The worm is dead. All dried up from the sun, its carcass sticks to the rubber playground flooring, plastered down. If that weren't a dead giveaway on its own - literally - Lacey has also poked at it with her chubby little finger a few times, and it didn't start wriggling, so it must be dead. Not asleep. Things that sleep usually wake up. Not this one.

She pulls her scraped knees up to her chin and runs a fingertip along the red scratches. They sting. Her eyes cast themselves sideways, at the boys chasing one another on the jungle gym, rattling across the bridge and making close escapes down the twisty slides. It's like they've already forgotten the way their grubby hands shoved at her back, the way their grubby mouths said mean things about her looks and her weight and how nobody wants to play with her. They're fully content to forget about her now that she sits at the very corner of the playground, separated from everyone else.

Well, everyone except this worm.

She tightens her arms around her knees and juts her lip out. There is a small movement around the worm, but it's shaky, a misty scrunch pulling itself away from the fragile shell. A second worm crawls free of the first and starts to crawl away, but it's still dead. She's learned that the dead sometimes come back by now. Carol taught her that. Carol's dead too, but she's back. They met when she turned seven. Carol is nice.

When the first tear breaks free of her eye and starts running down her cheek, she tells herself that she's being sad for this worm since nobody else will, but she's sad for herself too. The other kids are right. She's too weird to be with anybody else.

A shadow slides across her and the dead worm, obscuring her vision. Without glancing up, she says, "You made your point. I wanna be alone now. Go away."

"But being alone isn't fun," an effeminate voice says, "and I know you don't really wanna be alone because nobody wants to be alone."

Surprise fills her features; she looks up, curious. There stands a girl, haloed by sunset hues of orange and red and the softest blue. Her skin is the color of bronze, and her hair hangs black and straight around her shoulders, small ears peeking through the mousy strands. She's very pretty and her face is soft and her brown eyes look nice and Lacey doesn't know what to say so she just keeps staring.

Without needing a response, the girl sits down criss-cross applesauce beside Lacey, hands in her lap. "What're you doing over here?" She sees the worm. "Oh, it's dead. That's sad."

"It's not fair," Lacey says. She buries her face deeper into the cuts on her knees.

"It's not fair those boys were mean to you. Does that hurt?" The girl gestures at Lacey's legs.

"No," she lies. "It's fine. They're right anyways. Nobody wants to be around me."

The girls face contorts into something she doesn't know what to call. Determination, maybe. Her brows knit together like she's angry and her features settle into something too harsh for her face. "Well, I want to be around you. So they're not very smart and they're kinda liars too." She jams her hand into Lacey's personal bubble. "I'm Stella."

Lacey looks at Stella's hand for a moment. She hears a gaggle of laughter from the boys at the side, and she frowns. Maybe this is a trick. She'll pull her hand away at the last second and start laughing in her face and tell her how stupid she was to fall for it. Still, she lets her hand creep forward until she's latched onto Stella's. She doesn't pull away. They shake. "I'm Lacey. Lacey Waits."

Stella giggles, and it might be the nicest laugh she's ever heard, small and tinkle-y. "Well what are you waiting for? Let's go play!" She tugs at her hand, trying to pull her up, but Lacey squirms out of her grip, hesitant.

"But..." Her lip wavers. "They'll chase me down and push me again and call me names. I'm not supposed to play around them."

A predicament Stella has. She taps a finger against her chin. "Well...we already know they're dumb liars. They can't make you sit over here either. They can't make you do anything you don't wanna do, nobody can. My daddy says we all need to do what makes us comfortable and that our needs come first before anyone else's. What those boys want doesn't matter." A sly grin slips onto her face then, and she leans close, voice quiet. "And if we see them coming we'll push them first and see how they like it."

This pulls a laugh out of Lacey, and it's enough to make her unravel and wipe the tear away. "I like that idea. But..." She looks back to the dead worm. "Can we bury it first?"

Stella nods, and she bends over the carcass, not worried about the fact that it's dead or a worm. Her fingers peel it up from the rubber with the gentlest care she's ever seen, and with Lacey's help digging a small hole in the mulch, Stella lays it down. Together they cover it with mulch. When they're done, they beam at one another, and in the background, they hear laughter. The boys have become glowing skeletons, chasing one another around and around against a burning sky, flush with angry hues-

-flickering softly in conjunction with one another, backdropped by the dark stone of a fireplace. Its warmth spreads outward, far enough to reach the brown leather couch the two girls sit upon. Despite this, they wrap their legs and feet in knitted blankets and keep their hands secure around steaming mugs. Lacey still has it up to her lips when she laughs, and the air she blows makes the liquid bubble up and pop hot against her cheek. She tastes chocolate. Stella cackles, a hand on her stomach as she tries to keep from sloshing her cup everywhere. "It hurts! It hurts, ha!"

A calm falls over them as Lacey leans her head back and stares up at the ceiling to catch her breath. How her parents managed to pool together the money for a weekend trip here, she'll never know, but this is the most fun she's had, and with Stella here? It perfects everything. She's glad they managed to convince Elijah to let her come with them. It's not like he wouldn't've. They're thick as thieves, bonded by pinky promises and handshakes and the trauma bonding of having to endure middle school together. Eighth grade shouldn't be as hard as it is.

