Shelby doesn't walk into the parking lot—she erupts into it.
She's welded to Evan's arm like he's a trophy she won at a carnival booth, dragging his whole gravitational field with her, dragging everyone's attention with her.
"ANGELA!"
Her voice rings across the quad like bells at a coronation—or an alarm. Conversations splinter. Heads turn. Eyes land on me.
I brace for impact.
Shelby barrels toward me, glittering with a joy I can feel from ten feet away. Her braids are half-up, half-everywhere, and her smile is big enough to rewire the clouds.
"Evan asked me to the BALL and I SAID YES!"
She lands in front of me like a confetti cannon, breathless, eyes shining. She grabs my hands and shakes them so hard my teeth click. For a second, the static in my chest fizzles—shoved aside by the sheer force of her happiness.
"It's perfect," I tell her—and I mean it.
After every heartbreak, every disappointment, every time she waited at a door that never opened—she has earned this. She deserves to glow so hard the gods have to squint.
Shelby doesn't even hear me. She's too busy floating.
Evan leans back on his heels, smirking with the confidence of someone who has never truly been told no. Broad shoulders, backwards cap, Mercy sweatshirt tied around his waist like a uniform. He radiates the smug security of a guy who knows he looks good in game photos.
But his eyes flick once—fast—past me.
Not at my face.
At my hands.
At my bag.
Like he's checking something.
Then he's all casual again, voice lazy, grin easy.
"So, Ang," he drawls, "still sticking to your mom's famous policy? Books first, boys last? No dating till graduation?"
He spins a finger near his temple—crazy, right?
My smile tightens.
Mom's "policy" started as a half-joking threat to scare off boys with bad intentions. It turned into armor people could throw at me whenever I dared to want anything.
It's fine when I say it.
It's different when they do.
Then, casually, like ordering fries:
"So what about James?"
My heart goes still.
There it is. Clean hit. The name drops into my chest like a stone into a too-full glass.
I fold my arms across my ribs, shield by posture. "Wow," I say softly. "Middle-school improv and my ex in one sentence. Bold."
Evan shrugs. Not cruel—just careless. The shrug of someone who's never learned how sharp his jokes can be, because he's never been cut by them.
It was just a joke.
If it hurt, that's on you.
I'm used to this role—the smart, unbothered girl who's "above" dating. The one who can take it. The one who doesn't bleed.
Today, my skin is too thin.
Yesterday is still in my bones—Collins, the note, the laughter, the lot, the vanishing, the message that knew my not-name.
I pretend it's gone.
It isn't.
Shelby feels the shift before I can paste my mask back on. She drags me into a hug, quick and fierce, voice low against my ear.
"I want you happy, too," she whispers. "Don't shut yourself away."
The words bruise deeper than she means them to.
I'm not shut away. I'm…careful. After James, I rebuilt myself out of broken glass. Glued every shard back together and learned how to stand without cutting anyone else.
I'm proud of that.
But scars don't make you fireproof. They just make you quiet.
I pull back and force a grin. "I am happy. Vicariously. I'm like a parasite for your joy."
"Yeah, well, I'm an unlimited source," she says, swiping at eyes that might actually tear from excitement. "Drink up."
Evan clears his throat with the enthusiasm of someone about to propose a terrible idea.
"So," he says, "my cousin's in town."
Oh no.
I can already hear Shelby's squeal loading before sound happens. Her whole body coils, ready to launch.
"He's from Santorini," Evan continues. "Older. Broody. Family thinks he needs to 'open up.' You two could hang out. Or talk. Or just stand next to each other and be normal. Since that's your whole…brand."
He gestures vaguely at me, like I'm an item on a menu.
And it's stupid, but the way he says broody hits wrong—like he's quoting someone else's description. Like he's been given a script and told which adjectives to use.
Shelby gasps on cue, clutching my arm like it's the last lifeboat on the Titanic. "Oh my GOD, Ang. It's PERFECT. The Ball is literally the perfect place for you two to meet—"
I try logic.
"I'm not looking for anything."
She beams harder, like that's the correct answer. "That's why it'll work."
I try honesty.
"I'm not in the right headspace."
She squeezes my hand. "That's why you need it."
I try threat.
"If he breathes provocatively in my direction, I'm breaking his arms."
She squeals and claps, because she thinks I'm joking.
Evan grins like a director who's just nailed his dream casting. "You'll like him. He's quiet. Intense. Stares out windows a lot. You can trauma-bond over mutual hatred of fun."
"Wow," I say. "You should write taglines for dating apps."
Shelby is practically vibrating. "Does he have an accent? Tell me he has an accent."
