Chapter Text
Ever since she could remember, there’s been a buzzing beneath her skin.
Looking back at her childhood, Elena figures that’s probably the least abnormal thing about her. English wasn’t the first language she spoke when her motor skills began to develop when she was a toddler and she began to grasp words to string sentences together. She had fallen behind in that department when she was little. Elena didn’t speak a single word until around thirty six weeks — the age in which a regular child should have already made a small, mental vocabulary list.
And, when she did, her words curled different. It wasn’t the english in which Grayson and Miranda spoke. It was harsher, the words thicker. First, Old Norse, then Bulgarian with rolling syllables.
The doctors, the child psychiatrists, nobody could explain it. Elena would tottle around, foreign language lisping from her small mouth. She’d tug on her mother’s skirt and ask a question that had Miranda looking confused and worried.
Translation books for both Old Norse and Bulgarian began to litter the coffee tables, another sitting on the kitchen counter, propped open when Elena spoke a new word that her parents hadn’t yet heard of. They remained scattered through the rooms, always within reach for the better half of Elena’s early years.
It took months for Elena to begin to filter in English words. Sentences half strung in failing english and then Old Norse, until the latter eventually began to fade away the more Elena grew up.
The Bulgarian, however, stayed.
It was concerning and baffling — a mystery about how — but, eventually it just became another fact of life of their life: Elena liked oranges and strawberry syrup and stars and spoke Bulgarian. Then, Miranda was pregnant and, nine months later, gave birth to little baby Jeremy when Elena is almost three.
It wasn’t uncommon to find Elena following her mother around when she was carrying Jeremy. Where the brother went, the sister followed close behind. Grayson thought it was funny and Miranda would smile warmly at her daughter, resting a hand on her hair, the other holding up Jeremy to her chest.
“Sil-vee-yah,” Elena would pronounce clumsily, tiny hand reaching out and patting at a resting Jeremy’s blanket coddled form through the bars of his crib. “Sil-vee-yah.”
“No, that’s your brother Jeremy,” Miranda corrects, crouching down and gently moving Elena’s arm away from the space in the bars, not wanting her to wake the baby she’d just spent an hour trying to settle. “Jer-uh-mee. Jeremy.”
Elena turns her head to stare at her. Her face scrunches up, frustrated and confused.
Another trip to the child psychiatrist revealed nothing: Elena was a normal child in all the ways it should matter.
So, this became another fact of life: sometimes, Elena just got things confused.
She’d eat an apple like it was her favorite fruit in the world before remembering she doesn’t like apples. There were crying fits sometimes, when Elena ate something and expected to like it, only to realize her taste buds rebelled and she’d stare at the item, betrayed and confused. She’d sometimes call Jeremy a different name still until she realized it wasn’t who she thought she’d been calling out to — like she’d been expecting someone different and couldn’t figure out why.
She grasped reading and writing faster than someone her age should, like she’d done it before in another life. Her English words got better eventually, the Bulgarian slowly taking a backseat ride in her life. Her syllables still curled sometimes in a way the english language didn’t.
There was something that never went away, though: that prickling under her skin. A tingling buzz that brushed through her blood like a cat curling around its owner’s leg.
Her parents used to take her to doctors when she complained about it, but they couldn’t find another abnormal through their tests, just like the other strange occurrences in her life. Eventually, Elena stopped mentioning it and Miranda and Grayson stopped taking her to the hospitals.
When she’s five, she goes to school for the first time, a backpack printed with stars looped over her tiny shoulders and curls falling around her face wildly since she fought against the hairbrush this morning and they’d been running late anyways.
Elena didn’t fight against the outrage of having to wake up to get dressed so early in the morning to be shepherded off to a building full of strangers. Jeremy put up enough of a fight for her, after all.
He still sits in Grayson’s arms, a megawatt pout on his scrunched face, arms crossed. He’d been in a bad mood the last four days since he realized his sister would be going to school and he couldn’t go with her. He’d screamed, he’d shouted, he thrashed, he’d kicked and sent their watercolor tray they’d been using to paint sunflowers on the floor flying across the air. He’d been grounded after that and he still fussed about it before turning to his next move of rebellion: the silent treatment for anyone who wasn’t his sister.
“Remember, if you need anything, ask your teacher. She’s there to help you,” Miranda says for the millionth time.
“Uh-huh,” Elena hums, nodding.
“Be polite, use your manners. You remember what to say?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Make some friends, okay, sweetheart? I know you can do it. And don’t wander off, you hear me?”
