lips—brief, brittle, but genuine. Annabelle's posture was defensive but thoughtful, a fighter who also watched the exits. Whitney could work with that.
"Perfect," she said, hitching her bag higher on her shoulder. "I was half convinced I'd end up sharing with someone who'd narc on me for breathing after curfew. Or for researching at 3 AM."
Annabelle's gaze sharpened, curiosity edged in caution. "Research into what?"
Whitney's fingers flexed around the strap, leather creaking softly—a small tell she let them see. Better to show the shadow now than have them trip over it later.
"My brother," she said, voice flat as a dossier. "David Stephens. Disappeared from Thornfield five years ago. No body. No statement. No investigation worth the ink. School scrubbed him clean, like he was never here at all."
The words landed between them like glass shattering on marble, the shards catching light—and for a breathless moment, every one of them saw just how sharp they could become together.
The silence coiled around them, heavy as wet velvet. In any sane world, it should have sent them scattering—backs turned, polite nods offered, secrets safely swallowed. Instead, the four of them leaned in, pulled by something darker than curiosity.
"Investigating disappearances on day one," Annabelle drawled, her voice brittle as old paper scorched around the edges. "That's either reckless genius or suicide in slow motion."
Whitney's answering grin could have cut glass. "Probably both," she said, the words slipping out like a dare to the universe.
It was reckless. It was magnetic. Most kids came to Thornfield chasing ancestral ghosts in oil portraits and old endowments. Whitney Stephens had arrived to exhume bones everyone else pretended weren't there—and the honesty of it set something alight between them.
From her doorway, Lena watched with eyes sharp as scalpels, seeing angles and vulnerabilities the others barely sensed. "Thornfield doesn't just bury what it doesn't like," she murmured, each syllable deliberate. "It makes sure what's buried stays forgotten. And it's very good at cleaning up messes that ask too many questions."
They drifted apart, the spell loosening just enough for them to remember doors and suitcases and the illusion of safety. None of them noticed the shadow at the end of the corridor: Derek Hayes, clipboard tucked tight to his chest, gaze sweeping over them like a searchlight over broken glass. Cataloguing faces. Memorizing tells. Measuring threat.
Five girls who thought they'd found each other had just unknowingly etched bullseyes across their own backs. The game had started before they even learned the rules.
And at Thornfield Academy, the house always played to win.
Meanwhile across the main quad in the West Hall, the housing assignment paper all but dissolved in Jordan's palm—cheap ink and rich secrets bleeding together like evidence under acid rain. Room 247, Dormitory Three. Coordinates to a cell dressed in ancestral marble and curated nightmares. Each marble step under her scuffed sneakers echoed with a hollow opulence: money so old it smelled of mothballs and closed caskets.
Thornfield Academy sprawled around her like a baroque hallucination—gargoyles frozen mid-scream, shadows pooling where walls refused to meet cleanly. A place where scandal could be laundered into legacy, and girls like her—girls who'd burned their past to stay alive—might vanish without even a footnote.
The compass pendant burned against her ribs, tucked beneath binding and stolen boyhood. When you don't know where to go, kiddo, trust your internal compass. Her father's voice: soft, smoky, the sort of lie men say to daughters they plan to protect. Dead men don't have to live in a world where "true" could kill you and "north" was just another word for nowhere.
She'd been James Blake for eight months now—longer than she'd been anyone before. Another ghost stitched together from thrift-store shirts and a voice sanded down to gravel. Two years since that October night: gunfire, splintered bone, the wet gurgle of last breaths. Jordan Blake died face-down in her own family's blood. James clawed out of the wreckage wearing her guilt like a second skin. Eight months of binding ribs until breath came shallow, of lowering her gaze and sharpening her walk into something that dared the world to look twice.
And still, Thornfield's marble walls felt like they'd already guessed the truth.
The Federal Marshals had been surgical in their cruelty: Complete identity reconstruction. Gender presentation alteration statistically reduces detection risk. They'd said it like they were reading a recipe, each word stripping her further from herself. They won't be looking for a boy.
And they'd been right. They were scouring graveyards and headlines for a shattered daughter, not a son risen from the ashes with new scars and an old vendetta.
Room 247 loomed ahead like a verdict rendered before trial—brass numbers gleaming coldly, each digit polished to a shine that probably cost more than her family's weekly grocery bill back when they were still alive. Jordan's hand—James's hand—trembled as she slotted the key, the lock yielding with a soft click that sounded, for one traitorous second, like permission to keep breathing.
The room itself exhaled wealth so dense it felt suffocating: twin beds dressed in Thornfield's funeral colors—black, gold and blood-red—an antique desk better suited for ransom notes than homework, and windows framing the New England landscape with all it's gothic beauty. A sanctuary built for heirs and heiresses; cages so comfortable their occupants forgot they had bars.
Empty. Thank God, For a few stolen minutes, at least, the room would belong to her and the echo of everything she used to be.
Jordan dropped her duffel bag like a corpse hitting marble, the thud rattling up her spine and settling somewhere behind her breastbone. Alone—finally—she let the mask crack, shoulders curling inward as if bracing for a blow that never came. For a single stolen breath, her voice slipped free, softer, rounder, girlish.
"I can do this," she whispered. But even her own voice sounded foreign now—like hearing a lullaby in a language you barely remember.
The binding cinched around her ribs bit deep, a daily sacrifice on the altar of survival. She'd learned to silence the sting, to wear the ache like a second skin. Boys didn't live under the constant audit of their own flesh. Boys moved through space without apology, unburdened by the weight of curves and softness.
She'd learned to be a boy the way other people crammed for final exams: repetition, fear, and the gut-deep certainty that failure wasn't an option—it was a death sentence.
The compass slipped free from beneath her shirt, glinting dully in the dorm's dying afternoon light. Antique gold, the face cracked like old porcelain, its needle trembling northward with dogged faith. The last relic of Maple Street. Of a girl who climbed trees in grass-stained dresses and sang her baby brother to sleep while their father listened in the hall, smiling.
The baby brother who'd died screaming while she ran.
Focus. The voice in her skull belonged to the Marshals—clinical, cold, necessary. Identity maintenance is survival. Emotion is exposure.
She closed trembling fingers around the compass. And buried the girl again.
Outside, Thornfield spread out like a beautiful rot blooming behind gothic stone—perfect lawns masking buried bones. Students streamed across the quad in curated uniforms: girls in black, red-gold pleated skirts, boys in pressed slacks and gold silk ties that whispered old money with every step. Their laughter floated up to the window, sugar-dusted and sharp with secrets.
Somewhere out there, behind mirrored glass or hidden cameras, Derek Hayes was already marking her name in invisible ink. Watching. Waiting. Weighing the newest ghost Thornfield had swallowed whole.
The quiet ones always required the closest watch.