"Did you hear that?" Natalie asks, looking up towards the ceiling.

"Probably the wind," I try to excuse, but a second creak comes from the floorboards. "Could be Dog," I suggested next, but he was clearly napping on the couch.

"Yeah, whatever. Probably this million year old house that a million people have lived in," she said, moving to sit next to Dog. My anxiety was spiked, but her lack of interest calmed me a bit.

I wrack my brain trying to think of solutions. I could just kick her out, but she made biscuits for me this morning. Nerves bundled in my throat. Then it came to me: I'm a witch.

"Natalie," I started softly. "There's a reason I left you with Mr. Leland today."

She looks at me, confused. "What do you mean?"

"This week," I take a deep sigh, hoping she doesn't see right through me. "You can't stay here. There's a moon harvest, and only witches of pure blood can be in this house."

"What?" She looks puzzled. She doesn't believe me.

I swallow hard. "You need to leave."

"You're kicking me out?" She squeals, flying to her feet. Dog whimpers. "You can't kick me out, I-I made you biscuits!"

"It's for your own safety," I say softly, biting my lip hard.

She studies me for a minute, then scoffs. "You're lying." Shit. "But it's okay. I know where I'm not wanted. I was just starting to like you, you know, but you don't have to lie to get me out of this house. Should've known something was up when you were acting all weird this morning, but maybe that's just how you like to be. Alone. You're probably glad your sisters dead so you can sit in here and wallow in your own misery." She seemed to regret it the instant it slipped out, but the damage was done. I scoffed, looking at her in disbelief.

"This is why I don't want you here!" I said, a surprising calm in my voice. "You pretend to be nice and you pretend to be all sweet and innocent and then you use things you know against people." I walked over to my door, ripping it open. "Get out." Her whole demeanor changed in an instant, and the old Natalie I knew came back. No warmth in her eyes. Everything she had done was an act, of course. People only change when it's convenient for them.

She gave me a cold look as she strutted out the door. "Bye, freak." She waved a hand at me and I slammed my door closed, locking it in an instant.

I then realized chill in the room and moved to the fireplace to start it. "Chris, she's gone. You can come down."

My floorboards creaked, and I soon heard the stairs adjusting softly under his quick feet. Then, he came back into view. I prodded the fire as it spit itself to life, thankful for something warm in the house.

"You have a sister?" He asked from the bottom of the steps. I wanted to rip my hair out. I didn't want to think about her, or talk about her, or remember her, I just wanted it to all go away so i could breathe.

"I had a sister," I snapped, feeling anger boil in my chest. Dog recognized this and watched me with intent eyes. "She died. Drowned. She's been dead for four years and nobody will let her die!"

The fire sputtered and licked high into the chimney, seeming to match my rage. I wanted to break something. I wanted to scream. I told her the deepest part of me and she used it as a weapon. I knew I shouldn't have let her in.

I kicked the couch, hard, and it barely even moved, but pain shot up my leg. Then, a new emotion took over. Anguish. My cries started quietly, and then my sobs were so loud I felt like the whole house was rocking with me as I collapsed onto the floor by the couch, my heart feeling like it was clawed out of my chest. I couldn't breathe.

Dog tried to comfort me but I pushed him away. "No, no, no," I kept repeating, scenes playing in my head over and over and over. The look of terror. The ice breaking blow her. Her going under. Holding my grandmother's lifeless hand. Being laughed at and surrounded and outnumbered. All the memories attacked at once, and I felt sick, the emotions hitting like bullets.

A cold hand rested on my shoulder. "I know how you feel," he said softly. I looked up at him. No you don't. How could you possibly? I thought, but I didn't say it. "Give me your hand, let me help you up."

He lifted me with ease, and we instead moved to sit on the couch. I sat with my legs crossed, Dog moving to me and putting his head in my lap, whimpering. I stroked his head to comfort me while I sat, pondering what Chris had just witnessed.

"I'm sorry, she really brings out the worst in me," I said, sniffing and laughing as best I could. I could still feel the aching pain in my chest from wounds never healed, wounds never even acknowledged.

He reached over and grabbed my hand, just like I had his. To make sure you're real. I looked up at him, and he was staring at me with pity.

