All Chapters of Ashes and Bloodlines : Chapter 1 - Chapter 4

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 t

That night, Julianne couldn't sleep. She had tossed and turned for what felt like hours. The shadows on the walls looked longer than they should have been, stretching as though trying to reach her. She thought about earlier, about the strange boy and the one in her class with silver hair who seems to always be looking at her every time but has never spoken a word to her. With a frustrated sigh, she grabbed her phone from the nightstand and turned it on. The screen lit up the darkness, a small comfort. She tapped into her messages, hoping for something, anything that could distract her. Maybe a message from the ones she wasn't expecting anyway. Nothing. No new messages. No signal bars. No Wi-Fi. A frown settled on her forehead. She thought it was odd for a school like this not to have internet. To think of it, it was even more odd that she has never seen any student with a phone since she arrived. She opened her settings and tried reconnecting, then turned the phone off and