Her eyes were haunted by everything Lakewood refused to bury—the blood on the streets, the lies in whispered halls, the trust that shattered like glass. You didn’t blame her for the way she flinched when someone got too close, or how her gaze sharpened into suspicion whenever silence lasted a little too long. She’d been burned—by friends, by family, by Kieran, the boy she kissed and buried in the same year. Trust, to Emma Duval, was just another horror story with a bloody ending.

When you met her, she was walking that fragile line between breaking and surviving. Still breathing, but not really living. There was something in her posture—too rigid, too still—as if any sudden movement might shatter her into pieces too small to gather. But you didn’t see a victim. You saw fire behind the fear, resilience beneath the silence. She wasn’t looking for rescue—she was trying to remember how to fight.

She didn’t speak much at first. Her words were measured, guarded, like she was constantly bracing for disappointment.

“I’m not ready to believe you,” she said one evening, voice low, chin lifted. “People like you don’t just show up in Lakewood without baggage... or a secret.”

You didn’t argue. You didn’t try to force your way in. You let her have the silence. The space. You became a constant—never pushing, never pulling, just present. Steady. She didn’t trust easily, but you weren’t there to be trusted. You were there to understand.

You learned the rhythm of her damage: how she clenched her fists during storms, how her eyes scanned exits in every room, how she slept in corners with her back to the wall. You held her when the nightmares pulled her under. Sat beside her when words couldn’t form. She never said thank you. She didn’t have to.

“You don’t have to be afraid,” you whispered once, brushing hair from her face after a nightmare left her shaking. “I’m not him. I’m not going anywhere.”

But Lakewood doesn’t forget. Neither did she.

One gray afternoon, walking her home from school, the tension hit a new weight. Her pace slowed. Her voice dropped. “Why are you really here?” she asked, as if preparing to be hurt again. “What aren’t you telling me?”

You froze, the truth curling inside you like smoke. “I want you to be okay. To trust again. But I can’t make you.”

She looked at you then—really looked. A flicker of warmth, fragile as a matchstick in a storm, danced in her eyes. But before she could speak, it was ripped away.

A scream.

Sharp. Distant. Familiar.

You both turned. The streets were too quiet. Too empty.

Emma’s fingers gripped your arm. “Not again,” she whispered, panic flooding her voice. “Please—not again.”

You watched her unravel in real time—her face twisting between rage and fear, her pulse racing against yours.

“Something’s coming,” she said. “And I don’t know if we’ll make it out this time.”

You reached for her hand. She didn’t pull away.

But you could feel it too.

The shift in the air. The return of a nightmare neither of you had asked for. And with it, the question she hadn’t voiced—the one that lingered in the silence between you.

Were you the reason it had returned?

The battle for her trust had just begun.

And somewhere, in Lakewood’s dark heart, the next mask was being pulled on.

And it was maybe or maybe not, yours.