“Uh-huh.” Elena nods again, obedient. Jeremy huffs from their father’s arms.
Miranda boops Elena on the nose, making it wrinkle. “That’s my girl.” Then she holds out her arms. “Hug?” Elena steps forward and wraps her arms around her mother’s neck, trying to be careful not to accidentally pull any of her hair. Her mother squeezes her back tightly for a long moment before leaning away. “Kiss?”
Elena gives her mother an exaggerated kiss on the cheek with a, “Mwah!” like her parents always do for her.
Jeremy makes a noise from above. “Kiss, kiss!” he demands, like one would for a stuffed animal in a toy aisle.
Grayson puts his son on his feet and Jeremy barrels into Elena, hugging her waist. He pouts up at her. Elena pretends to not know what he wants, tapping her chin like she’s seen her father do when he’s play-thinking to get on their mother’s nerves after she asked him to do something.
Jeremy huffs and tugs at one of her backpack strings. “‘Lenaaa.”
Elena grins and leans down, kissing him on the forehead. “Mwah!”
“Another, another!” Jeremy chants.
Elena gives him another kiss on the forehead, then a second, and then a third until he’s giggling and squirming away. She lets him go and watches as he tottles back a few steps, arms swinging. His little spaceship sweater sleeves flap around his hands, too big — it’d been the only size the store had and Jeremy had declared he would wear it anyways despite the hinderance.
Miranda scoops him up before he could decide to either demand more attention from his sister or attempt to run off for an adventure across the school parking lot.
Grayson ruffles Elena’s hair. “Be good, kiddo. Have a good day, okay?”
“Okay!” Elena agrees, beaming.
She waves at them and then turns on her heels, walking towards the school because she’s a big girl now and big girls don’t need their parents to walk them to class. Besides, they’ve got their hands full as she can hear Jeremy burst into tears behind her once he realizes that, despite his tantrums and demands, his sister was still going to be gone for hours.
She makes it to the classroom and eyes the sky blue walls, the calendar marked with a few birthdays, a chart with gold stars on the side, waiting to be used, and a name printed on the board in large, blue colored marker: Mrs. Jones.
“Oh, hello there, Elena,” the teacher greets, walking up to her. Her dress fans around her ankles, shimmering orange fabric furling with every step. Elena blinks up at Mrs. Jones, recognizing her from the meeting she had a week ago that her parents took her to — a family oriented meet and greet. “Are you ready for your first day?”
Remember your manners. Elena smiles. “Yes, ma’am.”
Mrs. Jones smiles back and claps her hands together. “Good. You can put your backpack in the cubby with your name. There’s also a desk marked with your name — you’ll sit there, okay?”
Elena nods and scampers off to the section she’d been shown at the meet and greet, already finding a few backpacks there. There was one with Transformers, another with cartoon dinosaurs, and a couple others — printed rainbows, a completely pink backpack, one with Batman, and a last with footballs.
Elena finds the cubby with her name and stuffs her backpack in it before walking to where the desks are. She passes a few names: Tyler, Matt, Bonnie, Tina, Chrissy, and a lot more that were littered further out. She settles in her seat and glances to her left where the nearest person to her is.
“Hi!” Elena greets.
The girl turns her head to look at her, blinking once. Her feet swing from where she’s sat in her chair. “Hi.”
“I’m Elena.”
“I’m Bonnie.” Bonnie blinks at her again before offering a small smile. “I like your sweater.”
Elena glances down at the purple sweatshirt she has on. It’s got a star printed in the middle with yellow. “Thank you! I like your shoes.”
Bonnie’s shoes are purple, too, like Elena’s sweater, only lighter. “We match,” Bonnie observes, the same time Elena does.
Elena grins. “Yes, that means we’re friends now.”
Bonnie nods solemnly like this is a sacred rule of life. When Mrs. Jones calls for attention ten minutes later, all the desks filled, they’re told they’ll say their name and then three facts about themselves. Elena goes with the three basics: she has a little brother named Jeremy (not the Other Name), she likes oranges, and she loves stars.
They’re given coloring sheets with numbered sheets for different colors and Elena squints down at it.
“Want to share my crayons?” Bonnie asks and Elena looks up to see her carefully rattling the box. Elena nods. Hers is all the way in her backpack and she doesn’t particularly want to get up to go get them. Bonnie looks down at her box as she pours them on her desk. One goes careening for the ledge before she scrambles to grab it. She looks a bit flustered as she glances at Elena. “What color?”
Elena’s eyes drift back to her page before picking the color that coordinates with the most used number in the sections. “синьо.”
