Chapter Five - The Replacement

The administrative building of Westbrook College was the kind of architecture designed to intimidate. Gray stone columns, brass plaques polished to a mirror shine, windows tall enough to make you feel small just by standing near them. I had arrived at 8:47 AM, seventeen minutes early, because being early meant watching, and watching meant surviving.

Detective Cross had made good on her word.

Three days of paperwork. Three days of phone calls that stretched into evenings. Three days of me sitting in that motel room, memorizing Alice's phone like it was scripture, until the bleach-and-regret smell had soaked into my clothes, my hair, my lungs.

Now I stood on the steps of Prescott Hall, a backpack slung over one shoulder..new, canvas, nondescript;containing everything I owned and nothing I was willing to lose. The morning air had that sharp, clean quality of autumn in a town that wanted you to forget it had teeth.

I didn't forget.

"Alexa Lean is dead," Detective Cross had told me over the phone last night. "At least on paper. You're now Nova James. Transfer student, junior year, English literature. No social media presence. No digital footprint before six months ago. We scrubbed what we could."

"And what you couldn't?"

A pause. "You're a ghost, Nova. Don't let anyone look too close."

I liked that. A ghost. Ghosts didn't have to be careful. Ghosts could go anywhere, ask anything, because no one was afraid of something they couldn't see.

The irony wasn't lost on me. Alice was the one who should have been haunting this place. Instead, it was me.

---

The registrar's office smelled like old paper and lavender air freshener, a combination that made my stomach turn. A woman with glasses on a chain and a smile that didn't reach her eyes handed me a manila folder thick enough to be a weapon.

"Welcome to Westbrook, Miss James." She said my new name like she was testing its weight. "Your class schedule is inside. Dorm assignment. Meal card. Campus map." She paused, her smile flickering. "I understand this is a... unique circumstance. The scholarship replacement process isn't ideal. But Dean Hawthorne was insistent."

Insistent. Interesting words. I filed it away.

"Thank you," I said, my voice soft, almost shy. This was the mask I had chosen: quiet, unassuming, grateful for the opportunity. No one pays attention to the girl who doesn't speak.

I walked out of Prescott Hall with the folder pressed against my chest, my eyes scanning the quad. Students moved in clusters,laughing, arguing, heads bent over phones, lives so ordinary they had no idea how fragile it was 

The dorm I was directed too was a little off campus. It was a brick building at the edge of campus, hand covered in ivy that probably looked charming in brochures but up close resembled something climbing out of a grave. Morrison Hall. Room 217.

The key turned with a rusty protest.

The room was small. Two beds, two desks, two closets. Cinderblock walls painted the color of skim milk. A window that faced the parking lot. My roommate's side was already claimed, posters of bands I didn't recognize, a string of fairy lights that looked like they had died slowly, a textbook open to a chapter on cognitive dissonance.

My side was bare. A mattress wrapped in plastic. An empty desk. A closet with three wire hangers.

Perfect.

I set down my bag and stood in the center of the room, listening. The building hummed with the low-frequency noise of old plumbing and newer secrets. Somewhere down the hall, someone was crying. Two floors up, someone was laughing. In the room to my left, a voice said "I'm telling you, he's not worth it," and another voice said nothing at all.

I pulled out Alice's phone,my phone now, the SIM card swapped, the contacts scrubbed, but the photos still there, the messages still there, the ghost of her thumbprint still smudged on the screen.

 I had one year. One year of asking the right questions. One year of watching the right people. One year of burning it all down if I had to.

I opened my class schedule.

ENGL 301 - Advanced Narrative Theory. Professor Elaine Marsh. T/Th 10:00 AM.

PSYC 250 - Abnormal Psychology. Professor Daniel Cross. M/W/F 9:00 AM.

CRIM 210 - Introduction to Forensic Psychology. Professor Helena Vance. W 2:00 PM.

SOCI 305 - Deviance and Social Control. Professor Marcus Webb. T 4:00 PM.

A schedule designed by Detective Cross. A schedule designed to put me in rooms where killers were studied, where minds were dissected, where I could learn the language of monsters.

To her I was here to fulfill my sister's wish, while being safe.

Four classes. Four professors. One hundred and eighty-seven other students, according to the welcome packet.

And one of them killed my sister.

I closed the folder and pressed my palm against the place on my side where the pain lived. It pulsed once, twice, then settled back into its familiar rhythm. A second heartbeat. A countdown.