"Yes," Evan says, like he's revealed the twist ending. "And he rolls his R's. Don't make it weird."
Shelby digs her nails into my arm. "WE LOVE AN ACCENT," she stage-whispers. "Angela. This is fate."
The word hits like static.
Fate.
My throat tightens before my brain decides why.
Cassie's voice lives in the back of my skull like an old warning: Careful with words that sound like vows.
I gently tug my arm free. "Can we not use that word while the universe is in the middle of gaslighting me?"
They both blink.
"Nothing," I say quickly. "Just…allergic. To fate. And setups."
Shelby's smile falters for half a second—the brief flash of seriousness she wears like a hidden knife.
"Okay," she says softer. "Then no setups. Just…a conversation. A normal human conversation. You can do those."
Evan shifts, rolls his shoulders, still too casual. "He's coming either way," he adds. "My aunt practically packed him in bubble wrap and shipped him here."
Something about that lands wrong too.
Coming either way.
Like the cousin doesn't get a choice. Like choices aren't the point.
"Besides," Shelby says, scrambling back into brightness, "if you show up single while I'm with Evan, Tiffany and her Sigma hive are going to assume you got rejected last minute and I will physically fight them in the parking lot."
Evan nods solemnly. "I will hold her earrings."
The mental image—Shelby in a gown, swinging at Tiffany like a glittering war goddess—almost makes me laugh.
Almost.
"I can go alone," I say instead. "That's still legal, right? Or did Mercy quietly outlaw independent women last semester?"
"That's not the point," Shelby groans. "This is the Masquerade Ball. You don't walk in alone. You enter. With a date. With a look. With drama. It's a whole moment."
"Pretty sure I had enough drama today when Collins turned my love life into a TED Talk," I mutter.
Evan grimaces. "Yeah, that was brutal. Sorry, by the way. Some of the guys were saying—"
He cuts himself off, sanity grabbing his tongue just in time.
I arch a brow. "No, please, go on. I live for anonymous commentary on my humiliation."
He lifts his hands. "I'm not trying to be an ass. I'm just saying…the story moved fast."
My stomach tightens.
Moved fast how?
Fast like gossip?
Or fast like someone pushed it?
Evan glances to Shelby, then back to me, voice dropping slightly like he's letting me in on the joke instead of the warning.
"All I'm saying is half of them were impressed you climbed on a stranger's truck to write NO on it. The other half are afraid of you now."
He says it like it's funny.
But he doesn't ask the obvious question.
What truck?
Whose truck?
How did it disappear?
He just…knows.
Which means: he heard the story in a version that already has details.
Details that weren't public.
And my pulse stutters into a new rhythm—thin, cold, alert.
"Good," I say. "Fear is healthy. I recommend it."
Shelby swats his arm. "You were supposed to not bring that up."
"What? I'm complimenting her criminal instincts." Evan grins. "You spelled it right, at least. Could've been worse."
I want to ask how he knows exactly what I wrote. How fast the story spread. Whether anyone mentioned the picture. The texts. The way the truck vanished without sound.
Instead, I say, "Great. My legacy: the girl who said no aggressively."
"There are worse legacies," Shelby says. "Mine will be 'girl who tripped in six-inch heels and took out a buffet table.'"
"Your destiny," I say solemnly, "is to go viral."
She laughs, bright and loud. It tugs at the knot under my ribs, loosening it by a fraction.
But while they joke—while Shelby talks about dresses and glitter and curling irons and the pre-game playlist—my brain keeps looping back to one thing:
Nice handwriting. Wrong box.
The photo of me on the truck.
The note on the board.
Eyes on me.
Laughter like prophecy.
I wanted to choose the normal world.
Normal didn't choose me back.
We fall into step, the three of us, drifting toward the main walkways.
Campus swirls around us—laughter, voices, footsteps, the clatter of skateboards. Someone's blasting music from a portable speaker. The air smells like fries, rain, and cigarette smoke.
It all feels far away, like I'm listening from underwater.
Shelby and Evan buzz about IceHouse plans—pizza, loud music, that electric thrill of being young and wanted and headed toward The Next Thing.
They sound like the life I used to live.
All I hear is the wind.
The clouds are low and swollen, trembling with a storm that can't decide whether to break. The hairs on my arms lift even though the temperature hasn't changed.
Shelby loops her arm through mine, warm and solid and painfully human. "Okay, game plan: dress recon at my place this Saturday, then in a couple weeks we launch Operation Make Angela Agree to One Fun Thing. Evan, prep the cousin."
"I'm not a lab rat," I mutter.
"Incorrect," she says. "You are my emotionally avoidant best friend. It's worse."
Evan smirks. "I'll tell him to bring his least-murdery stare."
