The front door shook in its frame, rattling against its old metal hinges. Margaret Moore turned on her daughter in a fresh fury. The woman was always quick to anger and violence, and she had passed that down to her daughter. It travelled in the blood, locked away in the cells until it was the perfect time to burst free, spiking rather impulsively when triggered. However, the two Moore's held anger differently in their hearts. Margaret's anger was linked to her religious beliefs, as a way to punish and repent, and Carrie's anger was bottled up with fear. The teenage girl didn't know it yet, but her anger would be used for revenge and freedom.

"What were you thinking? Probably wicked thoughts," Margaret hissed at Carrie, her hand wrapped around her daughter's wrist like a vice. Carrie struggled to keep the borrowed book tucked up against her side. No doubt her mother would bruise her if she saw the title of the book. "I don't want you mixing with him, with them!" Her voice was like thunder, echoing throughout the small house, bleeding through the thin walls. Carrie supposed that Michael, across the one-way street, could probably hear the yelling. Mrs Bicken's, next door, often complained about the noise but never called the authorities despite the fact the old widow clearly knew about the domestic violence that occurred over her cherry tomato vines that covered the wooden fence that separated the two properties.

"You mean our new neighbours?" Carrie asked, her brows pulling together. So Michael had a family, then? She didn't even get a moment to ponder of what sort of family he belonged to.

"They're strangers!" she yelled into her daughter's face. Margaret Moore was rather beautiful, with a mane of hair a shade or two redder than Carrie's peach blonde. Margaret was tall and slim, like a model and her features were sharp but a little hallowed now from age. Carrie believed her mother was graceful but her cruelty made that grace vanish. "And there are already whispers about them. Terrible whispers." It was no surprise that Margaret already knew something about the new family. She worked at a dry-cleaning shop in the strip mall three streets over, right next to a busy local hair salon. While Margaret would never start gossip, she did listen to it. The words of a whisperer are like delicious morsels: they go down into the inner parts of the body. Hairdressers liked to talk, with shining lips and long manicured nails, and they didn't really mind who they talked to, and they certainly liked to wag their tongues to Margaret Moore. While abusive to her daughter, Margaret was the perfect picture of a Christian woman who baked treats and volunteered at the community centre and never missed Sunday's service. She wore long, faded dresses with neat cardigans and sweeping curls that never looked tangled like Carrie's.

"No, Mama. Michael seems nice—" Carrie tried in a small voice, but Margaret's grip tightened, her fingers made of steel. "I was only talking to him. Being polite. You shall love your neighbour as you love yourself, right?" she added frantically, trying to pull her arm free, but it was no use.

"Don't you dare quote the Bible to me, girl." Margaret's nails bit into her daughter's flesh, breaking the surface to reveal fresh, shining blood.

"You're hurting me!" Carrie cried out, her knees buckling with the pain.

"No mixing with those people, especially that boy. Do you understand me?" Margaret commanded, her sheet of red hair sliding over her thin shoulders. Carrie nodded, biting at her bottom lip to keep a sob locked behind her teeth. "I need to hear it!"

"Yes. Yes, Mama. I understand," she whispered, hot tears springing in her blue eyes. And Michael Langdon could, in fact, hear the altercation through the thin walls. The sounds of shouting and crying had echoed into the one-way street as twilight descended onto the city of angels, and his shadowed heart ached with sour nostalgia and stabbing empathy.

—

It had been two days since Carrie had first spoken to Michael and her skin was still ripped with the half-moon shaped marks from her mother's fingernails.

She had passed the shabby looking house across from her's five times now, and each time she desperately wanted to search the windows, but keep her head down, knowing how disappointed her mother would be with her if she went against the command to stay away from Michael and his family (not that Carrie had seen the rest of the family just yet).

The teenage girl was seeking haven in the library again on a sunny Friday in March at Westfield High. She had moved on from studying human mutation to blood diseases and disorders, thinking something foreign in her blood might be the reason for her power. She was flipping over to the next page when the chair opposite her shifted, the metal legs sounding across the linoleum flooring. Carrie's eyes flashed upwards instantly. No one ever sat with her, not in class and not during lunch in the library that on a good day hosted six students.

"Sorry, you don't mind, do you?" Ava Gold asked in a honeyed voice, already half-sitting in the chair. Carrie shook her head, pulling the book she was reading closer to her body so Ava had more room on the square table. "How's your research on freaks going?" Again, Carrie was stunned that someone was actually trying to have a conversation with her, and even more stunned that someone remembered something about her, even if it was just her reading habits.

However, Carrie didn't get the chance to respond, as Ava Gold was already speaking again. The girl was a Chatty Cathy, which Carrie didn't mind in the slightest. "I actually did my own research about freaks. My curiosity was tapped after speaking with you the other day, and I found out that freak shows still exist," Ava rambled off, pulling out some homework from her backpack. "Kind of, but clearly not like they did in the olden days. I also found out that Cirque de Soleil is hoping to open a theme park in Mexico, which I thought was really cool." Ava flashed a wide smile across the table, her brown eyes twinkling with genuine kindness.

Carrie returned the smile, but she knew it didn't measure up to the dark-skinned girl's, who had a million-watt smile. "That's really cool," she said in return. "I've never been to a circus of any kind before."

"I went once when I was little but I was just so terrified of the clowns. My older brother laughed at me the whole day," Ava shared easily, brushing off the personal detail of the memory like it was nothing. Carrie wasn't used to sharing personal memories or anything for that matter; no one had ever wanted to know anything personal about Carrie.