Not yet, I told it. Soon. But not yet.

******

I decided to take a walk round the school to know the nooks and cranny of the so called Westbrook University. Walking back toward the library I saw the lake.

It was beautiful in the afternoon light, blue and calm and innocent-looking. Students sat on the grass around it, studying, talking, laughing. Couples held hands on the pier.

The pier where Alice's body had been found.

I stopped walking. Stood at the edge of the water. The lake smelled like algae and something deeper,cold, dark, ancient.

"Beautiful, isn't it?"

The voice came from behind me. Male. Young. Familiar. In a way I couldn't place.

I turned.

The boy was tall. Broad shoulders. Dark hair that fell across his forehead. Brown eyes that looked like they'd been crying recently, the skin beneath them was swollen, shadowed.

I knew him. Not from campus. From Alice's phone. From the photos Alice had taken with him, giddy and in love.

Myles Clay. The name registered in my head, that was him standing right in front of me, he looked better than the pictures.

"I'm sorry for startling you, I'm Myles." He stretched  out his hand for a handshake.

I didn't take it. 

The silence stretched between us, thin as a wire. His hand stayed where it was, suspended in the space between stranger and something else. His smile didn't falter, not exactly, but something behind his eyes shifted. A calculation. A reassessment.

"That's okay," I said, my shy-girl voice wrapped around words that felt like glass. "I don't... I'm not really a handshake person."

A lie. I was a handshake person when handshakes meant information. Palm to palm. Calluses tell you if someone works with their hands. Grip strength tells you if they're trying to impress you. Temperature tells you if they're nervous.

But Myles Clay's hand was a door I wasn't ready to open.

He dropped his arm. Shoved his hand back into his pocket. Easy. Unbothered. But somewhat embarrassed. Like he'd expected the rejection.

"That's cool. Some people aren't." He tilted his head, peering past me into the lake, staring at it as if waiting for something to pop up or happen . "You must be the new transfer student.You fancy the water?" He finally said while still looking at the water.

"Maybe a little."

He laughed. I didn't.

"You know this lake used to be our favorite place to be." He turned. His eyes found mine, and this time, there was nothing casual about his gaze. No easy smile. No relaxed posture.  

He looked like a boy who hadn't slept in weeks, dark circles bruising the skin beneath his eyes, his jaw tight with something that might have been grief or might have been guilt.

I stopped a few feet away from him, close enough to see his face, far enough to run. The dock creaked beneath my boots.

"Our?" I asked, keeping my voice light, almost puzzled. In this school, I was Nova, and I planned on keeping it that way.

"Alice."

Hearing her name made my chest hurt for a moment. A sharp, specific pain, different from the dull throb in my side. This was the pain of a wound that had never been allowed to heal, of a scab that kept getting torn off by the simple act of breathing.

"She was my girlfriend," Myles said. "Till she got murdered right here in fucking cold blood."

His voice cracked on the last words. His eyes turned red and wet, but he didn't look away from me. Didn't blink. Didn't try to hide the tears that gathered at his lower lash line, clinging there like they were afraid to fall.

Is this real? I thought. Is this grief, or is this performance?

I knew how to read people, watched movies and always studied body movements.

Myles Clay's body was doing everything right. The crack in his voice. The redness in his eyes. The way his hands trembled slightly at his sides. The way his breath hitched when he said murdered and cold blood.

But so had Ted Bundy's. So had every monster who ever stood in front of a camera and pretended to mourn.

"I heard," I said. "That's kind of the reason I'm here."

The words hung in the air between us. 

"What do you mean?" he asked, his voice quiet. "That's the reason you're here. I thought you were the transfer student taking over the scholarship."

I hesitated. The shy-girl mask said backtrack, deflect, pretend you didn't say anything. 

"I'm also a true crime writer," I said. The lie came easily, smoothly, the way lies do when you've practiced them in a motel room mirror. "Freelance. I write about unsolved cases. Alice's case... it caught my attention."

Myles stared at me. His eyes, brown, kind, wet. Searched my face for something I wasn't sure he'd find.

"Uhm...I'll see you around then." He broke the silence, took a quick glance at me before leaving.

I headed back to my off- campus dorm. My roommate wasn't back yet.

I sat down on my bed, still bare,brought out my notebook and wrote down my first name. 

Myles Clay.