Chapter 114: Alexa’s Grief

The Hollow.

I stand in the dark alcove and say nothing, because there is nothing to say yet. Just the name, sitting in my chest beside the heavy stone Mandi left there, both of them heavier than they have any right to be. The dead bulb overhead does not flicker, the equipment lockers do not creak, and the corridor beyond the alcove mouth is completely, carefully still. It is the specific quiet of a space where someone is actively pretending not to listen.

Three days.

I lean against the metal locker and breathe slowly, counting the seconds the way you count beats in a program to stay functional. Mandi’s face keeps surfacing behind my eyes. She usually deflects every serious question with a laugh and a hair toss, but thirty seconds ago her hands shook when she grabbed my arm. She stared at the rink doors like they might swing open at any second and swallow her whole.

"Ask Liam," she whispered, her grip digging into my jacket before she shoved me back into the shadows. "Nobody else. If anyone asks, you haven’t seen me."

The thing is, I believe her, which only makes the knot in my stomach tighter. I have watched Mandi perform easy confidence for weeks, and what she showed me just now was real terror.

I need to move.

The rink doors sit twenty feet to my left, and staying in their sight line is a mistake. Mandi kept looking there, and whatever surveillance the pack runs this week clearly centers on the ice, the main hub on campus. Lingering beside the equipment lockers does not make me invisible; it only delays someone spotting me.

I push off the locker and step out into the hallway, pulling my bag strap up my shoulder as I adjust my pace to look purposeful. Purposeful is invisible, while urgent draws attention.

Liam. I need to find Liam.

The hallway branches thirty feet ahead, where one arm curves toward the east wing classrooms and the other drops toward the busy common areas. I follow the east corridor without slowing down, knowing Liam gravitates toward quiet corners and half-empty study rooms where he can monitor an entire room from a single chair. I have cataloged that habit without meaning to.

A silent countdown runs behind my eyes. Sixty-eight hours, roughly, or maybe even less.

I am halfway down the east corridor, scanning every open doorway, when I see her.

Alexa.

She steps out of a classroom on the left, letting the heavy door fall shut behind her, completely unaware of me. I stop instantly. Something about her slow, guarded steps makes my chest tighten with immediate dread.

Her face, when she finally glances up, stops me completely.

It is not fear, which is the first detail I register, and the wrongness sets in instantly. Mandi’s terror had been animal and sharp, full of darting glances and shaking fingers, but this expression is open in a way that looks raw, as if an old secret has simply grown too heavy to keep quiet.

She crosses the hallway in four fast strides, pulling me against her before I find words.

I let her hold me because stepping back is impossible. Her arms lock over my shoulders, and I wait for a natural release that never comes. Five seconds pass, then eight, then twelve. Her hold only tightens, as if she is memorizing the exact physical shape of me.

"Alexa." I speak muffled against the wool of her sweater. "Hey. What’s..."

She cuts in, her tone pushed high and rapid. "I just missed you. We never just stand in hallways anymore, you know? We’re always running somewhere."

She pulls away at last, hands staying firmly planted on my sleeves, offering a smile that costs her more effort than anything I have seen from her. "I just needed you to know," she says, voice tight, "that this whole year mattered. That you mattered. To me. To all of us." The words strike me oddly, framed in past tense, like a formal farewell dressed up as simple affection.

"Okay," I answer slowly. "Thank you. Are you alright?"

She claims she is completely fine, giving my forearms one last firm squeeze, and insists we simply do not say these things often enough.

I study her face. One second. Two. Alexa always catches the shift in a room before anyone else notices, altering her approach to whatever someone needs before they even ask, but right now she is scanning me, and whatever she reads in my posture makes that strained smile crack around the edges.

"Alexa," I say, keeping the words quiet. "Something’s wrong. Tell me."

"Nothing’s wrong." Her voice climbs higher, sounding brittle. "Seriously, Georgia, I just..."

Her voice cuts off.

Her chin dips slightly, and the strain drops off her features all at once, the false warmth collapsing inward like dry wood snapping under sudden pressure. Tears fill her glassy gaze, spilling past her lower lids before she moves to check them, running down her cheeks while her jaw stays locked in silence.

No words follow. Words are unnecessary.

Alexa knows something terrible. And whatever she found out, she has already begun mourning.

The tears on Alexa’s face are still wet.

"What are you mourning?" I ask, stripping away the careful tone I usually keep so I do not startle people. "What does everyone know that I don’t?"

Alexa shakes her head once and steps back, measuring the gap between us like a physical boundary. When I tell her not to just shake her head, she only breathes my name, cutting off before she can finish.

"Is this about The Hollow?"

Her jaw tightens; it is not an answer, but I log the reaction into the running ledger I have kept for weeks.

"The gathering," I say, keeping the words low while recounting the warning Puck gave me, the nausea written plainly across Mandi’s features, and the fact that Alexa is weeping right in front of me without explanation. I close the distance between us, demanding to know if Puck is behind this, but her control breaks before I can even finish his name.

"Please, Georgia. Don’t."

She reaches out and takes my fingers in a double-handed grip, squeezing with the same careful, suffocating intensity as her embrace earlier, as if she is committing the feel of my skin to memory. Her voice thickens with an effort that costs her everything, begging me to remember, whatever I end up seeing, that none of them wanted to lie to me.

Neither of us moves.

I just look at her. One second. Two.

When I demand to know what she means and what I am supposed to see, she lets go of my fingers and pulls away. Fury breaks through the dread that has been mounting since Mandi ran from the alcove and Puck hid behind his duty, and I lunge after her, catching only air where her sleeve had been a half-second before. She slips past my reach and plants herself just beyond arm’s length, close enough that I could try again, far enough that I already know I would fail. I tell her she does not get to drop those words and simply walk away.

She is already turning.

For one breath I consider chasing her down the corridor, forcing the answer out through sheer persistence, the way I used to force my body through a program on a stress fracture because stopping was not an option. But Alexa has made her choice, and I recognize, with a clarity that feels almost like calm, that nothing I say in this hallway will unmake it. Liam is the name everyone keeps handing me. I let my hand drop and let her go, filing the decision away like a move I chose rather than one forced on me.

Her sneakers click faintly against the linoleum, measured and even, and she turns the corner at the far end of the corridor without glancing back once.

Silence fills the long hall around me; the fluorescent tube overhead hums its single, flat frequency while an exterior door latches shut somewhere down the east wing.

None of us wanted to lie to you.

I turn the sentence over slowly, testing each syllable to measure how deep the damage goes. It is not just one person keeping a secret; they are all joined together in the exact same silence, and whatever happens three days from now is an outcome every single one of them has already accepted.

My hands hang completely still at my sides.

That is what terrifies me.