Page 6 of Dead Girls Don’t Forget

Chapter 3: First Day

The alarm clock went off at six. The room took a moment to make sense.

My new house. My new room. Boxes stood against the far wall, half-unpacked. My bed sat against the longer wall, blankets shoved to one side. A window with the curtain pulled framed the morning light. The desk Janet had ordered for me a week ago sat beneath it, the laptop closed on top and the chair pushed in. The dresser still had its missing knob. A single armchair I'd picked up from a curb on the drive in waited in the corner.

Ninety minutes was enough. I had taught myself to come up cleanly out of any kind of sleep when I needed to. I counted to five before I moved. Long enough to remember where I was, not long enough for my body to protest.

I had two roommates, fox shifters, both still asleep on the floor above me. The walls were thin enough that I had heard one of them get up at five-thirty and pad to the kitchen for water.

I swung my legs out of bed.

In the bathroom I rinsed my mouth and splashed cold water on my face, then leaned both hands on the sink and looked up.

A face both familiar and foreign stared back at me.

A twenty-three-year-old woman. She looked nothing like the thirteen-year-old girl she had once been, and it wasn’t just age. I bore little resemblance to my former self.

They made sure of that.

I leaned closer.

It was just a face. It could have been worse. I could have been disfigured, twisted into something that matched the ugliness I carried inside. I studied myself, tracing a fingertip along the faint, almost invisible lines near my cheekbones. Without makeup the scars from the surgeries were still there if you knew where to look. The one at my temple had faded over the years until it only caught the light at certain angles. The one along my jaw blended into the new line of my jaw until it was almost impossible to see. The one at the corner of my mouth was the only one I sometimes still caught myself touching.

Janet had found the best shifter reconstructive surgeon she knew. He never asked questions. He fixed what he could and told you the truth about what he couldn’t.

I looked at the woman in the mirror. Pale blue eyes, straight black hair to the middle of my back, five-foot-nine. I took her in for a moment, then picked up the eyeliner. My hand was steady as I traced the line, flicking it out into a sharp wing that framed my eyes. Mascara. A swipe of clear gloss. The woman in the mirror looked put together, the kind of new-girl-on-first-day a small college town would expect to see walking onto its grounds.

She did not look like a killer.

I dressed in the bedroom—ripped jeans, a long-sleeved white shirt, worn boots. The knife slid into the sheath at the inside of my left boot the way it had every morning for three years, balanced against my ankle and invisible under the leg of the jeans.

Grabbing my school bag and sports bag, I slung them over my shoulder and stepped out, locking the door behind me. Today was my first day on the new campus. Ridgeview University. My transfer school for senior year.

I had spent the last three years at Northlake College on an athletic scholarship, running cross-country and breaking more than a few course records. When I reached out to Ridgeview about transferring, they didn’t hesitate. They offered to cover housing, tuition, and even threw in a small stipend. Their women’s cross-country team hadn’t touched a podium in a decade. They needed someone who could change that.

And I needed to be here.

Coming back had always been part of the plan. My childhood home wasn’t far from this town. If life had gone differently, I probably would have attended Ridgeview from the start instead of growing up two hundred fifty miles away.

The house they arranged for me was close to campus, just a ten-minute walk. I headed down the quiet street, my boots crunching lightly against the pavement. I passed three runners going the other way, none of them shifters, and a postal van that had not started its route yet.

Most humans didn’t know we existed. Shifters had lived alongside them for centuries, in old family lines and territories that rarely drew attention. We went to the same schools, held the same jobs, paid the same taxes. Most people could pass a dozen shifters in a day without ever realizing it. That was by design. The ones who broke the rule did not stay above ground long.

As I approached campus, the buildings rose into view. Ridgeview was bigger than my last school, with wide lawns and brick pathways that cut between them. At this hour it wasn’t crowded yet. Only a few students moved through the space.

I didn’t slow as I crossed the grounds, heading straight for the athletics building. Inside, the fluorescent lights hummed overhead. A handful of runners were already gathered near the locker room entrance, stretching or pretending to. Most of them were wolves. I could smell it before I even saw them, that sharp, wild tang that always set my instincts on edge.

Their eyes flicked toward me as I approached. Curiosity. Annoyance. Resentment.

An outsider joining their team was bad enough. But an outsider who was a cat? Unforgivable.

I kept my expression neutral and walked past them into the locker room. The air inside was cooler, the scent of detergent and old sweat mixing with the faint metallic tang of the showers. I found the locker assigned to me, a temporary tag with my name in marker, and dropped my bag on the bench.

Heads turned.

I did not look up. I unbuckled my bag, pulled out my practice gear, and started changing.

A wolf girl two banks over glanced my way, then leaned across to her friend and whispered something. They both looked at me afterward. I didn't catch the words. I didn't need to. Whatever she had said had been about me.