VALERIA

“Leave me alone,” I keep repeating, closing my eyes as I clutch my sketchpad against my chest. “Just back off, Jeremy. I’m not doing anything to you.”

These are lines that are very familiar to me. In fact, I should probably just tattoo them on my forehead. Getting harassed in the art room of Redwood High is a staple for me. From freshman year to junior year, I was constantly bullied and made fun of. The art room has always been my place of solitude because painting calms me down.

But today is my first day as a senior. I had pretty high hopes. I was fine all day, and even though I still got weird looks for my appearance, everyone pretty much left me alone.

At least until Jeremy, the meanest boy I ever met, found me after our last class.

Now he’s pounding at the door of the art room, which I locked. “Come out, come out, you little freak.”

I take a deep breath. “I said leave me alone. Is that so hard to understand?”

He ignores me. “Hey, hairy, do you use your hairy armpits to paint all those ugly sketches? Because I bet they smell too.”

His friends’ laughter rings in the hallway, echoing like a taunt in my head. Instantly, tears spring from my eyes. I open my mouth to retort, to come up with some sort of rebuttal to redirect the embarrassment I just felt, but I come up with none.

Jeremy sneers, peeking through the little window of the door. “Aw, look! She’s going to cry, everyone! God, you’re so ugly, Valeria.”

They all take turns trying to look at me, and I want to shrink and never reappear.

Because what he just said is true.

I am terrifyingly ugly, but not in the nerdy, average way that they show in high school movies. There really is something wrong with me. I have thick black hair that’s also very apparent on my body, especially my face and my arms. I look like I’m sparsely covered in fur. My blue eyes are way too big for my face, and they freak people out. I’m taller and bigger built than any other girl here.

In short, I look like a cross between a teenage girl and some sort of a beast. My mom tells me that it’s all going to make sense in the future, but it never did.

It doesn’t help that every time I get into a situation like this, I get strange rises of strength and energy in my body, like my instinct to fight is trying to claw its way out.

And I’m feeling that surge of strength now.

I don’t know what it is or where it’s from. Maybe it’s part of puberty for a freak like me. Either way, I can feel a sense of danger from it. I can tell it’s not a good kind of strength. It’s monstrous.

Jeremy playfully turns the doorknob. “Let me in so I can take a good look at you, Valeria.”

“Back off, Jeremy,” I say, feeling the energy in me spike to great heights. I try to quell it, but it’s crawling up my throat like bile. “Please just leave me alone.”

“Not until I take a good look at you.”

I open my mouth to tell him to screw himself, but then, he pushes the door open with ease, breaking the rusty lock like it’s nothing. Fear rushes through my body, making me drop my sketchpads on the floor.

His friends eagerly peek through the door, waiting for him to reach me.

“Hi, Valeria,” he says in a fake sweet tone, picking up one of my sketchpads and flicking through it. “This is nice.”

“Please just go,” I rasp.

He just stares at me, and to my horror, he starts to rip the pages of my sketchpad.

Pieces of paper fly in the air, landing on the floor. Hours of work. Days of practice. Lots of love and emotion put into those pages….

All gone.

I look up at him in horror and he tosses the empty cover on my face. His friends holler and laugh. The sound, the sensation, and the terror of it all build in my chest, and with that I feel my strength struggling to escape.

Before I know it, I’m already screaming, launching myself at him and pinning him to the ground.

I don’t give him time to react. I straddle him, pinning his arms down with my knees as I give him punch after punch in the face. His bones are cracking under my knuckles. Blood is spurting from his nose and lips. He’s saying something, but I no longer hear it. It’s like something else has taken over my body.

“HEY!” one of his friends yells at me. “Get off him!”

“What are you doing?”

“Stop it, Valeria, he’s not moving anymore!”

Those words do the trick. I snap out of my trance. I get on my feet and stagger back, and that’s when I see that Jeremy is indeed not moving. He has his swollen eyes closed, his face covered in blood and bruises.

My heart stops. Did I kill him?

The idea is so terrible that I almost break down on the spot, but I just run past his body and push through the crowd of his friends, heading to the exit of the school as quickly as I can.

With shaking hands, I dial my mom’s phone as soon as I reach the gates. I look for my old car and get inside, waiting for her to answer.

She answers after a few rings. “Valeria, I thought—”

“Mom, help me,” I sob dryly, my body going numb. “I don’t know what’s happening to me. Please, help me. Pick me up, I’m begging you.”

Mom stays quiet for a moment. “Just drive home, Valeria.”

“I don’t think I can drive!” I clench my hands. “I… badly hurt someone, Mom. I may have killed him. I don’t know what’s happening to me.”

Mom stays silent. There’s something strange about the way she’s acting. It’s almost like she expected this. Something about it made me nervous, so I decide to just do as she says and drive away without turning the call off.

“Mom?” I swallow hard as I speed away from the school, taking all sorts of turns just to add to the distance. I don’t even know what path this is anymore. “What happened to me?”

“I’ll tell you when you get home,” she says in a low voice. “I’m sorry you have to find out this way.”

“What do you mean?” I ask. “What do you know? Just tell me!”

She’s about to speak again when suddenly someone steps in front of my car, about to be crushed, and I swerve off the road.

