"Tara, please just listen." Felicity tried to reason with the girl, who had stormed out of the party with the rest of their friends following behind. "Tara-"

By the hand that lightly grasped her elbow, Felicity stopped and looked behind her. Ethan was standing right behind her with those doe eyes, his gaze flickering between hers and the girl up ahead. His lips were already parted, like he was about to say something but couldn't get the words out. "I um- she looks pretty pissed, I wouldn't go too close, you know?"

The shorter girl watched Sam pass the two and call out for her sister. She clenched her fists and bit the inside of her cheek, continuing her watchful stare on the two.

"Felicity," Ethan whispered faintly, the touch of his fingertips against the skin of her arm feeling so electrifying. She swore the world stopped revolving around the sun and suddenly surrounded them—like they were the only two people who mattered on the Earth.

With every fiber of strength in her heart, she gently pried his hand away by his wrist and furrowed her brows. "I'm sorry," she breathed, before walking closer to the Carpenter sisters and settling just next to Sam.

"If I wanna hook up with an asshole, that's my decision!" Tara shouted and pointed at herself. "My decision! I mean- you're, you're out of my life for five years and then you can't leave me alone for five minutes."

"Because you're not dealing with what happened to us. Have you even gone to see the counselor? Once?" Sam asked.

"No, I'm not going to,"

"Why not?"

"Because I'm uninterested in living in the past like you and Felicity are!" Tara retorted, sparing a glance at the girl behind her older sister who had been silent during the entire exchange.

Felicity huffed and took a step forward. "Hey, maybe we should stop before someone says something they regret, okay-?"

"What's that supposed to mean?" Sam interrupted, ignoring the girl's words.

"I mean, I'm not gonna let what happened to us for three days define the rest of my life!"

Instead of intruding on their fight, Felicity got quiet. She pursed her lips and blinked rapidly, averting her gaze to the ground. Her hand shot up to the front of her neck, just above the bulb of her invisible Adam's apple and rubbed the scar.

"So you're just gonna pretend it never happened?"

Tara switched the topic instead of answering her question, lowering her tone to talk more civilly. "What are you doing here, Sam? In New York. You- you're working two shitty jobs to help with whatever, but- but what's your plan?"

"Please, let's just calm down-" Felicity bit the inside of her cheek and glanced around to see if anyone noticed the scene.

Then, Tara looked over. "And you, Felicity." The sound of her name made her eyes widen. "I mean, your mom is in California right now with her husband and kids, you actually have a family to go to, but you're still here with us in New York? Why?"

Felicity tilted her head and squinted her newfound glossy eyes. "You're-" she choked out, "you're asking me why I followed my only friends across the country after Amber and Richie tried to kill us?"

"Yes, I am." Tara said. "There are other colleges in California and opportunities for a new life. Why stick with us—with the past?"

Felicity shuffled in her place and sniffled quietly, scanning their surroundings out of habit before responding. "Maybe I just didn't wanna stay in a place with bad memories."

"But do you have plans for the future? Because I do!" She pointed at herself and directed her attention to Sam. "Okay, 'cause I'm gonna keep going to college, I'm gonna get my degree and I'm gonna live my life. My life!" She paused and glanced at the Prescott girl. "Okay, I know. I mean, you just follow me here and you won't let me out of your sight."

"I'm just trying to look out for you." Sam tried to reason.

"Okay, I-" Tara took a quick deep breath to calm herself. "I know. I know you are. You can't do it for the rest of my life, though. You have to let me go."

The two stared at each other while Felicity was immersed with staring at her shoes. Her old, tattered tennis shoes, which happened to be her only pair since she packed up for college and moved away. Her old pair—the ones she wore during the night at Stu Macher's old house—were hidden and tucked away in the back of her closet.

She swore they would never see the light of day again.

"Hey!" Felicity looked up to see a girl in a costume with an animal print coat. She dumped her cup of soda onto Sam's white sweater. "Murderer!"

Sam gasped and pushed the girl away, only stopped by Chad who held her back. "What the fuck is wrong with you, bitch?!" Mindy tried to push their camera away, while Felicity stared in shock.

