It had been a year since that bloody day, and no one, including Carrie Moore, had forgotten about the incident in the girl's locker room. The outcast girl had hoped, prayed even, that the mockery and the jesting from her fellow classmates would have lessened, like a waning moon, but it never did.

She was subject to cruel bullying and harassment day in and day out and it never got easier for her. Carrie's skin didn't harden like marble or steel. No, her skin was forever thinning, rubbed raw and fragile with sandpaper. Yet as her skin got weaker, her blood got stronger, conjuring all that hate and rage into a concentrated power that was screaming to be let out, screaming to explode like a bomb. And it wasn't just teenagers that attacked and abused her, it was her own mother.

Carrie supposed the bullying at high school wouldn't be so bad if she had a stable and loving home life, but both places were a war zone more often than not. Her only escape was practising moving objects with her mind, which she hadn't told a soul about yet. It has a slow process learning to harness her power, and she nearly always had to use rage to bring forth her power. She only practised in the dead of night, hidden under her sheets with a flashlight shoved up under her chin. Her power to move objects was her dirty, little secret, hidden away in the chambers of her heart. To begin with, Carrie had been terrified of what she could do, but as another year rolled around, she had come to like her power, even though she didn't really understand it and certainly didn't know where it had come from.

Her curiosity had finally snapped, and the seventeen-year-old headed for the library during lunch, her saddle shoes slapping against the hard vinyl tiles of the hallway. It wasn't unusual for Carrie to find shelter in the tall stacks of books and the silence of the school library that always warm and calm. She had learnt to avoid the cafeteria like the plague, but it was harder to avoid students in the hallways and in class.

But today was different, for Carrie had a purpose, a mission: to research the unusual and the gifted. Carrie wasn't entirely sure of what to search for and wanted to keep her scope wide and endless as she snacked on carrot sticks. So, the blonde girl started with human mutation, because she assumed her power had to be a mutation of some kind, unnatural and wrong.

With weak sunlight pooling at her feet, she found a minuscule section about the travelling freak shows of the 1950s. She read about a group of people a part of Fräulein Elsa's Cabinet of Curiosities that were labelled freaks simply because they were different and didn't fit into the strict boundaries of society. There was a man named Lobster Boy that had a hand deformity; he looked cute in the faded, black and white photograph next to his profile. And there was Amazon Eve, the tallest woman in the world and Ma Petite, the smallest woman in the world. The travelling show even featured conjoined twin sisters! And while Carrie thought the show and the time period sounded wonderful, she couldn't find anything that gave light to someone having a power. Regardless, she allowed herself to daydream about being a part of the carny family were misfits and outcasts had a place where they belonged as she glanced at an old issue of Life Magazine the featured the glamours, Elsa Mars. Lunch was coming to an end, but Carrie was still curious about the travelling freak show, despite that it didn't answer any of her questions, so she checked out the book, wanting to pour over it a bit more at home.

She was walking back to her locker when someone shoved her in the back harshly, knocking her to the ground, and her textbook fell to the ground, skidding away from her. Her knees smacked against the floor and her palms stung with the brutal impact. Her tangles of peach blonde hair fell into her face and tears welled in her eyes. Rage was surging right beside the embarrassment that was practically second nature now. But one couldn't get used to embarrassment, not ever.

"Looks like you've found your people, Crazy Carrie." It was a boy from her fifth-period chemistry class who sat with Tommy Ross, the popular cute jock dating Deliah Snell. "You freak!"

There was laughter ringing off the lockers; there was always laughter, which was something one also couldn't get used to. Carrie's cheeks flared crimson as she peeked out from under her curtain of long, wavy hair.

Carrie didn't take much pride in her appearance and after she had smashed her standing mirror, Margaret Moore had removed all the mirrors from the house as she quoted Jeremiah. What are you doing, you devastated one? Why dress yourself in scarlet and put on jewels of gold? Why highlight your eyes with makeup? You adorn yourself in vain. Your lovers despise you; they want to kill you.

She also wasn't very fashionable and wore muted shadows of black, grey and brown and always donned long sleeves and long skirts to hide the bruises that marked her pale skin. And what items of clothing she didn't find in second-hand stores, she made by hand—she was a talented seamstress. The boy continued to walk onward, chuckling as he was cheered on by his friends. Carrie scattered forward on her knees, reaching for the textbook.

"Here, let me help you," a dark-skinned girl said, picking up the book as Carrie gathered herself up, not bothering to dust off her long skirt. "Is this for a history project?" Students moved around the two teenage girls, bumping and jostling against them as they headed for their last classes of the day.

Carrie shook her head. The dark-skinned girl nodded politely, her lips lifting with a kind smile. Carrie placed the girl as Ava Gold, another senior but they didn't share any classes. Carrie Moore knew every one of her fellow students, though they didn't know her.

"A personal project then. I get that. The library has a whole section on pirate history that I've been slowly working through. Just for my own entertainment and education, of course," Ava Gold rattled off in a sweet voice. Her white teeth matched the white opals swinging from her earlobes. When Carrie didn't reply, Ava just smiled some more. "Well, happy reading." She passed the textbook to Carrie, who took it quickly, wrapping her arms around the book, using it as a shield.

