Page 1 of Eternal

1

Lose Your Mind

Teal

Sanity is a matterof perspective.

After all,to me, it makes sense what I’m doing here. But to anyone else, they’d label me insane. I suppose they wouldn’t be wrong, given more than a handful of doctors would agree with them.

I’ve been Bristal’s designatedcrazy girlas far back as I can remember. Ever since my first meltdown in the middle of Regal Marketplace, when I accidentally knocked one of the jars off a shelf, and it shattered on the tile. Cherry juice-stained glass scattered the floor while I curled against the canned vegetables with my fists balled at my temples.

I tried to silence the ringing in my ears while everyone stood watching me have a breakdown over a shattered jar.

If I close my eyes, I can still see theirs on me. Everyone watched me like a movie as I fell apart, but no one actually did anything about it.

Adjust her dose.

Alter her diagnosis.

It hasn’t worked yet, so I can’t figure out why they’re still trying. Besides, who are they to judge when the ones holding the scale are usually the worst offenders?

The creaky gate at the other end of the courtyard opens, and I watch a figure walk through. The man is tall, and his dark hair falls to the top ridge of his ears. He’s wearing a hoodie and jeans. A simple outfit when his family no doubt bleeds money.

There are only two ways to get into a school like Briar Academy: be one of the very few ridiculously intelligent students here on a scholarship, like my roommate Violet, or come from a family with pockets deeper than the ocean.

Like most students, I’m the latter.

The Donovans come from old money. We’re rich through oil, blood, and sin. The only way to get as wealthy as my father is to come from generations of men with no moral compass. And there were plenty of them.

My family was one of the first four to invest in Bristal. Along with the Pierces, Christiansens, and Lancasters, my bloodline founded this small slice of hell. Between the four families, we built this town. Set the laws. Laid the first bricks of Sigma House.

As if wealth and local power weren’t enough, the men who founded Bristal decided they needed more. So theystarted the fraternity that now bleeds into every political facet of this country. In the university handbook, the fraternity goes by Sigma House, but everyone here knows to really call them Sigma Sin.

After all, they do the work of sinners, not saints.

They hide behind their fraternity while the families that started it all taint each new generation with power and greed.

The man makes his way deeper into the courtyard. He closed the gate behind him but didn’t latch it. His shoes drag against the pavement with every long stride, and his steps are even, slow, and purposeful.

Campus policy says we shouldn’t be out of our dorms past ten o’clock, but no one follows it. And since no one actually monitors the security feeds around campus unless there’s an incident, there’s no incentive to listen.

Regulating students would require the administration to care about our safety.

God forbid someone actually gives a shit.

The man doesn’t see me sitting on a bench at the opposite end of the courtyard as he makes his way through it. A streetlamp above him flickers.

I watch from the shadows as he kicks a rock across the cobblestones. It skips along the crevices before finally lodging in one of them.

The music in my earbuds is low enough that I can still hear every sound of his shoes scraping the ground. Of his bag being pulled up over his shoulder. Of the low whistle coming through his pursed lips.

Until he finally comes to a stop near the library, tucked in the darkness of the now-barely flickering light.

He’s familiar, but I can’t place him. I’m pretty sure we’ve had a class or two together. His hunched posture is familiar, even if I can’t remember his name.

So I give him one instead.

Talon.

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