Just as the realization that nobody would really do anything settled in, her heart began thumping with a rush of adrenaline. Her mind was plagued with the lighter in her pocket, begging her to use it.

"You guys should stay away from her, she knows what she did." Then, the girl pointed to Felicity. "Especially you, final girl, your mom's probably ashamed of you hanging with Billy Loomis's daughter!"

Felicity furrowed her brows and lurched forward, fists clenched by her sides. "The fuck did you just say?" She grabbed the girl by her shoulders and yanked her forward. "You wanna mess with me? I'm Felicity fucking Prescott, that's who I am! I fucking killed Amber Freeman and Richie Kirsch, you really wanna go-?"

Masculine arms wrapped around her middle and pried her away from the random girl, who stumbled back with surprise and fear over her face. Felicity pushed and lashed the person holding her back without looking behind, pointing directly at the girl. "Try me, bitch! See how tough you are now!"

The group of girls filed away, too far to catch up to once the person behind her let his grip loosen. Felicity whipped around breathing heavily after her exchange with the girl and swallowed thickly. "I had that," she spat.

Ethan stood in front of her with his doe eyes bigger than before. He took notice of the way her eyes were filled with rage and the way her hands trembled. "I don't think a night in jail for aggravated assault would be too nice," he said.

Felicity huffed and pulled at the collar of her shirt, which had rode up during her thrashing. "I would have been fine." She turned her attention to Sam, who had been adjusting her soaked sweater with a scowl. "Sam," she walked up to the older girl, "do you need anything?"

"I- I have tissues." Ethan followed behind her and dug into his pocket, pulling out a small stack. "I have like, three tissues." He offered them to the girl and stood awkwardly, glancing at Felicity and wondering what to do.

She nodded her head over to the direction where the rest of their friends walked. "Hey," Felicity said, her voice making the girl look up for a moment, "if you need anything, I'm right here."

The older girl sighed and bit her lip. "I'm fine, just go with them."

Felicity inhaled sharply and tugged Ethan's sleeve, causing him to follow her as she walked away. A frown was painted on her face as she stared off into the distance, only subconsciously following next to the boy.

Her eyes were trained on the ground—memories of Amber's face when she shot Liv point blank, blood splatters in every corner, the look in Richie's eyes when he slashed his knife across her body. Felicity rubbed the pads of her fingers over the scar to the right of her ribs. The scar tissue almost felt disgusting.

The ringing in her ears intensified. She could almost feel the wet and sticky coat of blood over her hands again.

Their voices were the thing Felicity couldn't get out of her head. The screams of Amber as she rolled around on the ground engulfed in flames, Richie's sickening grin when he twisted his knife, drenching it in blood, and worst of all—the voice telling her to ignite the lighter in her pocket the moment her adrenaline spikes.

"Hey," Ethan shook her shoulder, "are you even paying attention to me right now?"

She emit a sharp gasp and clamped her hand down over his. Her heavy breaths made her feel dizzy, the only thing preventing her from stumbling back was his hand. With a quick scan of their surroundings, Felicity realized they had stopped.

"Woah, are you okay?" Ethan asked, furrowing his brows and stepping in front of the girl with both his hands on her upper arms. "Hey, look at me." He lightly took her chin in his grasp and turned her head to face him.

When their eyes met, Felicity felt a shiver run down her spine. His eternally anxious brown eyes hid a deeper, more violent form. The more she studied, the more she saw the monster that lurked, hidden behind a human disguise.

"Felicity?" His voice wasn't registering. "Felicity!"

And as soon as it came, it was gone. Felicity blinked once, maybe twice, and rubbed her eyes before peering back up at him.

There his pretty doe eyes were again. "Felicity, are you okay?" He looked more worried than he usually did—which shouldn't have been physically possible.

"Yeah, just- um," she sniffled and rubbed her eyes again, pulling away from his enchanting proximity and backing away just a few steps.

"What was that about?" Ethan asked, daring to step closer after she stepped back.

Felicity pursed her lips and dismissed his concern. "Nothing, I'm fine." She caught a glimpse of the rest of their friends up ahead and grabbed his hand, tugging him with her. "Come on, they're getting further away."