"Wow," I say. "You really know how to sell this."
"He's not a murderer, he just…looks like one." Evan shrugs. "You'll see."
"Great," I say. "Can't wait to meet your Greek murder statue of a cousin."
A breeze curls around us—cool and deliberate—brushing the back of my neck like fingertips. The world feels narrowed, like campus has folded inward and left just us and the path.
My phone buzzes in my pocket.
I slow, pulling it out. Shelby and Evan keep talking, orbiting each other like a binary star.
It's Cassie.
Cassie: you feel weird
I huff.
Me: that's rude
Three dots blink, vanish, blink again.
Cassie: not like that. like storm pressure behind my eyes and it's pointed at you
My grip tightens.
Me: evan just invited me to meet his cousin at the ball
Dots. Pause. Dots again.
Cassie: tall. dark. eyes that make you forget you're standing in your own life?
I stop walking.
Shelby tugs my arm, glancing back. "You good?"
"Yeah," I lie. "Just a text. Keep talking. I'm here. I'm listening."
She launches back into describing a dress she saw online—black velvet, ridiculous slit, tiny embroidered stars. Evan argues sequins are a fire hazard. They keep moving; I let my feet follow.
Me: you've seen him?
Cassie: not yet. but something new just stepped on the board and the energy feels like…like the wrong player on the right square
The sidewalk ahead blurs at the edges.
Cassie: careful. don't say yes to anything that sounds like "always" or "never"
Always. Never.
The hooded man in the road. The veiled figure. The door.
You were never meant to remain in that flesh this long.
Unknown: You don't have to be ready yet. But you will be.
My mouth dries.
Evan is watching me now too, somewhere between curious and annoyed. "Everything good? Or did another truck leave you a love note?"
"Just Cassie," I say. "She's pre-judging all your cousin's life choices."
"Tell her to get in line," Evan mutters. "My mom's been trying to fix him since adolescence."
"See?" Shelby squeezes my arm. "Hopeless romantic case study. Perfect for you. You can nurse him back to emotional health."
"I'm a nursing student," I correct. "Not a life coaching rehabilitation program."
"Same skillset," she says. "Different tools."
I snort despite myself.
Up close, Evan is so…ordinary. Cocky. Loyal to his people. Mildly oblivious.
And yet—
His timing is too perfect. Cousin in town. The Ball. Right after the note. Right after the lot. Right after the campus turned my humiliation into a group ritual.
Coincidence?
Maybe.
Except I don't believe in coincidences anymore.
Not since the door. Not since the scroll. Not since a prophecy whispered Keeper into my bones and then waited.
We reach the fork where the paths split—one toward the dorms, one toward the library. The wind gusts, rattling the leaves like they're trying to let go.
Shelby leans into me, voice softer. "Promise you'll come over Saturday?" Some of the manic joy slips, revealing the soft underlayer. "No disappearing into your books. No 'I fell asleep on flashcards.' I want to see you excited, Ang. Just once. For you."
Guilt presses under my ribs.
I am excited.
Just…not about the right things.
I think about the invitation in my bag—matte black, silver ink, humming like a live wire. I think about the unknown number in my phone. The truck that moved without sound. There are two invitations in my life now.
One with a dress code.
One with a body count.
"Yeah," I say. My voice sounds steadier than I feel. "I'll be there."
Shelby's smile comes back full-strength. "Good. And order more fabric. We're going full cinematic. No half-measures."
"Since when do I do half-measures?" I mutter.
"Exactly."
She and Evan peel off toward the lot, his arm slung around her shoulders, her head tipped toward him as she talks. They move like they've already choreographed the next three years without knowing it.
My phone buzzes one more time.
Cassie: one more thing
Me: what
Cassie: if his eyes feel familiar… don't be polite. run.
A chill slides down my spine like ice water.
I shove my phone into my pocket and turn toward the library, feet moving on autopilot.
I walk between them—Shelby's joy pulling me forward, dread tugging me back.
Two worlds.
One tearing.
One stitching.
And somewhere above it all, fate is smiling—patient as a dealer with a loaded deck—absolutely certain I'm already in the game.
For the next few days, nothing explodes. No mysterious texts. No shifting shadows. No new omens clawing at my dreams.
Almost enough to pretend everything is normal.
Almost.
Because on the third day—when I open my sketchbook in the library to work on Shelby's dress—there's a new page I don't remember drawing.
A single charcoal study.
A man's profile in shadow.
Dark hair.
Strong mouth.
Eyes left blank—just empty ovals of paper.
And beneath it, in my handwriting that isn't quite my handwriting:
DON'T LOOK FIRST.