Chapter One
Sense of Stability

     JIA was supposed to be at Tara's house.  She always used to be there, even just to lounge on Tara's couch for a while.  It was better than being at her house with her mom, even if Tara's mom was similar to her very own.  There wasn't much of a difference, but at least Tara's mom was going to meetings and trying to screw her head on straight.  Not much could be said for Jia's mom.

     Jia couldn't even tell you why she didn't go to Tara's that night, which was the most horrible part of the whole thing.  All she could say was that since she ran into Ghostface that night while walking home, she hadn't been the same.  She swore she was beginning to see Ghostface more and more around town, even while doing the most mundane things.  But it had barely only been two months.  From the end of July to mid-September, Ghostface was seeping into her life and scaring her shitless.  Why wasn't she dead yet?

     But she didn't even say these things out loud after she saw all the crazy looks she was starting to get, from her friends included.  So she just shut up.  And the lock and key were more often than not, popping pills or sliding alcohol down her throat.  Anything she could get her grimy little hands on to get the image of her being hunted out of her mind.  But no amount of drugs could fix this.  She was beating herself up for not being there.  She was stupid to think someone wasn't going to die.

     "Attention, Panthers.  A reminder that all classes and school activities are canceled tomorrow due to public safety concerns."

     Jia nodded, and while those who sat around her looked more disappointed than her, she couldn't say she was shocked.  She knew she should be playing dumb like everyone else was – all she was doing was making herself a target – but if Ghostface was back, she knew they needed to hide away as fast as possible.  She didn't even want to go to school that day, and the longer she sat around listening to them talk the more she wanted to turn around and go back home.

     She was dressed as a paranoid individual usually does.  She didn't spend much time on her hair and makeup anyways, but today it was even less.  Two pieces of her hair were dyed Barbie blonde, the rest jet black.  All of it pulled into a messy braid that rested down her back, stray pieces hanging and flowing whenever the wind blew through the grass and picnic tables in front of their school.  She wore an Artic Monkeys tee-shirt with a pair of very old jeans and a random pair of Converse.  Despite looking as messy as she usually did, she felt out of place like a sore thumb.

     "That was Sam," Wes said to the small group.  Sam was Tara's big sister, but despite them being related, she couldn't remember the last time she saw Sam much less actually with Tara.  The two had a strained relationship for many years, but Jia wasn't totally sure why.  All she knew was that Sam grew up and moved along – literally moving to another city, leaving Tara behind with their mom.  She was glad that Sam was coming back, even if there wasn't much they could do at that point.

     "She's coming?" Amber asked in her raspy voice as Mindy stood next to Jia, and despite Mindy being glued to her phone, she was the only thing providing comfort for her at that moment.

     "Yeah," Wes confirmed as he slid his phone into his pocket.

     "Watch everything get worse," Amber said, earning a small eye roll from Jia.  Granted, Jia didn't know much about Sam and what was going on with her and her younger sister, but she was sure that Amber didn't know either.  Wes softly smiled as he saw Jia's reaction. At least he tried to make an effort to understand her.

     "Listen, all I'm saying is, with everything going on right now, I think it's time we take our relationship to the next, most intimate level," Chad and his pink-haired girlfriend walked over to the small group and joined them at the picnic tables before relaxing on them, leaning on his elbow, staring up at said girlfriend, Liv McKenzie.

     "He wants me to accept his Find My Fam request," Liv explained to the others, clueing them in on whatever Chad was nagging her about, but Liv didn't seem too bothered at all by it.

     "It's the smartest option with a would-be killer on the loose.  You know exactly where I am and I know exactly where you are," Chad defended himself, never once breaking eye contact with her.

     "Aw, you can stalk me like a jealous boyfriend," Liv teased.

     "And you can stalk me like a jealous boyfriend," Chad countered, pressing his index finger to his chest as his voice became higher.

     Amber stuck her tongue out, fake gagging at their interaction.  Sure, it was intimate and clingy of them, but Jia didn't really care.  Plus, Chad was happy, they were happy.  "Is this because you two aren't having sex yet?" Amber asked with a laugh, but Jia didn't find anything about the situation humorous.  In fact, she found next to nothing Amber said humorous.  She herself had a complicated friendship with Amber Freeman – in the fact that they really weren't.  But she had been friends with Wes since diapers and the twins since elementary, so where did that leave her?

