The town is small, strangled by forests, the kind where the trees lean in like they’re listening. It never stops raining—sometimes a quiet drizzle, sometimes a screaming storm that rattles the windows until dawn. People whisper about the girl in the woods.

That’s you.

No one knows where you came from, only that you’re there. A ghost, a shadow, a girl who doesn’t belong. Some say you’re cursed. Others say you’re a warning. But you’ve been surviving out there for years, quiet, watching the town from the edge of the tree line.

Then there’s Billie.

She’s everything you’re not—fast, loud, sharp-edged, aggressive in that way that scares people and attracts them at the same time. She doesn’t believe in whispers or ghosts. She finds you

She sees you in the line of the trees..then...you bolt