“You are not listening to me, Nina!” Leanne raised her voice from behind the kitchen counter. I looked up. Eyebrows furrowed and lips pursed, she gave me a disapproving look, shaking her head.

“Huh?” I said as I took my earphones out.

She shook her head and I watched as her newly dyed ginger bangs swept across her forehead. “I said that I’m pulling an all-nighter. Are you going to be okay here with Cristóbal tonight, because I might not even be home until noon tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Cris is asleep anyways and with the way he was feeling, he won’t wake up until tomorrow.” Cristóbal, my little brother was a very easily sick fourteen-year-old.

“Hey, Nina?” Leanne turned around, her hair whipping across her face. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“I never do,” I reminded her.

“Love you,” she said, hugging me. She smelled faintly of cinnamon and it reminded me of my mother.

“Love you more,” I said as she went out the door. “Bye.”

Leanne was my mother’s younger sister. She was just twenty-eight years old and was more like a sister to me than a guardian. She didn’t have any children, so she had no clue how to raise a child much less two teenagers. To be honest, she was doing a good job, even though she was less of an authority figure and more like a best friend or an older sister.

It was seven o’ clock and I knew I wasn’t going to be falling asleep any time soon. Every time I tried sleeping the same nightmare would always come back to haunt me. My horrid experience, the guy that saved my life, the promise he made to check up on me but didn’t fulfill made me nervous. He could have been seriously hurt by those lowlifes.

I took a hot shower and went to find something to eat. I turned on the TV in the living room to play songs from my favorite playlist while and making myself shrimp pasta. I wasn’t the best cook, but I could wing it with a few simple ingredients. After, I made myself comfortable while I finished the last season of my most recent binge.

At around ten, I brushed my teeth and headed to bed, taking off my locket that I wore everywhere. I’d had it for as long as I could remember. I might have gotten it for a birthday, Christmas, or just some spontaneous gift from my parents, I couldn’t remember. But I wore it everywhere. There were two pictures in it. One with me, my dad, my mom, and my two brothers, and the other which was an old photo with me, and two men I don’t think I’ve ever seen before.

I liked to think the old picture was one of me in a different life with a different family. I couldn’t remember ever seeing them though. For as long as I could remember, there had only been my mom, dad and two brothers. My father used to tell me that everyone in the puzzling photo would be a big part of my life one day, but I was yet to meet them in person.

I couldn’t sleep. Tire and weariness were obviously there but the noise next door was not helpful. The neighbors were arguing again, and it was giving me a headache. Listening closely, I heard them yell through the house about why the light in the kitchen was left on, and whose turn it was to wash the dishes after dinner. It was almost the middle of the night. It was too late for such nonsense.

I tried to remember where I last left my earphones which so happened to be all the way on the other side of my room on my window seat. I got up to get them and I placed them in my ears, tuning in to a calming playlist. I was anxious to fall asleep. I hated my recurring nightmares. There was no one I could call right now since one of my best friends was out of the country, and the other was most likely either sleeping or out partying. She didn’t care whether it was a school night or not. If I called Natalia, and woke her up, I’d be sure to feel her wrath tomorrow at school.

My mind drifted off to that guy again who helped me, and I took up my sketch pad and pencil. I started to sketch the outline of his hoodie from when I remembered seeing his shadow. By the time I -was finished, the drawing was of a boy with a hood over his eyes in a dark corner. I placed my sketchpad on the bedside table and pulled the covers closer, hoping to fall asleep. When my eyelids started to get heavy, I gave into the darkness.

I woke up screaming again. The lights of my room flickered on and off for a few seconds and then went off. The dream always started out with me in a dark room, tied to a chair. I was left alone in the dark for a while, then the three men from that night would appear with different forms of weaponry, and close in to kill with glowing red eyes.

I was used to weird dreams and nightmares. I would sometimes have the most realistic dreams about the people I didn’t know in the vintage picture in my locket, shapeshifters, and vampires with glowing red eyes and pointed teeth.

After my eyes adjusted to the faintly lit room from the moon, I kicked off the covers and looked at the time. Three thirty-two. I suddenly felt too hot to stay in bed. I walked into my bathroom to splash some water on my face. Looking in the mirror, I saw the very visible dark circles under my eyes from my lack of sleep over the past few weeks.

Drying my face, I went back into my bedroom only to see a dark figure sitting on my windowsill outside. I froze.

“Don’t-”

I didn’t wait for him to finish. Running back into the bathroom, I locked the door.