     "You actually bring up a very good point," Chad nodded.  "Not that I want to sound like a stereotypical jock trying to get into his girlfriend's pants..."

     "Great!" Liv cut him off, taking his face into her hands and pressing a kiss to Chad's cheek.

     "Don't do it, Liv.  There's a psycho out there.  You make yourself harder to find.  Delete social media, tape over your phone camera, disable GPS," Wes said.  Jia returned the favor by trying her best to quirk the side of her lips up into a smile, but even then, it just looked displaced on her.

     "Yes, thank you very much, Edward Snowden," Chad said as Liv gave him a thumbs up.  Jia wanted to laugh, snicker, anything at the comment, but she couldn't bring herself to do it.  "Actually, your mother just interrogated me about Tara's attempted murder, which was very fun."

     As Chad flicked his thumb behind him, motioning to Judy Hicks, who just happened to be the town's new sheriff on top of Wes's mother, Wes seemed a bit uncomfortable.  "I'm sure she's asking everybody.  I mean, Ghostface is back."

     "The press still isn't saying Ghostface," Mindy noted, speaking up for the first time.

     "My mom doesn't want to cause a panic," Wes maintained.  Jia nodded, bringing her hand to the back of her neck and rubbing on a kink that wasn't necessarily there yet.  However, she was sure with all of this back-and-forth conversation, she would be more stressed out soon enough.  Just the mention of Ghostface had her skin crawling, but she didn't want to say anything yet.  The last time she added to the Ghostface conversation, it didn't end well.

     "It'll get out by the second or third killing," Mindy added, alerting Jia.  The girl with long hair then turned to get a better look at her friend.  Mindy wasn't necessarily someone who was stone cold, but she could come off as harsh or impersonal, especially when it came to anything killing or horror related.  Yet still, Jia couldn't believe her ears; Mindy was talking about this so casually as if it wasn't a real person, their friend they were talking about.

     "Jesus, Mindy, there wasn't a first killing.  Tara's alive," Amber said, and for once, she was on the same page as Jia or at least acting like it.  Jia couldn't imagine what she would do if anything happened to Tara, all because she wasn't there to help her.  If Tara died, it would be all her fault.  And Tara was the last person who deserved to be a victim of Jia's actions.

     Mindy hummed.  "That means she could still die," she said.

     "What the fuck?" Amber asked, slightly startled.  Despite Mindy being a horror movie junkie, she was taking their rag-tag friend group by surprise by the way she was acting over Tara's attack.

     "Or the killer could come back for her," Mindy continued, bringing a hitch to start forming in Jia's breathing pattern.

     "Fuck, Mindy!  Come on," Chad even chimed in, trying to shut his sister down.

     "I'm just telling you, arm up, okay?" Wes said in a defensive manner, per his earlier statements.  "Pepper spray, check.  Taser, check."

     "Girlfriend repellent, check," Amber sarcastically added, making the others (minus Jia) giggle.

     "Nice.  Thank you," Wes muttered to himself as the laughter died down.

     "Oh, shit.  Is that... Vince?" Liv asked no one in particular, a crease in between her eyebrows as she drew everyone's attention to the guy down in the street in front of their school, leaning against a black car.

     "Wait... The creep you hooked up with last summer?" Chad asked, equally confused.

     "Yeah, he worked with me and Tara," Liv said.  Jia didn't want to say anything at the moment, but even though Vince was a certified weirdo she had gotten high with him in the past summers so she neglected to say anything wrong about his character.  For now.

     "He worked with Tara?" Amber asked, but Jia knew fully well that Vince worked with them.  It would have been a bigger deal to her if she didn't get fired from that job.

     Liv nodded.  "He's been stalking my Instagram the last couple weeks, posting the creepiest shit."  As Liv said that, Vince pressed his fingers to his lips before blowing a kiss towards them and waving.  Jia shuddered, wanting to retract her earlier thought about saying anything bad about him, as Mindy took a quick picture of him.  Of course, he was a creep, and quite frankly, a perfect Ghostface.