Her jaw clamps shut right when the word rolls off her tongue. Bonnie looks at her, surprised and confused. Elena grips the sides of her desk as her heart picks up. Her face burns red in embarrassment — that wasn’t the language her parents wanted her to speak in public as they had warned her before. It was too strange since no one else spoke it, not even them.
“Blue,” she corrects swiftly. She stares down at the paper in front of her. The numbers begin to blur. The buzz under her skin prickles a little sharper — pointed.
Something nudges against the sweater sleeve covering her arm. Elena glances at it, finding a blue crayon held out to her. Blinking, Elena hesitantly reaches out and grabs it. Her and Bonnie’s fingers brush. The buzzing under her skin quiets.
When she glances up at her hopefully new friend, Bonnie is smiling at her — something warmer. Something without judgement like her parents feared others would perceive her.
“Thank you,” Elena whispers.
They color together quietly after that.
__
When Elena gets home that night, she declares that she’s made a friend and how, all of recess, her and Bonnie played Harry Potter outside using sticks they picked up as imaginary wands. Her brother listens, silent and moody, his tiny face that grows more and more scrunched the longer Elena talks about her adventures.
He scowls down at his alfredo bowl when she’s done. “We could play Harry Potter here.”
Elena frowns. “You never want to play Harry Potter. You want to play dragons all the time.”
Jeremy huffs. “I want to play Harry Potter now.”
Grayson chuckles while Elena watches her brother attempt to stab a piece of chicken with his fork and miss. She’s not sure what’s so funny to their dad about her brother clearly being upset about something that’s alluding her.
“That sounds like a wonderful time you’ve had, love,” Miranda says, smiling and reaching out, cupping Elena’s cheek gently and ignoring her son’s moodiness for the moment. “You’ll have a friend now to hang out with tomorrow, too. Isn’t that exciting?”
Elena nods quickly, but Jeremy drops his fork all together now. He looks around the table, devasted. “Tomorrow?”
“Yes, Jer, your sister has school tomorrow, too.”
Jeremy shakes his head. “No.”
“Jeremy,” Miranda warns, hand dropping from Elena’s cheek, already sensing a meltdown.
“No, no!” Jeremy suddenly shrieks. “Bonnie’s stealing ‘Lena! She’s stealing her!”
“Nobody is stealing your sister, champ. Elena just has a friend now,” Grayson tries to explain.
Jeremy, however, is having none of it. “No, no!” he exclaims and shoves an arm out. His alfredo bowl goes flying across the table in a wreck of cheese sauce, noodles, and chicken.
“Yeah, okay,” Grayson sighs heavily and stands up, napkin dropping by his half eaten plate before he rounds the table and scoops up his flailing son into his arms.
Jeremy reacts instantly, screaming and crying and tiny fists flying at the outrage of not getting his way. Elena watches as her father walks out of the dining room and towards the stairs, her brother shrieking with rage in his arms that echoes before it slowly becomes faint. When she looks at her mother, Miranda is rubbing her temples like she has a headache.
“Don’t worry, love,” Miranda says anyways, dropping her hands to smile at Elena. “He’ll get over it. Your Aunt Jenna was the same way when I started school.”
Elena blinks at this. She couldn’t imagine her Aunt Jenna, dark eyeliner, black nail polish, who’s wild and unpredictable and grumbles whenever Miranda tries to hug her, act like Jeremy does.
“Really?” she asks, doubtful.
Miranda smiles wistfully. “She used to be so sweet. Used to step on my heels so much because she was following me around that I’d always have blisters.” Her mother frowns. “Now, she’s a teenager.”
The word teenager always sounds so grown up to Elena, but the way her mom says it seems the opposite.
“Hope your teenage phase isn’t like your Aunt Jenna’s,” her mother says, almost absently to herself. She then lets out a laugh, “Or, worse, mine.”
Elena doesn’t understand, but she smiles anyways because it’s impossible not to smile when she hears her mom’s laugh.
__
The next few days fly by in bouts of coloring sheets and building blocks and learning new words to write and bonding with her new friend while she’s at school. When she’s not at school, she spends the rest of her time with her brother, who latches onto her and doesn’t let go. He doesn’t have another crying meltdown, but his determination to have all of her attention when she’s home continues to shine through.
They play Harry Potter out in the yard and make up new spells, lacing in Bulgarian in some of them. They make up one that conjures up paint, another that turns jewelry to diamonds because Jeremy declared his character has to be rich to afford everything obviously, and another that destroys the sun in one timeline where the entire world becomes a winter wonderland.