“You know I won’t hurt you,” the guy said. He sounded way too calm while my heart was hammering away and threatening to burst out of my chest. “Nina, come out,” he said. How did he know my name? I started to hyperventilate and got a little dizzy. I should call the police. My phone. It was by my bed. Dammit!

“I don’t know you, go away!” I shouted.

“I won’t hurt you. I told you that I’d come to check on you and I have. Just… come out here.”

Was it really him? Was it the guy from that night? “How do I know it’s really you?” I asked.

“So, you do remember me?” he asked. “You’re just going to have to trust me, Nina. I’ll leave if you want me to.” I unlocked the door and peaked out to see him still sitting on the windowsill.

“How did you find me?” I gave up hiding behind the door and stepped out. Something told me I was doing something very stupid. Scanning the room, I looked for something I could defend myself with just in case he was lying.

He stepped in from the window. “It took some time, but I have my ways. You’re a pretty hard girl to find.” He paused and looked around my bedroom. “I see you are okay- at least physically- so I’ll be on my way.”

“W-Wait!” I said, stopping him from going back out the window. “You never told me your name.”

“It’s not important. Go to sleep, you should have school in a few hours.” He smiled and dove head-first out the window. I ran to it expecting to see him face down on the grass but instead, he was nowhere to be seen. I went back over to my bed, lay down, and surprisingly fell asleep quickly without the fear of having that dream again.

When the sun rose, I woke with a start. According to my clock, I had forty-five minutes until school started. I stretched and went downstairs to make some cereal and curled up on the couch with it while trying to find something else to obsess over. I didn’t have many titles left in my watch list. By the time I finished eating and laid out my clothes, I had twenty minutes left.

I hurriedly put on my uniform which consisted of a plaid, navy blue pleated skirt, a white shirt, and a tie that matched my skirt. Not bothering to tie my tie yet, I slung it around my neck then put on my socks and shoes. Because of the wildly curly hair I had, it was hard to manage in its long state, so I had recently started wearing it straight to save time preparing for school in the morning. I made a part it in the middle, tucking the curtains of brown hair that hung at the sides of my face behind my ears.

I applied just enough makeup to not look as tired as I felt, grabbed my necessities, and nearly tripped over my feet running down the stairs. My brother, who had found himself downstairs while I’d been getting dressed didn’t escape a kiss on the cheek from me as I rushed past him. He was staying home with somewhat of a caretaker who lived with us during the week that would come around in about an hour. He didn’t go to school anymore. Not since our parents passed away.

When I got to school, I had almost finished taking out my books for first period when the secretary announced that I was to report to the front office over the intercom. I was just about fifteen minutes late. I didn’t get called to the office often but when I was, it was to either to show someone around the school, or to do some ridiculous task for my principal who couldn’t be bothered to move around for trivial things.

“Early morning photo shoot, Nina? You ought to manage your schedule better,” a sickly-sweet voice said to me as I made my way to the office.

I didn’t have to turn around to know it was Shelby Rose, the most superficial, sorry excuse for a human being there was. At least in my book. Shelby had tried to befriend me at the beginning of sophomore year when I came to the school, but when I found out how she really was, I cut her off. She had only been pretending to be my friend.

“Actually, yes. I wish you could’ve come but with all that plastic, you would have melted under the lights,” I said sarcastically only to receive a scowl and a flip of her strawberry blonde hair in reply.

When I made it to the front office, I was let into the principal’s office. There were two students I could tell were new sitting around Principal Castelli’s desk.

One had white-blonde hair while the other had jet-black hair, but they looked too much alike to not be related. The white-blonde boy was twirling a pen between his fingers and looking at me with a curious expression. The other boy with the black hair, whose eyes resembled the other boy’s, was staring at me with an unreadable expression. I wasn’t sure why. They both had long hair that hung over their ears with lip piercings that looked like they hurt. They both wore full black attire instead of the school uniform.

“Hi?” I said as more of a question than a greeting.

Mr. Castelli introduced the new students to me. The one with white-blonde hair was Damian Catalano and the other was Daniel Catalano. Twins. “It might take a bit of time to show them around and speak to the teachers, but you’ll be marked as excused.”

Considering I hadn’t slept well the night before, I’d been hoping to have a quiet day of floating around my classes, but I had signed up for the Welcome Committee months ago and had to do my job or drop out.

Mr. Castelli was certainly right about showing them around the school taking some time. Giving a school tour to new students didn’t only include showing them where their classes were. It included showing them the entire school. Silver Stone Tech had a rather large campus. It was the biggest private school in the state.