—

Felicity bounced her leg up and down with her arms crossed, biting the inside of her cheek as she stared at her phone. The helmet Ethan gave her was discarded on the other side of her body. Her brows were furrowed, contemplating her options. She could either call her mom who was probably busy with her own life and her half-siblings who were young toddlers or keep her problems to herself and hope they would fade away.

She took the latter.

"Hey," Ethan shuffled to lean against the counter she was sitting on, awkwardly settling against the cold surface. "Are you... feeling better now? Any less jumpy?"

"Yeah, I'm um," Felicity grabbed her phone and slipped it into her track pants pocket, "I'm fine. Just tired." Even from afar, anyone could see the heavy eyebags she sported matched with a certain gloom in her eyes.

The boy nodded and gripped the counter a little tighter. She was so off-guard, so unaware, that Ethan thought it would be almost unfair to kill her now. It didn't stop him from fantasizing her blood dripping down from a deep gash along her neck, spilling under his hand and coating her chest. "Yeah, I get that."

He cleared his throat and almost blushed at his sadistic thoughts. "So, Chad calls you Flick?" Ethan asked, trying to clear up his head and eliminate the newfound awkwardness between them.

"Yeah, it's some stupid nickname from a year ago when we were in high school." Felicity almost chuckled at the memories of their senior year before it was screwed up by the psychotic duo of Amber and Richie. The corners of her lips perked up the slightest bit.

"There was this night we had, all of us, where we pulled an all-nighter and had a sleepover. I think it was because we had nothing else to do or something like that. And I don't even remember who said it, but we got on the topic of none of us having nicknames." Felicity paused and let out a small giggle, ducking her head down to hide her smile.

Ethan caught it, though. He stared at her expression and replayed the sound of her laughter in his mind. Hell, her laugh might have been more beautiful than imagining her covered in her own blood.

"So, Tara's was something like Tarantino after Quentin Tarantino, Mindy's was, like, Mindy Mouse, Chad's was Chadillac, and Wes's was-" Felicity choked on her words as her smile faded, swallowing thickly. She blinked back rapidly forming tears and sniffled. "Sorry, um- Wes's was East to Wes."

"Who's Wes?"

Wes Hicks, Felicity wanted to say. Wes Hicks, my first and last best friend who I made every plan with together. Wes Hicks, the boy who I thought I was gonna spend my life with, go to college with, get a degree with. Wes Hicks's life was stolen the day either Amber or Richie—the police never figured out who because there was nobody to question after their identities were revealed.

"Wes was um," Felicity looked down at her hands and picked at her nails, taking a deep breath before looking back up into Ethan's brown eyes. "Wes was my best friend who was killed back in Woodboro. He was one of the first and was stabbed within the hour of his mom's murder. Now, I get to live the life he never got to."

"Do you," Ethan cleared his throat and stepped closer, "do you ever think about him? Since it happened a year ago?"

The girl blinked a couple times again and nodded. "Everyday. But it's mostly when I get too emotional or I'm alone with my mind, I think about him and who he could have been if I didn't lead those psycho Ghostface fanatics to him."

"Don't blame yourself." Ethan frowned, wiping away a tear that cascaded down her cheek. Felicity hadn't even realized she started crying. "His death wasn't your fault, from what it seems. Just because you're Sidney Prescott's daughter doesn't make you responsible."

She licked her lips and averted her gaze to the side, shaking her head softly. "You don't know that, Ethan." Felicity denied.

"I do," he whispered, "I know because from the moment I met you, I know you would never do anything to hurt someone—especially not someone as close to you as Wes."

Ethan knew she would never do anything on purpose to upset or hurt someone she held in her heart. It was only the more reason to wiggle his way into her personal life, to become the person she needed to lean on so when the time came, she wouldn't be able to stop him from continuing with his final plan.

She would never be able to stop him if she loved him.

Her brows furrowed as her eyes filled with hope. "You think so?" Felicity asked, having never heard someone tell her those words since Wes was first murdered. Nobody stopped her to tell her it wasn't her fault she carried the blood of the original final girl victim of the first Ghostface killers.

Nobody cared as much as Ethan Landry did for her.

But the biggest regret Felicity Prescott would ever feel in the future was believing Ethan Landry's filthy lies.

