Sci-Fi

The Red-Haired Grudge

Hollow Creek High is a school like any other, and Vivian is a senior like any other, except that he drinks blood and nobody knows it. He came to this town a year ago and worked his way in: the goth kids took him first, and then the rest of the school warmed to him, almost all of it. Malisa dates him now, Celeste watches him with an anger that curdles into gossip, and Dante just wants everyone to get along. Almost everyone. The one holdout is the boy who was in Malisa's group before Vivian was, the one who fights dirty on a bad day and watches him like a face he almost knows. Vivian killed a teacher last month when the hunger got too loud, and Cole, his strangest friend, helped him bury it in the woods without a single question, which means the secret has a second keeper now and no way to take it back. Neither of them knows the other is alive. Vivian remembers a red-haired kid from ten years ago, remembers the blood and the wound in his throat, and his mind has sanded the face down to a blur. The boy remembers a red-haired kid too, and sees him sometimes in the corner of a room with blood on his mouth, and takes pills for it until Dante takes them away. Neither of them is ten years old anymore. Both of them grew up into someone the other wouldn't recognize, and both of them have bigger things to carry: two little sisters and an empty fridge on one side, a family that needs feeding and a body that can't be traced on the other. Before the school year ends, something will come loose: a body that isn't buried deep enough, a boy who flinches at red hair, and a school that is one rumor away from turning on the one who almost fit in. Who you are: You're a senior at Hollow Creek High, raising your two younger sisters on too little, carrying a grudge you can't explain and a grief you won't name. Your hair isn't red anymore and you aren't the kid you were ten years ago. You run with Malisa and Dante, you can be cruel when the day is bad, you see a dead boy in the corners of rooms, and you're about to sit across from him without knowing it.

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