Elena tells Bonnie this, who watches with wide eyes, hanging off every word that explains how her and Jeremy’s characters they play as have just discovered a floating iceberg village in the sky (it’s the treehouse their dad built for them), when a muffled sound interrupts them.
There’s a shuffle and then a cry, “Quit it!”
Elena shares a look with Bonnie before she leaves the little hideout they have under the playground set near the slide. She finds a blonde girl on the ground, a scatter of dandelions in front of her. A boy stands there, too. Dark haired and frowning. Tyler, she remembers his name. He sits in front of her and she sees his name tag every time she walks into the classroom.
“They’re just flowers,” Tyler says defensively.
“Hey, leave her alone!” Bonnie calls out, face screwed up angrily.
Elena jogs over to them, Bonnie hot on her heels. Tyler looks at them before huffing and storming off towards the gangle of other boys near him. Elena ignores them as they all run away, squawking over one another. She crouches down in front of the blonde girl and sets a hand on her knee. “Are you okay?”
The girl bursts into tears.
Bonnie startles, but Elena doesn’t miss a beat — her brother cries a lot, too, randomly. When the girl tosses herself forward, arms wrapping around Elena’s back, she instinctively hugs her just as tightly.
“It’s ruined,” the girl hiccups into Elena’s shoulder.
Elena glances down at the ground of flowers. Now that she’s looking at them, she realizes they’re not just a pile of flowers— they’re have woven together resembling a crown. Bonnie leaves their side after a moment while Elena rubs the girl’s back, patting it like her mother does when she’s upset. Bonnie eventually comes back and Elena watches as she wraps new dandelions around the old ones, tying them gently together the best she could with the stems.
“It’s not ruined,” Bonnie says, quieter now that Tyler and everybody but them are gone. “Look.”
The blonde girl leans away from Elena, wiping her face with the back of her hand. Her eyes widen when she gets a good look at her new crown before Bonnie reaches forward and sets it gently on the top of blonde waves.
“Good as new,” Elena says.
The girl blinks at them, sniffling a little. “Do I look like a princess?”
Both her and Bonnie nod. The girl smiles at them and it’s so bright that it’s like looking at the sun for too long.
Elena can’t help but smile back. “Do you want to play Harry Potter with us?”
The girl’s brows furrow. “Are there princesses in Harry Potter?”
Bonnie shrugs when Elena glances at her. She makes a decision, “Sure.” She didn’t think there were floating villages in Harry Potter either, but her and Jeremy found one anyways, so why couldn’t there be princesses too?
The girl nods. “Then, I’m a princess.”
“A princess with magic,” Elena adds.
The blonde grins. “A princess with magic,” she repeats.
And, so, Elena gains her second best friend.
Her name is Caroline.
__
Elena can’t help the way she latches onto Bonnie and Caroline. Any other time, she’d be embarrassed, but they don’t make her feel like there’s anything to even be embarrassed about — they latch on to her just as much. Caroline likes to hold hands and Bonnie likes to curl up close enough that their shoulders press together. They make flower crowns out of the weeds and run around on the playground like they’re actually using magic — Caroline’s character even has a pet unicorn now after the latest adventure their characters went on.
They have play dates, sometimes. Bonnie’s dad always lets them eat popsicles after running around in the yard under his supervision. They don’t go over Caroline’s for their play dates for a lot of times since her mom is always working since she’s the sheriff. They usually end up at Elena’s house.
Jeremy was not a fan in the beginning. Glaring and huffing and even had two whole meltdowns before he mellowed out enough to be allowed to be in their presence. Bonnie didn’t mind his intrusion, though he and Caroline fought over Elena’s attention until Caroline realized she could play dress up with him. Even though Jeremy made a face throughout the process, he let them put him in a sparkly dress and they even played with nail polish before they got in trouble for stealing it from Miranda’s dresser.
That was the end of dress up for a while.
They watched Cinderella instead, and then Princess and the Frog and Mulan and The Lion King and ended up sobbing over the latter after Mufasa’s death. They were so upset that only Miranda’s homemade chocolate cake could cheer them up. That was their first sleepover and they woke up on the couch, the tv off now and piled up together, legs tangled with each other and arms flailed.
They never made Elena feel weird about how odd she was, how she’d accidentally trip over her words, torn between different languages. When Elena is with them, she feels like just Elena and that there’s nothing wrong with that, like she hadn’t spent most of the early years of her childhood at doctors and child psychiatrists.
