Oliver’s hand shot back through his hair, a nervous tic he’d had since he was a kid, but the motion exposed the wide, pale landscape of his forehead he’d always hated. He winced, immediately combing the dark strands forward again. “She probably thinks I’m going to kill her,” he breathed into the sudden, heavy stillness of the woods. His eyes darted to the log. The knives. Three of them, his good ones, laid out like ritual implements. The thought had been innocent—tree art, their tradition—but in the flickering candlelight, they looked like evidence. “Fuck,” he choked out, dropping to his knees. He raking pine needles and brittle leaves over the gleaming steel. “This is so bad…”

A twig snapped. He shot upright, and yanked the hem of his worn hoodie down, then fumbled with the frayed cuff of his baggy jeans. The crumpled paper in his hand felt like a dead bird, And then he saw her.

She stood at the edge of the candlelight, not quite in it, not quite out of it.

It all came rushing back, the memory so sharp it felt like a physical blow. The hallway, a cacophony of slamming lockers and cruel laughter. He was a smear of grease and angst on the wall, and the popular guys, hyenas in letterman jackets, were circling.

“What’s the matter, creep?” one had sneered, shoving him so hard his head cracked against the metal. “Gonna go cry in the woods? Summon your little demons to help you?” They’d laughed, a sound that echoed in his nightmares, and then she was there. She hadn’t said a word. She’d just stepped into the space between them, her presence a sudden. They just… left. No fight, no argument. They backed away and disappeared down the hall.

That was the start. The beginning of Oliver and the new girl who was a ghost and a queen all at once. He’d waited for her to drift back to the popular girls, but she didn’t. She found him after school, leaning against the same wall, and her first words to him were, “You have blood on your shoe.” It was from a squirrel he’d found and… examined. He’d expected disgust. Instead, she’d just tilted her head. “Show me.”

So he did. He showed her the spot in the woods, this spot, but bathed in afternoon sun. He showed her how to gut a rabbit, He’d expected her to leave, to call him a freak. Instead, she’d picked up a sharp rock and carved a sigil into the bark of a beech tree, a complex, swirling design he’d only seen in a dusty grimoire he’d stolen from the library. “For protection,” she’d said, her voice as flat and cool as a stone in a riverbed.

From then on, it was their world. They’d study the topography of the hills, mapping the land. They’d collect animal bones, arranging them into intricate mosaics on the forest floor. And they’d practiced summoning. Oliver was the one with the books, the frantic energy, the belief. He’d draw circles in chalk, chant the Enochian words he could barely pronounce, He never saw a demon, never felt a presence, but he always felt something. A pressure. An attention, around her

Now, she stood before him in the dark, and the candles flared as she took a step closer. Her eyes, usually just dark, seemed like pits of absolute nothingness, swallowing the light. He rubbed the back of his neck, the skin prickling with a cold

“Thanks for coming, gir— uh… I know it’s dark. And it’s weird. And… you know, the knives… that was stupid. I just… I wanted to carve our names again, but bigger, and it’s too dark to see the bark, so I laid them out to… I don’t know. I’m an idiot.” He let out a shaky laugh, the sound dying instantly in the oppressive silence.

He looked down at the paper, now a sweaty, mangled mess in his fist. He couldn’t read the words anymore, but he knew them by heart. They were the only words that mattered.

“So… uhm… I’m… you know… just grateful. For our friendship. For… everything. You’re my best friend. The only one who… gets it. You’re beautiful— but not in a… I mean, you are beautiful. Sorry if that’s weird to say. It’s just… true. You’re… nice. And cool. And you don’t care what anyone thinks. And I… I like you. Romantically.”