Chapter 35: MANDI ALMOST BREAKS

Georgia

I’ve been carrying the weight of my notebook for days now, the calendar, the pattern, the word I still can’t quite make myself say out loud even in the privacy of my own head. Ever since Darcy listened to every detail I handed over so freely, I’ve felt a gnawing frustration building toward Mandi, toward her silences, her half-answers, the way she’s let me sit in the dark for weeks while a virtual stranger got the truth out of me in a single lunch conversation.

I find Mandi in our room on a quiet Tuesday evening, curled up on her bed with a textbook open in her lap that she doesn’t appear to actually be reading, her eyes fixed somewhere past the page rather than on it. Gerald the fern sits on the windowsill behind her, and for some reason the ordinariness of it, of our room, of her curls falling loose from their usual knot, makes what I’m about to do feel even stranger, like I’m about to drag something enormous and wrong into a space that’s only ever felt safe.

Something in me finally decides I’m done circling.

"I need to ask you something," I say, closing our door behind me, my voice steadier than I actually feel. "And I need you to actually answer me this time."

She looks up, something wary already surfacing behind her eyes, like she can sense exactly where this is heading before I’ve said another word, like she’s been bracing for this conversation for weeks without either of us naming it out loud until now.

"What about?" she asks, too carefully, setting her book down but not closing it, some part of her clearly still hoping this might be about something else entirely.

I don’t let her deflect. "Puck. The full moon nights when the whole campus goes quiet. The scratches I’ve seen on people’s arms the morning after." I pull my notebook out from where I’ve kept it hidden lately, tucked beneath my mattress most nights, and hold it up like evidence, my hand not quite steady. "The way certain students vanish on the exact same nights, over and over, like clockwork. I mapped it, Mandi. All of it. Every single date lines up with the lunar calendar. Exactly."

Mandi’s face drains of color, the same way it did that night I found her waiting in the doorway after I saw the shadow at the tree line, pale and rigid and already grieving something I couldn’t name.

"Georgia," she starts.

"Don’t." My voice comes out sharper than I mean it to, months of frustration finally boiling over, my hands trembling slightly around the notebook. "Don’t tell me it’s coyotes. Don’t tell me it’s tradition. Don’t tell me I’ll get used to it. I’ve heard all of that a dozen times from a dozen different people, and I’m done pretending it means nothing. I need someone to actually tell me the truth for once since I got to this school."

She sets her textbook aside slowly, her hands trembling slightly as she does it, and for a long moment she just sits there, staring at the space between us like she’s trying to figure out how much weight the floor can actually hold before it gives way entirely beneath both of us.

"You don’t understand what you’re asking," she says finally, quiet, her voice smaller than I’ve ever heard it.

"Then help me understand."

"I can’t." The words come out strangled, like they’re costing her something physical to say even that much, her whole face tight with the effort of it. "There are things about Puck you don’t know. Things I can’t - "

She stops dead.

It happens so suddenly, so completely, that for a second I think she’s simply lost her train of thought. But it isn’t that. Her whole body flinches, sharp and involuntary, like she’s walked headlong into something solid and invisible, some wall I can’t see but that clearly, undeniably exists for her. Her jaw locks. Her hands curl into fists against her knees, knuckles gone white. A small, choked sound escapes her throat, somewhere between a gasp and a sob, cut off before it can fully form. That isn’t panic, I realize, watching her fight against whatever’s gripping her - it looks more like a leash pulling taut, some binding yanking her back before she can say too much.

"Mandi?" I take a step closer, alarmed now, the sharpness draining out of my voice entirely, replaced by something closer to fear. "Are you okay? What just happened?"

She doesn’t answer right away. She sits there, rigid, breathing hard through her nose like she’s fighting against something physical, something with real weight and pressure behind it, and when she finally looks up at me, her eyes are wet, glistening with something that looks less like fear and more like grief, deep and old and exhausted, the kind of grief that’s been carried quietly for a very long time.

"I want to tell you," she whispers, and I believe her completely, the sincerity in her voice raw and unmistakable, breaking slightly on every word. "You have no idea how badly I want to just tell you everything. Every single thing. But I can’t. I physically can’t."

She doesn’t answer when I open my mouth to ask. She just stands, gathering herself with visible effort, her whole body still trembling slightly.

"Mandi, wait." I reach for her arm, and she flinches away from the contact, not unkindly, just instinctively, like even that small touch is too much for her to bear right now.

"Please don’t ask me that again," she whispers, her voice cracking on the last word, splintering into something raw and pleading.

Before I can find anything else to say, before I can push or plead or demand a real answer, before I can even fully process the look on her face, she’s already through the door and gone, the sound of her footsteps fading fast down the hallway, leaving me standing alone in our room with my notebook still clutched in my hand and more questions than I’ve ever had in my life.