     "Probably time to introduce him to Hobbs and Shaw," Chad flexed his muscled while holding eye contact with him as Vince spit on the grass lawn surrounding their school.

     "Maybe not the best idea to incite violence right in front of the sheriff," Liv reminded him, grabbing hold of his arms.  "Looks like he's leaving.  Thanks anyway, boys," Liv said, earning a kind laugh from Chad.

     "Tara says she fought back hard," Amber said, bringing the topic right around to Tara again. In a way, Jia didn't mind because she knew if they weren't talking about Tara she would just be thinking about her anyways... but she really didn't want to think about the fact that Tara almost died.  "You've got bruises," she motioned to his obvious sore spots on his biceps, but that wasn't really new for Chad.

     "From football practice," Chad shrugged, frankly a little surprised that Amber would suspect him.

     "Oh, sure," Amber said, slowly turning her attention back around to Jia.  "Weren't you supposed to be there with her that night?"

     Jia swallowed the lump in her throat as she hesitantly prepared her answer.  It was the one question she had been dreading.  She knew deep down Wes and Mindy would never believe she was the killer (the jury was still out for Chad; he didn't really care much about conspiracies and Liv; she didn't know her that well), and yet she still felt nervous about answering the question.  "Um, yeah.  But I wasn't."

     "Where were you?" Mindy asked, furrowing her eyebrows in confusion as this was the first time she was hearing of this.  Despite the attitude, Jia knew that Amber must have known exactly where she was.  There wasn't a time when Jia's actions went unnoticed in this town.

     Before Jia could answer for herself, Mindy jumped back in.  "Oh, come on, Amber.  You know exactly where she was.  There's no need to point fingers."

     While it was a nice gesture on Mindy's part, she suddenly wished Mindy had said nothing at all.  Better yet, she wished she never chose to sit with them that day.  Jia quickly hung her head as she felt everyone's gaze land on her.  "You were getting high?" Wes asked, his tone more than laced with concern.  At least she could say she had one friend who didn't approach her hobbies with a totally negative reaction.

     She popped her knuckles as she looked down in her lap, unable to bring herself to look him in the eye.  She nodded and continued nodding until she felt her thoughts scramble.  "I was smoking with some people from my math class," Jia said, staring down at her cold hands, before stuffing them under her legs.  She could have died right then and there from embarrassment.

     Amber scoffed with a smile.  "You hardly even go to class."

     "Amber..." Chad quietly said, shaking his head.  Jia had found an unexpected brother figure in Chad, and sometimes she forgot how nice he was underneath all his jock exterior.  He really did put up with a lot from the girl.

     By the grace of some God, Wes's phone buzzed.  Jia wasn't surprised that he was the first one to be alerted, he was probably the closest to Tara since the three stopped hanging out consistently years ago.  She knew Wes and Tara dated for a hot minute, but they decided to remain friends afterward and it worked perfectly.  "Tara's awake.  She just texted.  I... I'm going to the hospital, you guys coming?"

     "Yeah," most of them said.

     "Oh, yeah?" Amber looked Jia up as Jia stood up and pulled her tote bag over her shoulders.  Not much was in it, but it had become a habit more than anything to carry it around.  It smelled of patchouli and perfume from Walgreens, but it was hers.  Was this a challenge from Amber?  It was hard to tell.

     "I hardly even go to class anyways, huh?" Jia rubbed her tongue along her cheek as she dug her fingertips into the palms of her hands out of frustration.  No way was she going to let Amber show face at the hospital without her in tow, trying to push Jia back out of the frame again.  And no way was she going to let Tara be alone after what had just happened.

     "I can't, but I'll meet you guys later," Liv said sadly.

     "All right," Chad said, pressing a kiss to her temple as Wes suspiciously looked at them.  Jia softly patted his shoulder as she passed by him, bringing him to turn around and join her as they marched down the sidewalk, determined to get to their friend.  As they walked side by side, he slipped his large hand into her shaky one, bringing the girl a sense of stability that she was getting for the first time in a really long time.