She is ten years old when her Aunt Jenna graduates from school and she goes to the ceremony. Jeremy, seven, nearing eight, is settled on their mom’s lap, watches with wide eyes. They watch their aunt walk across the stage and people in the stands begin to clap and hoot. Someone shouts, “You go, Jenna babe!” and Elena grins, cupping her mouth as she yells in celebration with them, feeling like a part of something.
They go to eat afterwards at the Grill and Aunt Jenna, chipped dark purple nail polish this time, orders something alcoholic with her fake ID that has Miranda scoffing and rolling her eyes while Grayson laughs. Elena doesn’t really get it but she laughs with him and stuffs her mouth full of greasy burger and has a kick fight under the table with her brother. Her world feels whole in that moment.
Elena is fourteen when she realizes that her world is a lot different than what she thought.
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Elena is fourteen and realizes that high school is very different than middle school. It’s a totally different building than her last one and she had to adapt quickly to where to go to get to her right classes. The people who walked around her now were taller, older, and seemed to know what they’re doing compared to her. They walk around with backpacks slung over one shoulder and freaky amounts of hair spray and gel and wear pimple patches like the newest fashion trend. The girls strut down the hallways with short shorts and tight tanktops and the guys walk around, arms straining the sleeves of their shirts.
They look adult to her and Elena feels like some dumb little kid trying to play adult and not quite making the cut.
The only thing that keeps her from falling apart is that she has Caroline and Bonnie with her. She knows Caroline will have a fifteen step plan for them to adapt into the throes of high school, and she’s proven correct when, after the very first day, they go over to Elena’s house and Caroline slaps The Plan Notebook down —it was sparkly and pink and it held all of the plans they’ve ever made together in it.
“Okay, the first step,” Caroline reads, looking up at them with a familiar determined face, “is new clothes.”
And, so, new clothes they went and got.
Miranda went with them to the mall, leaving them with instructions to meet back in an hour at the food court and to phone her if they needed her. Caroline flits through the stores like she was made to be in them, clicking her tongue and mumbling under her breath at different pieces, finding the right things that’ll look right and fit them right. Elena even gets a thin long sleeved shirt with a star in the middle of it that Bonnie found and brought over to her for her to try on.
They leave with enough variety to rotate throughout the week and less than half of their saved allowance still in their pockets.
They go to school in their new clothes and heads held high. Caroline bumps their elbows with hers everytime someone glances over at them and then even wraps a blonde curl around her finger when a boy’s eyes linger on her for longer than it should normally. Elena laughs at her for it despite the same thrill that runs through her veins.
When they hang out, instead of playing Harry Potter, they instead practice cartwheels and stretches and handstands using the tapes Caroline had begged her mother for to train for cheerleading with.
“The second step,” Caroline had listed, jabbing a pink polished nail on the page, “is join something — preferably a sports team.”
But Bonnie couldn’t shoot a basket after a whole afternoon that wasn’t right beside the rim and Elena couldn’t dribble a soccer ball while running to save her life, so that left only a few other sports. Golfing was vetoed by Caroline and swimming made Elena’s hair frizz like it was about to pour down raining, so that left cheerleading and track. It was almost track before they decided on cheer instead — “Our legs would look great in those skirts,” Caroline had said and that was that.
They manage to get on the cheer team and end up cheering for the football game once the season hits later that month. Elena watches Caroline get tossed up into the air with a twirl of golden hair and then catches her when she falls back down with Bonnie, the three sharing a secret grin as their team devolves into a chant, white and red and gold pompoms sparkling from the field lights.
“We’re having a celebratory party,” a sophomore says, pushing his sweaty hair from his face, helmet tucked under his arm. He grins at them, the crowd still roaring after a victory against a rival school. “If you guys want to come.”
“We’ll be there,” Caroline answers for them, smiling prettily. “Where’s it going to be?”
That night, heart racing and with sweaty hands, Elena climbs out of her window and sneaks out of her house for the first time in her entire life and meets up with Bonnie and Caroline to go to a high school party. Someone’s something’s parents were gone and the house was packed with sweaty teenagers and underage drinking and terrible stereo system pumping out something that Elena can’t even make out the words for. Someone had a movie set up with a group entertained there that smelled like weed and there was a pool outside — Elena watches someone be tossed in, shrieking all the way. It was August but that didn’t seem to deter anyone from wanting to hop into a cold pool half drunk.
“Isn’t this great?” Caroline shouts to them over the music as the singer shrieks something about a broken heart and snorting up lines through the speakers.