"I remember my life before coming here," he spoke solemnly, and his eyes moved down to his lap where his other hand picked at a small hole in his sweatpants. "My parents and I, we...we were coming home from a movie. It was my birthday. It was pouring dangerous amounts of rain and I could hardly see out of the windshield." He swallowed, his adam's apple bobbing. "But I kept trying to get my dad's attention. Pulling on his sleeve. Holding my new phone out in front of the road in his vision. And eventually, he did look. He paid attention to me. But the road was much more important." He lifted his eyes back to me. "The road swerved right suddenly, and bam, we crashed. Straight into a tree. They both died. My dad on impact, my mom the next day in the hospital. And their needy 12-year-old son was left completely uninjured." He said it with so little emotion; like it was a memory from a past life instead of one more recent. Maybe he had managed to cope better than I did. Talked about it. Moved on.

I let out a breath I didn't know I was holding. I rubbed his thumb gently with mine. "I'm so sorry," I said quietly. "I know you don't want to hear it. But I'm sorry."

He gave me a thin-lipped smile, then returned his attention away to whatever he could fiddle with so his eyes weren't on me.

"My younger sister Aspen drowned in the lake right over there," I said, gesturing to the window. The sun was now on its second half of the sky, slowly nudging towards night. "We were having a snowball fight, and I turned away for one second, and then she was too far in. The ice was too thin. I watched as she fell below the surface, not even having a chance to swim back up. And she died, because I didn't watch her."

"She wasn't your responsibility," he said, looking back at me. His expression was near unreadable.

"She was my little sister. Of course she was my responsibility, it was my job that she grow up good."

"No, she wasn't. Nobody is anybody's responsibility except parents and their babies." I had nothing to say to that, so I just stayed quiet. And we looked at each other from across the couch, our hands overlapped, the fire warming my skin.

"I need you with me tonight," I whispered to him. "I just...I need to know that you're here."

He gave my hand a light squeeze. "Of course."

-

A pillow separated us on the bed, and despite the barrier, a small part of me wished he could have his arms wrapped around me. But him being there brought me a strange sense of comfort, like I had known him my whole life and we were friends at a sleepover. Maybe it was because he knew more about me now than anyone else ever has.

My eyes opened at exactly 2:37 AM. Something about the air in the house was wrong. But then I realized it wasn't the house; it was outside. The trees were rustling with a panic I normally only heard on the fourth of July.

There was a fire somewhere, and the trees were upset.

I cast a glance at Chris, who was sleeping peacefully, hardly making any noise at all. I had to go put the fire out, now. The trees were creaking with urgency as I put on another layer of clothes, my layered jackets, and slipped quietly out of my room.

I put my shoes on last, and told Dog to wait and gave him a goodbye kiss on the forehead. And I slipped out the front door, into the dark, freezing night.

I stepped outside and looked for the evidence of the fire; the smoke, the light, anything. And then I saw it.

About a quarter mile towards the boy's camp, there was a subtle light, almost completely concealed by the surrounding trees. I took a deep inhale and began to move swiftly towards the fire.

The voices were loud and had a slur to them as I got close. I realized some boys had snuck out to build a fire and get drunk. I approached quietly, peering to see how many people there were.

Three boys and Natalie all talked louder than they probably intended to, discussing something that had all of their faces grim.

"Jon, you don't understand. No, there is no right answer here, all of us are in deep shit if anyone finds out," one that was out of my view said, sounding stressed.

"We can get out of this," I assume the boy who was Jon responded, and I saw him lift a dark liquor to his lips, passing it to the boy to the right of him, who Natalie was all over. "Lucas is gone, but it's not our fault. We can deny even being there." Lucas?

The boy who Chris may have killed?

"Aiden, pass me that," The third boy I couldn't see said, his voice now smooth and commanding. Aiden handed it to him with a wink, placing his hands anywhere he could on Natalie.

"Maybe we can get out of it. But if he decides to come back, how will we explain that? How will-Jesus Christ, Matt, slow down," Jon said, taking the bottle from the boy who was out of sight and taking his own swig, then looking down into the bottle. "If he comes back, we can't deny anything."

They must be talking about Chris, I realized. This must've been the boys he was with that night. I moved to step closer, and a branch snapped under my foot. My heart immediately leaped to my throat as the conversation fell silent.

"Wildlife," Aiden decided after a moment of too-quiet silence. "We can say he went fucking crazy in whatever house he's holed in, that's for sure."

"That he couldn't live with the guilt of losing his bunkmate to the storm," Jon offered, finishing the rest of the bottle. "I don't know if I could live with myself, though."

The trees shuddered overhead as the flames licked too high and too close to their lowest branches. After quiet fell over them, I decided to make myself known.

And I stepped out from behind the tree.