Springton High School, at the outside courtyard during the lunch period. Along the very outer ring edge of tables, a youthful girl dressed in dark clothing sat, all by herself. She was slender and possessed fair features; her hair was dyed ink-black but shone with luster, and her eyes were as clear as pools of autumn water. However, all of the other students kept a wide distance, with few daring to draw any closer to her.

Elena Seelbaugh preferred it that way.

“Aiyo, what’s gotten into you?” Alicia Brooks asked with a sigh, sitting down to join the girl without invitation. “I wanted to leave you be today, but you look so troubled that I really just couldn’t bear to do it. What’s wrong, Elena Seelbaugh?”

“Nothing is wrong,” Elena Seelbaugh replied with an air of indifference, not even giving Alicia Brooks a glance. “It’s just...”

“We’re friends,” Alicia Brooks reminded her, as she saw that Elena Seelbaugh didn’t want to speak. “We’re friends, and so—your troubles are my troubles, your burdens are my burdens!”

“I’ll not bother you with trivial matters,” Elena Seelbaugh said, dismissing the matters as if they were trivial. “Some trials can only be faced alone…”

Elena Seelbaugh’s words trailed off and her lofty expression hardened into an impassive mask, because a small procession of students was approaching their isolated table. Leading the group at its head was a figure that couldn’t be any more familiar to her—Carrie Elwood! The same witch that had attempted to lure Tabitha Moore out of the Williams family’s residence and entrap her into a confrontation with Erica Taylor.

That confrontation had happened anyways, but Elena Seelbaugh shuddered to imagine how things would have turned out if Tabitha Moore had been attacked alone outside the manor, where there would have been no witnesses! Her friend’s life had been hanging by a thread—if not for the immediacy of them rushing the girl to safety, she would have surely breathed her last breath!

Then, Erica Taylor and Carrie Elwood could have made up any excuse they liked, Elena Seelbaugh thought inside her mind, her eyes narrowing. Erica Taylor is facing justice now—but this Carrie Elwood hasn’t answered for her crimes!

As always, Carrie Elwood dressed in an ostentatious manner, wearing a fur-collared gilet several grades above what most Springton students were able to afford, with the Tommy Hilfigure brocade insignia prominently sewn upon the lapel. Her golden hair was ornamented with jadelike butterfly clips from the Claire’s pavilion in the prestigious Sandboro mall, her eyebrows were like fine feathers and muscles soft like snow, and Carrie Elwood’s frosty disposition could be summed up with the words—ice princess!

“I thought to take pity on you and invite you to tea—on account of us once being like sisters,” Carrie Elwood lamented, glancing from the Snapple tea she held and then back up to Elena Seelbaugh with a mocking smile. “But to think you really went so far as to cripple your own popularity base!”

In the eyes of all the Springton High students, Carrie Elwood’s words were an indisputable truth! The Elena Seelbaugh of just last month had been lauded by many as one of the most promising youths in the entire school. Her countenance had been sunny and fair, her reputation had been advancing swiftly for her age, and even though she was considered at the peak of the freshman class, she was still kind and courteous with fellow disciples.

Now, however, Elena Seelbaugh took pains to avoid her peers, ceasing to cultivate her image of a bright young beauty, and dressed herself instead in the black of funerary clothes. It could only be described as shocking! One of this generation’s coveted white lilies had instead become as strange and inauspicious as a black lotus! Gossip and rumor found its way into the ears of many students, most believing she’d gone berserk in the practice of her fashion subculture and was experiencing some manner of social deviation. In their eyes, what other reason could there possibly be?

“So what if I did? What does my popularity have to do with you?” Elena Seelbaugh answered with total disregard to Carrie Elwood’s status. “Drink Snapple? With you? I would sooner drink poison just to quench my thirst!”

The curious onlookers all around them watched with rapt attention. Since ostracizing herself from the grade’s main cohort, Elena Seelbaugh had rarely spoken—some had even thought her struck dumb or began to take her for a mute. Her instead replying to Carrie Elwood in such a bold manner went against all expectations!

“You!” Carrie Elwood’s eyes flashed with cold fury, and she nearly dashed the bottle of Snapple against the flagstones of the school in a fit of rage! “Good! Very good! A shameless cripple like you still has the face to brag!? I’m warning you, Elena Seelbaugh—don’t refuse a toast only to drink a forfeit!”

“Could it be your own popularity has reached a bottleneck?” Elena Seelbaugh guessed with a meaningful smile. “So, you hope to use me as a stepping stone? Hmph, as expected—you could only come this far!”

In fact, though it now seemed that Carrie Elwood had risen to new heights and held every advantage, the girl had been struggling to consolidate her popularity. With several of the more tyrannical sophomores that had opposed Tabitha Moore either expelled from the school or forced to kowtow in apology after a suspension, a rift had appeared in the hierarchy of student alliances. Though Carrie Elwood had used every advantage and stolen every opportunity to fill the political vacuum, she was still but a reed that bent in the wind, subject to the myriad swaying and flowing influence of common opinion.

Elena Seelbaugh had instead chosen the more bitter and difficult path. Forsaking the popularity she’d painstakingly built up wasn’t simply a true loss, however—this experience was tempering her spirit. Advancing one’s popularity through ordinary means slowly accumulated impurities in one’s temperament, which Elena Seelbaugh was now expelling. Circulating the beautiful and endlessly profound lyrics to My Immortal filled her with meaning and continuously forged Elena Seelbaugh’s resolve to go gothic.

The haunting melody Tabitha Moore had sung for her was like spellwork, and in the hours since she’d been lost in thought trying to unravel the meanings hidden within that song. For it to have such a calamitous effect on the inner core of Elena Seelbaugh’s very being there was surely some profound mystery or secret, but exactly what it might be continued to slip through her grasp and elude her.

“I know why you begged and pleaded your wretched way into the Halloween lakehouse party,” Carrie Elwood’s voice rose until all of the students gathered in the school’s courtyard could hear her. “This shameless freshman slut was hoping to seduce a sophomore—Matthew Williams!”