"I think that's actually a pretty normal reaction... towards clowns, I mean," Carrie said, forgetting about the book in front of her. She wanted to talk with Ava Gold, to actually have a friend. Carrie didn't know if she was any good at being a friend, but she was more than willing to try.

Ava let out a casual and joyous laugh, and for a moment, Carrie's heart sunk, believing that Ava was laughing at her in a cruel way, but then Ava's cheeks lifted with another smile. Carrie had made someone genuinely laugh and it was a new and heartwarming experience. "It's nice in here, away from everyone," Ava went on, gesturing towards the library around them. "I'm guessing it's always quiet in here?"

"Yeah. Not many people hang out here. I guess it's lame or something," she answered, nodding as she looked around the practically deserted stacks and empty tables. She could only spy two other teenagers: One was hunched over a table, sleeping and the other was bobbing along to the music thumping away in his headphones.

"Or, you know, maybe it has something to do with the kids that died in here? Talk about grizzly tales!" Ava replied in a low voice, spinning a pen around her fingers.

"What?"

"Come on, you know, the kids that were murdered in here in the 90s during a shooting spree? That this place is haunted?" Ava shivered with the words, like a sudden coldness was pressing down on the two girls. Carrie's eyes narrowed and she shook her head. "You haven't heard the ghost stories? How the football field lights shudder on and off during games?" Carrie shook her head again. No. "The locker doors flying open randomly? Not even the phantom crying in the girl's bathroom?" Carrie shook her head again. No and no.

"No one really tells me anything around here," Carrie admitted lamely. She didn't even know any gossip, that's how far down the social ladder she was. Not even the petty, high school gossip reached her. Only the jokes and cruel bullying reached her.

"Oh, that's crazy." Carrie's heart stilled. Crazy Carrie. "But also kind of a blessing. But like high school sucks anyway, so why would a bunch of ghost kids wanna haunt their high school?"

"Maybe they can't leave?"

"Oh, man, that's kind of sad," Ava noted, and then she leaned forward. "Can I have a carrot stick?" Carrie handed over her bag of carrots, sharing them with the girl. Ava Gold switched topics easily and frequently and the girls chatted freely over carrot sticks during lunch, but the knowledge about a bunch of students being massacred at her high school, and in the library where she found haven, clouded Carrie's mind well into the afternoon.

—

Carrie didn't remember walking home that afternoon, her mind stuck on the grizzly tale that Ava Gold had told her in the library. She remembered standing at her locker, just staring into the depths of the metal box filled with books yet no indications that the locker even belonged to her. No photos or stickers. No personalisation to speak of. And then suddenly, she was nearly home and a voice was calling out to her, the dark clouds of murdered teenagers clearing up like sunshine filtering through rain clouds.

"Hello, Carrietta!" Michael Langdon greeted warmly and rather excitedly. He was perched on the chain-link fence, his long legs swinging and heavy boots smacking against the thin metal in a slow tempo.

"Hey, Michael." Carrie paused, looking from her house back to the boy that looked so golden. Her mother's car wasn't in the driveway, which meant she was still at work. No one was around to see Carrie talking to the street's new boy who looked more like a handsome man each day. He was blooming incredibly fast. Impossibly fast.

"Was today less ugly?" he asked, keeping up the tempo of swinging legs and knocking boots. Boredom was a silent killer, and while Michael genuinely liked killers, he didn't like this one. He knew Carrie had been avoiding him, knew her mother had commanded her not to talk to him, and he had been patient with the girl because he had still been able to smell the blood dried on her skin in the shape of fingernails when she walked past his house, but his patience was wearing dangerously thin.

"Yes and no," she replied in a low voice riddled with shadows and confliction. "I found out that a bunch of students were murdered at my school today." Michael dropped to the ground, cocking his head to the side. His interest sparked like wildfire.

He closed the distance between them. Her wounds hadn't healed yet, he could smell that. Blood and honey, that's what she smelled like up close, a wonderful mix. "The Westfield High Massacre?"

She nodded glumly. "Yeah. You know it?"

"A little. I've heard about it," Michael lied. He didn't know a little about the Westfield High Massacre, he knew everything. Every single and little detail, yet he hadn't actually been to the sight of Tate Langdon's killing spree, but the idea made his pulse flutter.

Carrie hugged herself, looping her fingers around the straps of her backpack. "I know it happened a long time ago... It's just, I don't know. Those poor souls being killed that way."

Michael studied the teenage girl for a long moment, lost in thought, lost in a dark place that felt so familiar to him and so close to being tangible he could reach out and touch it, caress it with his fingertips. "Can you take me there?"

"You want to go to my school library to see where some students were killed by a trigger-happy psycho?" Michael didn't register the sliver of judgement in her voice.

"Why not? We could go now?" There was a wonder in his voice, like a child asking to go to Disneyland. Little did Carrie Moore know that Westfield High was Michael Langdon's Disneyland.

"It's a little macabre," she said, watching as his face hardened into marble and glass.

"The whole damn world's macabre." His words were dark, black as coal, but suddenly fleeting. His face softened, his shoulders bowed and he looked so lonely, friendless even. "Pretty please? I've barely left the house since I moved here." Carrie's heart surged with empathy. She knew what it was like to be locked inside, locked away from the world in a prayer closet. She also knew what it was like to be lonely, without a friend in the whole, wide world.

"Okay. Sure," she found herself saying, and the smile Michael that gave her sent bolts of electricity through her blood. He looked at her like she was heaven-sent, or rather, hell-sent.