"Shit, guys, come check this out!" A voice yelled from in front of the TV. Ethan whipped around as Felicity peered over his shoulder, trying to get a glimpse of the scene. She pushed herself off the counter as soon as he backed off so he wouldn't get hit and rushed over to stand behind the smaller couch chair Ethan sat on.

Sam and the cute boy from down the hall walked in through the door following Chad. Felicity looked the girl up and down, giving a glance to the man next to her with a raised brow before looking back to the TV.

"Holy shit, that's that chode from our film studies class," Mindy pointed out, "the one obsessed with Argento."

"...found at the scene were various Ghostface costumes, a character popularized by the Stab movie franchise..."

"Oh, fuck." Felicity muttered to herself, inhaling deeply and pulling out her phone from her pocket.

"Pack a bag, we leave in ten minutes." Sam told her sister, then turned her head to the Prescott girl. "You might also wanna pack, Felicity, if you wanna get out of here."

She shook her head. "No, I just- I need to make a phone call."

"Absolutely not, Flick, are you crazy?" Mindy's eyes were wide like saucers. "You know phone calls are a ticket to hell, right? Especially with your last name? Don't call anyone."

"I have to talk to my mom, she probably knows what to do-"

"No fucking calls." Mindy demanded, using a louder voice to convey her point. "Do not take any risks."

"Wait, hold on a second, 'cause this might not have anything to do with us," Tara tried to reason.

"Are you serious?"

"We don't need to flee the city! It's Halloween, everyone's wearing masks!"

"Tara," Sam deadpanned, "Tara, this isn't a coincidence. You knew him!"

"Barely."

"Chad, Mindy, back me up." Sam turned to the two twins, looking between the two of them.

"It is a little-"

"Close to home," Mindy finished his point, shrugging her shoulders and eating popcorn.

"I- Flick, please," Tara pleaded for the girl to support her claim with her eyes.

Felicity's gaze flickered between all of them, who directed their attention to her. "I'm not risking my life for a possibility that this isn't connected to us, Tara. We should leave." She pursed her lips, picking at her phone case to distract her mind from the rumored new Ghostface killer.

"Quinn, your dad's a cop, right? Can you call him and find out what's going on?" Tara jerked her body around and directed her attention back to her older sister. "Before you make the unilateral decision to abandon my college education and flee the fucking state?"

Sam's phone rang on the wooden table behind them, causing everyone to turn their heads in the direction of the noise. "Who is it?" Tara walked closer to the older girl, who picked up her phone and stared at the screen.

"Why did everyone just freak out when her phone rang?" Ethan asked, mocking an innocent look upon his face as he peered questioningly at everyone before settling his eyes on the girl behind him.

Felicity bit the inside of her cheek. "The kill always starts off with a phone call. Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to call my mother and make sure she knows I'm currently safe—is that okay, Mindy?"

The girl paused for a moment, eyes narrowed until she shared a look with Anika and rolled her eyes. "Fine, Flick," Mindy sighed, "you can call her, okay?"

Felicity gave her a tight lipped smile and brushed her hand against Ethan's shoulder just before she walked away. He tilted his head up to meet her gaze and parted his lips until the girl cut him off. "Stay here, I'll brief you on some stuff later."

He only nodded and shuffled in his seat.

As Felicity stood off to the side and watched Sam talk on the phone with Quinn's dad, she stared at her mother's contact, thumb hovering just over her name to call her. She bit the inside of her cheek until a metallic taste filled her mouth—when she smoothed her tongue over the spot, she realized she had bitten it raw for the second time of the week.

Sidney Prescott was out in California living her happy ending with her husband and young children. She didn't need to be bothered with her college student mistake of a daughter, not when she just settled down in her life.

The Prescott girl didn't need to bother her mother with such a stupid matter, not until she really needed someone to talk to. She huffed and locked her phone before slipping it back in her pocket, pausing her hand for a moment to squeeze the lighter inside for some sort of relief.

Felicity Prescott needed to do this by herself—independently on her own without dragging her mother into it for once in her life.

It started with the lack of a phone call home.

omg next chapter is gonna be so exciting to write y'all just wait

—rory