Stella's taken nicely to it, though. Her face has gotten thinner since the beginning of the year, her hair longer, more silky. And her ease with talking to people, teachers and peers alike, leaves her beloved and coveted. It's like second nature, knowing just what to say. And she's gorgeous to boot; it's no wonder everyone adores her so much. Pretty Stella, she thinks, her chest gone to soft mush, perfect Stella. Even her nose is a marvel on its own, sharp and slender with this small, hardly noticeable freckle on the side unless you're really looking, and her lashes are long and dark and they flutter real nice-

"Why're you staring at me like that?" Stella asks, trying to fit the words around another imminent fit of giggling. She takes a sip of her cocoa, looking Lacey in the eye. The color is glossy and bright. Like topaz. "Do I have a chocolate mustache?"

Warmth flushes her cheeks, and she averts her gaze, chuckling to herself to hide the embarrassment of being caught. There's a nervous tingle in her chest as she fiddles with the mug in her hands. In that moment, she gets an idea, an idea that keeps coming back to haunt her: she should tell Stella about the ghosts. If anyone's not going to peg her as a weird lunatic, it's Stella. Stella will listen; she'll believe her and think it's cool. Unless she doesn't.

Pressure, soft and reassuring, lands on her shoulder. Stella's voice has a similar cadence to it. "What's wrong? You look...uncomfortable. Conflicted. Tell me about it."

And she wants to. She opens her mouth to, but it's so big, too big, and the way Stella rubs her thumb over Lacey's shoulder, it makes something else entirely pop out: "I have a crush on you."

Silence. In the back windows, skeletal faces watch and leave their mandibles agape, glancing at one another behind the frosted glass. They aren't supposed to be part of this memory, Lacey knows that much, and the windows are smaller than they ought to be, but the anticipation of this moment makes her disregard these small details. There's a terrified tingling in her gut, almost sickly. She shouldn't have said anything. This'll ruin everything. Oh, God.

"I knew that already," Stella finally says, unbothered.

"Oh."

"Yeah but uh, I like you too, y'know. I wanted to tell you first since I thought you weren't gonna, but...I've been thinking about it a lot."

Excitement, building, bursting, spilling out between her ribs and into the space between them. "Yeah?"

"And I wanna do something about it, like date maybe, if you want to, but if we do..."

"I'm in, I am one-hundred percent in, Stella, let's do this."

"...I want it to be a secret."

Oh. Well that stings. What's wrong with Lacey? Why does it have to be a secret? Discomfort replaces the anticipation, replaces the excitement, and makes her shoulders droop. She burrows deeper into the blanket. "I'm not sure I'm comfortable with that."

"Well, why not?" Now Stella's riled, and a bit of cocoa wets their blanket. "I mean, I'm not out to anyone else yet, I don't know how my family'll take it, being strict Catholics and all, plus people say bi is just a phase and I don't feel like dealing with it, and if we hide it we won't have to deal-"

"I'm not comfortable with that, Stella," Lacey says firmly, setting her mug down on the floor. "You said I shouldn't do what's uncomfortable for me. I don't want to be a secret. It feels...wrong. It'll go wrong if we do it that way."

"But-"

"No."

If anyone should understand, it should be Stella, the one who gave her the advice in the first place. But instead of going soft like Lacey's used to, her face hardens, and she lifts herself from the couch, reeling from something - rejection, maybe; it's not like the determination she shared above the corpse of the worm. This is fresh, new, not a look she likes. It's powerful anger and even though she remembers there being more to this conversation Stella takes off into the back wall, which no longer exists, instead giving way to an open forest. The bony fellas run at her side.

There should be snow on the ground; there's only mud. Lacey herself is gone, too; there's only Stella. It's strange, being in her head, seeing through her eyes. It's not as amazing as she thought it'd be. It's pretty scary, actually, feeling her heart pound so violently, tasting blood in her mouth, experiencing an agonizing burn in her lungs. "Help!" she belts. Her throat feels like it's on fire, raw and overused. It echoes and no one answers.

She throws all of her weight into sprinting. There is disorientation in the air. Her shoulders keep slamming into trees, bark slicing through skin. Warm tears break through the grease and grime on her cheeks but she keeps running. Her bare feet sink into the mud and squelch. Her ankles feel just as raw as her throat, inflamed. "Fucking help!"

There is noise behind her. Feet crunching. Boots, heavy boots. An involuntary scream lurches out and she throws herself forward with every step, stumbling but never stopping. In truth, there are foggy skeletons dangling from the trees, watching intently, but she passes them by without a single hint that she knows they're there. Empty sockets gaze into other empty sockets within the canopy, and in them, as impossible as it should be, there is worry floating in the air, intent with no outlet. Lacey, from within Stella's skull, tries to yell at them to help, to do something, to lift her up and away from the danger, but her voice never makes it out.

A heavy force slams into her back. Their screams intermingle. She tries to scramble away, palms clasping onto a stray branch, but it cracks off the log and she's dragged back. She tries to dig her fingers into the earth but it's too moist and slips away. The hands that flip her onto her back are soft but dig. Stella is too frantic, too busy searching around for escape, for a weapon, for anything at all to see the face.

She sees a rock and reaches out for it, but then pressure clamps down on her throat, forcing the heavy gasps to stay where they are. Her body lurches, and the hand that was so close to the rock curls back into her body, towards her neck. She claws.

There's a lot of kicking, a lot of thrashing. Desperation pushes for air, but there is none. Her eyes bulge; she can feel the agonizing pop of blood vessels under her skin. Her fingers slow and she begins to fade. The dark blue sky drops rain upon her weak body, and the last thing she sees is the rustling canopy above her as droplets fall into her eyes.

One hand goes limp against the mud, and a plump worm writhes between her fingers, finding a home in a sleeping girl plastered to the wet earth. No, not sleeping. Things that sleep usually wake up.

Not this one.

Worms, by AlicebanD