It wasn't often that someone actually spoke to her and not at her, so Carrie was thrown. Ava Gold skirted around Carrie with a spring in her step and no lingering cruelty anywhere. Carrie half-turned watching as the dark-skinned girl was swallowed up by the sea of students. She squeezed the textbook closer to her chest, still feeling an ache in her kneecaps and the burn from the tiles on the pads of her hands; she was sure they'd bruise. Pain was something that a person could get used to, and sadly, Carrie Moore was more accustomed to physical pain than mental pain.

—

Years ago Carrie had made the smart decision to walk to and from school instead of catching the bus. Just like the cafeteria, the school bus was a space of potential bullying and abuse. So each day, the teenage girl would walk the long and lonely forty-minute trip each way.

She mostly didn't mind and liked the sound of nature that would envelop her (she didn't own a device that played music, her mother never permitted it). The wind would play with her hair and the sun's rays were always welcomed on her covered shoulders. Somedays she would read as she walked, others she would just watch the world go right by her but never with her.

Today, she was reading from the textbook about freak shows, her fingers gripped around the borders to hold the book steady. She was nearly at her driveway on the quiet, way one street when someone caught her eye across the short way.

The afternoon made his hair look golden. Spun, raw gold straight from the depths of the earth. But the pure sunshine gold didn't match his pale flesh or the dark clothes he wore. The boy looked like he was in his adolescence but there was something mature or ancient about him, like somehow he was completely ageless or not bound by age at all, and he was leaning against a chain-link fence, waiting. Just waiting.

Carrie could only guess at what he was waiting for, kicking at the dirt with the edge of his heavy, black boots. She would never know he was waiting for her at that very moment in the dying afternoon light as twilight echoed across the west coast town. Carrie's eyes didn't hover and she quickly returned to the line she was reading about a freak called Pepper who was married to a freak called Salty.

"You had an ugly day," he called out, pale eyes reading her deeply even at a slight distance. Carrie paused, her saddle shoes freezing on the sunkissed asphalt still warm from the day's heat.

She flicked her eyes up, not sure he was even talking to her. She scanned her surroundings, but no one else was in sight. It was just them. "Most days are ugly," Carrie said, her voice nearly lost on the breeze. She had never been outspoken or confident, always seeking oblivion and she was genuinely surprised she even uttered those four words to a stranger when she hadn't even been able to conjure a 'thank you' to Ava Gold mere hours ago.

"You're right about that," he agreed with a stern nod and kicked off the fence, meeting her in the middle of the road. "And when you delve a little deeper, under the skin and the bone, you'll find that the whole fucking world is an ugly place." To most people, the harsh words coming from such a pretty and handsome face would've been a shock, but Carrie was used to pretty faces spilling out words of malice. She tried not to study the boy too much, but it was hard, for he was so alluring and there was something in his pale eyes that seemed to promise all kinds of wonderful and wicked things. Carrie knew instantly that he wasn't from around here and that he must be new to town.

"Expect winter. Winter isn't so ugly. Cold and quiet," she breathed out. She had never seen a real winter with real snow that blanketed the earth in coldness, but she imagined it to be blissful.

"Yes, I suppose you're right about that too." He read the title of her textbook and something flashed in his eyes. Intrigue or amusement, Carrie didn't know, so she assumed it was cruel judgement and pressed her book closer to her chest. "I'm Langdon. Michael Langdon."

"Carrie Moore," she echoed. Her mind wanted to step away from the golden boy dressed in black but her heart wanted to step closer, to breathe him in.

"Short for Catherine, right?"

"Carrietta, actually."

"So much more beautiful than Catherine." The softness of his face contrasted with the shadows in his eyes. It was a strange juxtaposition, one that Carrie didn't know what to make of. Carrie had always been observant, being a homely wallflower allowed her to see people more easily than if people were really seeing her. But Michael Langdon was seeing her too, right down to the soul locked up in her heart of hearts.

"I never thought so," she murmured. She knew she wasn't pretty or beautiful, not with her messy hair or curveless body and ghostly flesh that was often peppered with imperfections. She didn't resemble the likes of Deliah Snell or even Ava Gold, and she doubted she would ever be completely comfortable in her own flesh.

Michael cocked his head to one side, eyes quizzical suddenly, like he saw something she and the world did not. "Why not?"

She shrugged, unsure of how to answer that but she wanted to try, to keep this conversation going but a new voice boomed across the air. Familiar and shrill.

"Carrie! Carrie get inside now!" Both teenagers turned to face Margaret Moore, standing on the doorstep of the Moore house, anger and terror fresh on her slightly weathered face. Carrie went to open her mouth, to say something, to say anything but her skin was heating with more embarrassment. "Carrie! NOW!" The blonde girl bowed her head in shame and turned on her heels, hurrying away Michael, who stared at Margaret Moore intently and with a sinister glimmer in his eyes and the corners of his lips twisted upwards. Today was the beginning of the end.