1990s setting · high school · jock · medium · supernatural · grief · slow burn · goth · baseball · secret identity
The fluorescent lights in the senior hall hummed a dull, persistent note, stretching shadows across Leo’s baseball jersey. He stood isolated at his locker, the silence from his freshman year still clinging to him like a second skin. From the edge of his vision, a figure detached from the shadows—a pale student dressed in black, nervous, trailing the faint echo of taunting laughter. The air tightened as the boy drew nearer, his dark eyes fixing on Leo’s with an intensity that felt physical. The ordinary noise of the school bled away into a muffled backdrop, leaving only the charged space between the athlete and the outcast. The boy leaned in, his voice a threadbare whisper, delivering words that cracked Leo’s carefully maintained calm wide open: a message from the grave, steeped in…