VALERIA

A strangled scream rises in my throat as I press on the brakes of my car. The sound of the screeching tires grinds in my ears, and the smell of the burning rubber is so strong that it brings a gag out of me.

Thankfully, however, my car stops before it can slam into a tree and kill me.

I breathe hard, my hands still wound tight around the steering wheel. My knuckles are white and I’m sure my face is drained of color too. My heart is basically swinging inside my rib cage, and it doesn’t seem keen on going back to normal.

I almost died. I nearly went off track and became a skid mark on the road.

And it’s all because of the random person who appeared in front of me.

“Who’s there?” I demand, looking around to find the person. “Are you hurt?”

No one answers. I don’t see anyone else here too.

But that can’t be possible, right? I did see someone stepping in front of my car. I know that it had a male silhouette, and it was wearing something reddish in hue, but darker. It was maroon. It’s hard to miss in the background of the green forest foliage.

Even with my shaky legs, I get out of the car, grabbing my keys and wedging them between my knuckles as a weapon. The wind blows overhead, rustling the leaves and creating sounds, causing me to whip around over and over.

However, I’m alone with the big trees and the fallen leaves.

Is it possible that my anxious brain just came up with all of that? Is there really no man here at all, just me and my worries? It would make sense, because I was thinking of getting caught and perhaps that—

“You shouldn’t be here.”

The sudden sound of a male voice from behind me makes me flinch. I whip around so fast that I almost lose balance, but that’s not what sends me falling to the forest floor.

This has to be the person who blocked me earlier, and it’s a man who has to be a couple of years older than me.

A man who has the looks and the aura of a Greek god. His chiseled features are soft and sharp at the same time, with his straight nose, sloping cheekbones, and prominent jaw. His hair is black and wavy, slicked back to reveal his eyes, his most striking feature.

His irises are brown, but in a shade that’s so light it’s almost yellow. The light just bounces off of it, reminding me of the last embers of a big fire.

In short, he’s gorgeous. Probably the most gorgeous person I have ever seen.

But there’s a certain aura about him that’s... strange. Like he’s not from around here. Something about those eyes suggests that he’s hiding something.

When he smiles at me, that creeping feeling in my chest only gets more acute.

Maybe it’s just his smile, because he has extra-pointy canines that give him a mischievous look. Maybe it’s the fact that he’s wearing some sort of a maroon suit with a black shirt, with some kind of emblem on his breast pocket. Maybe it’s just the way he appeared out of nowhere.

Whatever it is, I just get to my feet as he starts to walk toward me. I back against a tree, readying the key in my hand. “Who are you? And what are you doing here?”

The man only tilts his head. “I should be the one asking you that. Do you even know where you are?”

To be perfectly honest, I don’t know where I am. I want to say that of course I do, it’s the sleepy small town of Florence, Oregon. It shouldn’t be hard to find your way, and yet I got lost for reasons I still don’t understand. His smirk is making me think that he had something to do with it.

“Yeah,” I just say briefly. “Now tell me who you are and what you want from me. You almost killed me, you know that? Appearing like some sort of a ghost out of nowhere?”

The man just chuckles. “You’re not a very good liar. I know you’re lost.”

With that, his whole energy changes. Something strange clings in the air, a change in the wind that makes it feel electric. As I look into his eyes, I find myself getting more and more relaxed, but not in a way that’s comforting. His gaze is making me almost sleepy.

Pliable. Obedient.

I can’t move my body. No matter how hard I try, I’m still stuck against the tree and I can feel a physical force holding me there.

He walks closer to me until his face is inches from mine. The scent coming from him is intoxicating, a mix of pine and musk and something sweet like nectar. I inhale it deeply because I can’t help myself, and that’s when I sink deeper into my trance-like state.

“You know you’re not supposed to be here,” he whispers, leaning close and inhaling deeply as he reaches my neck. “Are you asking for danger?”

“No.” I shut my eyes as heat rushes all over my body. “I’m lost. I want to leave.”

The man laughs softly, his strange sweet scent filling my nose. “What if I don’t want you to leave? Because I can smell something on you, and it tells me I shouldn’t let you go.”

He leans closer, but even though my instincts tell me to push him off, my body doesn’t react.

In the end, he gets so close to me that I feel his skin.

“You’re different,” he observes, his eyes lighting up. “You’re one of us. I see that now, and I’ll take you where we all belong.”

I want to tell him I don’t know what he’s talking about, but it feels like my voice is gone.

He reaches out and takes my hand, leading me away from my car. Every part of me that’s sensible is telling me to run, but it seems that he has control over my body. All I know is that I’m following him like a lost puppy, letting him navigate deeper and deeper through the forest.

At last, we reach a hill surrounded by tall metal fence and vines. Perched atop the hill is a building that looks like a castle, with dark red bricks like his suit. The windows are lit and I can hear voices from inside.

He turns to me. “Now, all you have to do is trust me so you can get in. I promise, everything will make sense if you come with me.”

“I don’t want to go in,” I say, but I find myself nodding. “What did you do to me?”

“Just trust me,” the man tells me soothingly.

And with that, he holds my face in his warm palms and fixes his gaze on my lips, slowly leaning in.