Page 38 of Lustling

Shaking it off, I move toward the door, shoulders square, jaw tight. I won’t be that girl. Not again. I reach for the handle and step into the night.

The air hits me like a baptism.

Cool and damp, it clings to my skin, carrying the last breath of summer on its tongue. But it’s more than the temperature that makes me stop. The clarity… it’s unnatural.

I blink, adjusting, but the world doesn’t blur—it sharpens. The trees are no longer vague outlines in the dark. They’re detailed, every leaf etched in silver light, every branch swaying in slow motion. I can see the veins in the leaves, the glisten of dew catching the moonlight like shattered glass. A rabbit shifts in the underbrush nearly thirty yards away. I see its twitching nose, the rise and fall of its tiny chest. I hear it too. The rustle of its fur. The rapid-fire rhythm of its pulse.

My breath catches.

I turn slowly, eyes wide, trying to take it all in. The woods breathe. The wind speaks. It carries voices I don’t know how to translate—whispers winding through the trees, telling stories older than language.

This isn’t normal. I wasn’t like this before. Something inside me has changed.

But I can’t think about that. Not now. Not with my mind spinning and my body still humming with the aftertaste of sin. I need something concrete—something real to hold onto. I need my phone.

I pat down the hoodie and shorts, as if by some miracle it’ll be in the pocket. It’s not. I don’t even know where I left it. Somewhere between the hallway and Hell.

A spike of panic pierces the quiet.

I need to find it. I need to know the time, check the date, see if the world is still turning. If I can reach someone. If anyone would even believe me.

I press a hand to my chest, grounding myself.

I’m not the same girl who came here. And I’m not done finding out what that means.

But right now, I need to find that phone. And I need to decide—am I walking away from this place?

Or deeper into it?

It takes longer than I expect to find my phone. I move through the night like a shadow, retracing my steps across the yard and into the fringe of the woods. My vision cuts cleanly through the dark now, guiding me around every root and rock as though the earth itself is parting for me. Each breath of damp night air fills me with something dangerous, a quiet certainty blooming in my chest. I don’t stumble. I don’t falter. It’s as if the night recognizes me. As if I finally belong to it. And maybe I do.

I crouch and lift it from the dirt where it must have slipped from my hands last night. The screen is cracked in a spiderweb pattern, but it still glows to life when I tap it. Relief floods me in a long exhale. A small, ridiculous victory, but it feels like a tether to the person I was before. The girl who still had a phone. A world. A plan.

Then I hear them.

The sound is faint at first, just a ripple across the night, but my sharpened senses snare it easily. Voices—male. Familiar. I freeze, every instinct rising like hackles at the base of my neck. Slowly, I turn my head, narrowing in on the direction of the sound. It isn’t coming from deep in the woods. It’s closer, drifting from the edge of campus where the shadows thin around the buildings.

Shawn.

And his friends.

I slip instinctively into the darkness, pressing myself flat against the brick wall of an outbuilding. My heart doesn’t race. My breathing stays slow. I’ve become still in a way I’ve neverbeen before, every muscle quiet, every sense open. They don’t see me. They don’t even know I’m here.

“I still can’t believe you fucking lost the bet, man.” One of the guys laughs, a sharp slap landing against Shawn’s back.

Shawn groans, dragging a hand down his face. “Yeah, yeah, whatever. She was a fucking tease. I should’ve had her months ago.”

The world tilts under my feet. Something cold and black slides through my chest.

Another voice joins, amused. “What was the deal again? Five hundred bucks if you fucked the prude?”

Prude. The word is a slap. My stomach turns.

Shawn laughs, low and bitter. “Yeah. And I fucking had her in my car. She was begging for it.”

Begging. My blood surges, violent and hot. My nails bite crescents into my palms, but it doesn’t ground me. It makes it worse.

And then I smell it.