Shade of the Pines

Seventeen was supposed to be easy. Or at least tolerable.

Julianne never asked for a fairytale. Just a normal, boring senior year. One where she didn’t have to fake-smile through awkward dinners, flinch every time her phone buzzed, or pretend she didn’t see her parents’ marriage crumbling.

She only found out her dad had left when she saw a post-it note on the fridge. No ‘I love you,’ no hug to say goodbye. Sometimes, she wondered if her parents ever really cared about her. Even when they were present in her lives, she had always felt alone.

Her mom didn’t cry after he left. She just poured herself a glass of wine and muttered something about ‘freedom.’ And even after all that, she still pretended to care, to believe that everything was normal and everyone goes through those sorts of things at least once in their lifetime. She kept going to school, doing her homework, baking cookies like she used to when she was eight, hoping maybe the smell of chocolate chips and vanilla would glue the pieces of their lives together.

It didn’t.

And just when she thought things couldn’t get worse, she walked in on her boyfriend, Shane, in bed with her best friend_Brooklyn.

Brooklyn with the glossy smile and fake laugh who always ‘joked’ that if Shane and her ever broke up, she would be first in line.

Guess she wasn’t joking.

She just stood by the entrance. Frozen. Shane didn’t even bother pulling the sheets up. He had the nerve to look annoyed, like she had interrupted a movie while Brooklyn gasped and started crying. Of course, she always cried when she got caught. But Shane just shrugged and said, “You weren’t around much lately. We didn’t think you’d care.”

Julianne had managed to calm herself down and walk out the door, leaving them be. She knew what she was supposed to do, like every other girlfriend would do when they see their best friend having an affair with their boyfriend, but she already knew the relationship was falling apart, and that her friendship with Brooklyn was getting distant.

None of them ever bothered to ask her why she hasn’t been around. They just…moved on. That was two months ago.

Two long, lonely months.

People at school whispered about her after that. Of course, the story she heard were that she betrayed her friend or that she broke Shane’s heart. She knew it was a story made up by Brooklyn. She always does that to cover up for herself. People at school won’t stop bringing up new things about her and they even made it obvious by talking aloud and staring at her whenever she walks down the hallway or was in the cafeteria. And whenever something happens, they would always suspect her first. Like when they said she had hexed Brooklyn’s I*******m into glitching for three days straight.

In reality, she just faded.

She stopped answering texts, deleted her socials, and went to school like a ghost. She would sit at the back of the class, leave school earlier than the rest of the students. The teachers stopped calling on her and it was like she became invisible, which would have been fine until the weird stuff started happening.

Julianne always knew there was something else about her. Something that made people look twice. She knew, deep down, that she was different. But she wasn’t exactly sure how.

It started small. Flickering lights when she was angry. A crack spidering across the kitchen window when her mom screamed at her for not moving on already.

Then there was the dream.

It felt real. Too real.

She was standing in a forest of ash trees. Everything was grey; the sky, ground, even the wind. Then she looked down and saw something glow on her skin. A mark. Twisting vines circling her arm, pulsing like it had a heartbeat of its own.

Then a voice, whispering her name. It didn’t sound like her mom’s, or Shane’s, or Brooklyn’s. It was something distant. Something older. And it felt too real.

She woke up sweating, her bedsheets all tangled, and noticing something to be off in her room, she looked at the side to see her mirror cracked, from top to bottom. Just like the kitchen window.

Julianne knew everything happening was not normal, but she couldn’t bring herself to believe she was a freak. Why couldn’t she be perfect like Brooklyn or the other kids out there? She told herself there was nothing wrong with her, that it was stress or trauma. That she was grieving, mourning the life she’d lost.

But then the next morning, the coffee machine exploded. Flames, sparks, right in front of her in the kitchen and she just stood there, stunned, frozen. She barely touched the thing, only reached for it and boom! The fire alarm rang aloud and her mom came running in like she had set the house on fire on purpose. She stared at her, like she was a stranger, like she was scared.

At school also, after Math’s class, while everyone was chattering and laughing aloud, she suddenly became angry at herself, at everyone. First, her dad for leaving, then her mom for moving on so fast and not caring about her, then Shane for hooking up with her best friend, and then Brooklyn for betraying her. She clenched her fist hard on the table and couldn’t bear the loud laughs and chattering from her classmates.

Why was everyone happy except her?

And just then, she stormed her fist hard on the table and it cracked to pieces with a loud noise. Everyone stopped and raised their eyes. It was not just her table, but the rest of the tables and chairs up from her row that cracked.

Julianne could see their eyes, the way they looked at her. They were scared. And it was like they knew she was a freak—no, a monster. It was the same eyes her mom had when the coffee machine exploded.

Before they would accuse her, she grabbed her backpack and fled from the classroom, running down the hallway and sprinting out of the school gates, not stopping even when the security told her to. She ran all the way home, willing herself not to cry from everything that was happening to her.

She flung the door to her house opened and ran all the way to her room while her mom shouted after her. But she couldn’t care. She locked the door and shut all the windows, shutting her ears from her mom’s loud banging and yelling on her door and eventually shutting herself out from the world.