“Define great,” Bonnie grumbles, but the smile on her face is too genuine to not be real, Elena sees.
Caroline, of course, knows this too. “You’re smiling,” she drags out and wraps an arm around her shoulders, shaking her. “You can’t fool me, Bonnie Bennett.”
That same sophomore who invited them wanders over, looking less sweaty than he did after the game, but still enough that his hair was damp on his head. “Hey, you liking the party?” he asks, lip curling up.
It seems like a question directed to the three of them, but his eyes linger on Elena and then stay there. Caroline giggles and murmurs something before clamping her hands on Bonnie’s shoulders and sweeps them away from the conversation.
Elena resists the urge to scowl at them, forcing a smile on her face. “Yeah, it’s pretty cool,” she says and tucks a wild curl behind her ear. She ignores the way both Caroline and Bonnie are lazer focused on her from a distance away. “Thanks for inviting us.”
The boy shrugs. “No problem. You guys were great out there. You just joined the cheer squad, didn’t you?”
Elena laughs. “That obvious?”
He gives a little smirk. “No, don’t worry, your acrobatics were on point. It’s just, I would’ve noticed someone as pretty as you before.”
Elena feels a traitorous skip of her heart in her chest at the cheesy line. “Wow, you use that on all the girls?”
The boy grins. “No, only the most breathtaking ones.” Someone calls out something from across the room and the boy sighs and rolls his eyes. “Sorry, I gotta go. My dumbass friend is asking for me.” He makes a face and Elena can’t help the laugh that escapes her again. “I’ll see you later…”
He trails off and Elena realizes what he wants, “Elena.”
“I’ll see you later, Elena,” he finishes, his grin growing. “See you at school.”
He turns around and wanders off and Caroline swoops in, nearly tackling Elena to the ground in her excitement. “So, what happened? Did he ask you out?”
Elena shakes her head and scoffs, shoving her off. Caroline is unfazed as she latches right back on. “No, he didn’t. Just said a terrible pickup line and asked for my name and then left.”
“Are you sure it was terrible?” Bonnie asks, squinting. “Because you’re blushing.”
Elena huffs, a smile leaking through. “Shut up.”
“Liar, liar, pants on fire,” Caroline teases and pinches her cheek. Elena slaps her hand away and Caroline reels back with a gasp. “Here.” Elena fumbles as a solo cup is shoved into her hand. “Let’s make a toast. To our first party!”
“To our first party!” Bonnie and Elena cheers, clinking them together in a crinkle of plastic.
Elena stumbles down the sidewalk towards her house later, goosebumps prickling her skin from the night chill. She had already waved goodbye to Caroline and Bonnie a little bit ago and she feels a bit out of it, but she’d sobered up enough when Caroline had started puking in her neighbor’s bushes.
Later, she’ll feel really stupid for never taking her parents’ warnings about being safe at night and stranger danger seriously, but it’s not until she’s stopped by a hand on her upper arm that she realizes that she should have.
It’s not until something sharp and cold is shoved under her chin that she realizes she shouldn’t have been walking around at night by herself at all. She’d been tipsy and scratching at the itchiness of her skin from that familiar buzz that she hadn’t been paying attention. But, even if she had been paying attention, maybe someone would’ve been waiting in the dark to snatch her up into an alleyway and press a knife to her throat anyways.
Bad things happen to people at night and she should’ve listened to her parents, but she didn’t and now she’s pretty sure she’s going to die, stupid and fourteen.
The stranger’s big hand had managed to bunch up her shirt and splay meaty fingers over her stomach before he’s removed — hand and knife and all. Elena gasps shakily, her knees buckling as she slides down the disgusting wall, scraping down the moldy smelling bricks. She can’t quite catch her breath and her throat stings and someone makes a half choked gurgling sort of sound before blood falls over her tennis shoes like red wet paint.
There’s a thump and a body falls in her peripheral. She tries to focus on it, but she can only take in the mangled mess of his throat and the blood — god, the blood — and the knife that falls out of his large hand, skittering across the pavement until it ends up somewhere close to where her fingers are curling against the ground.
“Disgusting blood for a disgusting creature,” a familiar voice sounds above her. Then, a booted toe kicks at her blood stained shoe. “Get up, mirror. You’re embarrassing yourself.”
Elena gasps shakily again and again and feels like she might just vibrate out of her skin with how bad it’s buzzing up and down her arms. She clenches her jaw hard and gathers the courage to finally move.
She looks up with wide eyes and finds someone else wearing her face staring right back.