Calder didn’t approach her again for three days.
He didn’t need to.
El could feel him watching.
Not in the obvious way — not staring across classrooms or following her down hallways. Calder was smarter than that. His attention was quiet, deliberate, threaded through the spaces between people.
He watched patterns. He watched reactions. He watched her.
And El felt it every time his gaze brushed her like a fingertip across the back of her neck.
She tried to ignore him. She tried to pretend nothing had changed.
But everything had.
The Incident at the Crossing
On Friday afternoon, El stood at the edge of the school grounds, waiting for the bus. Students crowded around her, laughing, shouting, shoving each other playfully. She kept her arms close to her body, her breath steady, her emotions locked down tight.
She couldn’t afford to slip.
Not here. Not in front of everyone.
Across the street, a group of boys were messing around near the crosswalk. One of them — tall, loud, careless — shoved another too hard. The smaller boy stumbled into the road.
A car screeched. A horn blared. The boy jumped back just in time.
Gasps rippled through the crowd.
El felt her pulse spike — not from fear, but from the sudden, sharp wish that rose unbidden:
I want him to stop being cruel.
She swallowed it down instantly, forcing her mind blank.
No. Not here. Not now.
She squeezed her eyes shut, willing the pressure to fade.
When she opened them, Calder was standing across the street, watching her.
Not the boys. Not the near‑accident.
Her.
His expression wasn’t shocked or confused like everyone else’s. It was focused. Intent. As if he hadn’t seen the almost‑collision at all — only her reaction.
El’s stomach dropped.
He knew.
He was waiting to see what she would do.
She turned away quickly, stepping onto the bus as soon as the doors opened. She didn’t look back. She didn’t want to see the way Calder’s eyes followed her.
But she felt it anyway.
The Notebook
That night, El couldn’t sleep.
She lay awake, staring at the ceiling, listening to the distant hum of traffic outside her window. Every sound felt sharper. Every emotion felt louder. Every thought felt dangerous.
She rolled onto her side, pulling her blanket tighter around her.
Her phone buzzed.
A message.
From an unknown number.
She hesitated, then opened it.
I want to talk. — C
Her breath caught.
Calder.
She stared at the message for a long time, her heart thudding painfully. She didn’t reply. She couldn’t. She didn’t know what he wanted — or what he knew.
But the next morning, she found something in her locker.
A notebook.
Plain black cover. No name. No decoration.
Just a single sticky note on the front:
Read it. — C
Her hands shook as she opened it.
Inside were pages of handwritten notes — dates, times, locations. Newspaper clippings taped neatly beside them. Printouts of local incident reports. Lists of names. Circled patterns.
And at the center of every cluster, every timeline, every ripple:
El.
Her breath hitched.
He had tracked everything.
Every accident. Every sudden fight. Every inexplicable burst of violence.
He had mapped her emotions to events she hadn’t even known she caused.
Her knees weakened. She leaned against the locker, gripping the notebook so tightly the edges dug into her palms.
Footsteps approached.
She didn’t need to look up to know who it was.
Calder stopped beside her, hands in his pockets, expression calm.
“You see it now,” he said softly.
El swallowed hard. “You’ve been following me.”
“No,” Calder said. “I’ve been studying you.”
She flinched.
He didn’t apologize.
“You’re connected to all of this,” he continued. “And I think you know it.”
El’s voice trembled. “Why are you doing this?”
Calder’s eyes softened — not kindly, but with a strange, unsettling sincerity.
“Because you’re not the only one who feels different,” he said. “And because I think you’re stronger than you realize.”
El’s pulse hammered.
She didn’t speak.
She couldn’t.
Calder leaned closer, lowering his voice to a whisper.
“I want to help you understand what you are.”
El’s breath caught.
What she was.
Not who.
What.
Calder stepped back, giving her space.
“When you’re ready,” he said, “meet me after school.”
Then he walked away, leaving El clutching the notebook, her heart pounding, her thoughts spiraling.
The world listened to her.
And now someone else did too.
Someone who wasn’t afraid.
Someone who wanted to understand.
Someone who might be dangerous.
ns216.73.216.176da2
and then Add to home screen.