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[sub][i]Dear Diary — Today, I tried lying to myself by saying that everything is okay. I couldn't even form the words.[/i][/sub] [/center]
[code]Grand Ridge Academy - Rita's Dorm.[/code][hr]
[center][hider=Monsters of Folk - His Master's Voice][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYVssLSrESk[/youtube][/hider][/center]
Another morning, another nightmare. Rita Vorona lied awake in bed, her eyes finding hidden figures in the stucco ceiling of her dorm as she tried to forget the dream. She had tried to forget a lot of things over the pass month, to push them into the deep recesses of her subconscious where they would fester and manifest years later in therapy sessions that she would inevitably stop going to before any real help could be done. So far, her success rate at forgetting was nonexistent. She could still remember the panic. She could still remember being within arms length of the murderer. She could still remember the hurtful things she had said to Martin, and to the cops, and to the classmates that had prodded her after the fact. Ever since that night the girl had been cursed with an unfiltered tongue, the stress of the events leaving her only with brutally honest words.

Eventually, she reasoned that the best way to avoid saying shit was to stop saying shit, and so she once again became the quiet wallflower. College had been a chance for a reboot, a rebranding, a reimagining of herself, and she had flubbed it as hard as one possibly could. When she went to class she would sit in the back, avoid eye contact, and not ask any questions. She had found that asking questions lately was a great way for her to get herself in to trouble. Conversations turned weird fast, and people grew uncomfortable and suspicious of her presence.

For example, a simple probing of a professor on why they needed to actually purchase the exorbitantly expensive books on the syllabus resulted in a controversial revelation that the teacher was only trying to help their friend, who had authored the book, get a healthy stipend. Asking the person next to her if they’d mind if she borrowed a pen got her trapped in a rant about “how come everyone always wants to take my stuff just because I came prepared” that had resulted in Rita switching seats so they would never have to interact again. And God forbid if she ever asked someone if they were okay. There was only so much information about a stranger’s sex life that she could deal with, and that amount was somewhere in the range of zero to none. 

And if she said something back to them? Yeah, it was better if she just remained the creepy quiet kid.

Saturday morning meant no classes for Rita. Normally she would’ve stayed in her dorm and read a book or watched TV until it was time to sleep again, but she felt completely uncomfortable in the room. Largely this was in part due to not having a roommate to share her double sized dorm. Many would kill to have been so lucky to have a room all to themselves that wasn’t the size of a closet, but considering that her roommate had literally been killed by that lunatic in the woods it felt a little off to be happy about the personal space. Her roommate, judging by the posters and knick knacks that she had left behind that nobody had come to claim, had a taste for horrible country music and pride in a horrible Southern state. Naturally, the admission office must’ve felt like Rita would’ve enjoyed the company of a fellow Texan. Naturally, they were wrong, but spending time stuck in a room with another yokel was far superior than spending time stuck in a room with the possessions of a dead girl. 

So now she had to get up and get out. It was too early to take a shower—even one person in the communal bathroom was too many for her. Dressing herself in the mirror, Rita frowned as she worked her left arm into the long sleeve of a white blouse. At first she had thought the lines were some kind of cut she had taken while rushing to the boats that horrible night, but they were too perfect and too dark to be scars. Scrubbing at them had only made her skin red and irritated, and no amount of aloe vera would make them fade. She raised her left hand up, the lines like the cut strings of a marionette taunting her with their persistence before she buttoned up the sleeve and threw on a black, oversized sweater in a desperate admittance of defeat, hoping that the long arms would hang over and conceal her fingers. She finished dressing, fussed with her hair, fussed with it again, and took a step back.

Yep. She looked like shit.

Sighing, she shoved her phone in her back pocket—no new messages, typical. The only one who would have texted her would’ve been Martin, and she had been giving him the cold shoulder lately out of fear of making a bigger asshole out of herself. Rita grabbed a dog-eared book off of her desk and made her way out of her room, careful not to look at anyone if she passed them in the hall. She walked with the hurried pace of someone who was late for class but determined not to appear that way and kept the book close to her chest, covering the title and author up just so that nobody would try and strike up a conversation about dead Russian writers that would inevitably turn into their take on how to properly run a socialist society. 

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[code]Grand Ridge - Outside Main Building[/code]
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Popping through the front doors of the girl dorms, she almost instantly regretted her decision to wear so many layers. She would melt if she stayed outside, and the anxiety of someone watching her turn around and go back inside to sit in the common room froze her with fear. If someone was actually watching her, they would’ve seen Rita scurry around the campus looking for a quiet place to hideaway before she decided on the library, her pace shifting into one of laser-focused guidance as she beelined to the main building. Her focus was once again scattered by the sound of a fire alarm going off, and her head snapped around as if her very being there had somehow triggered the blaring noise. She was so busy looking for the source of the alarm that she didn’t even realize there was a person in front of her until she smacked in to their back, her book dropping from her hands. She almost found herself asking if they were okay before remembering what roads that question lead her down. So instead, she tried to apologize.

“I’m sor…” started Rita, the words fading as she recognized the shape of Claire O’Sullivan, the girl who had promptly tried to kick her ass for something Rita had no control over. She had successfully ducked Claire for the past month, even though the reasonable part of her told her that there was little likelihood that the girl even remembered her. Still, logic did little to quell her worries, and now there was nobody around the wrangle the woman back. The blaring of the fire alarm rang in unison with the own alarms going off in Rita’s head as she was instantly transported back to the night of the massacre. She shrunk back so that she wasn’t blocking the door for any escaping students, but as she did she managed to step in to a bit of her spine. 

[i][b][color=lightgray]“Are you going to try and hit me again?”[/color][/b][/i] asked Rita, the judgment heavy in her voice as her dark eyes glared up at Claire. Hidden within her sleeve, her sigil faintly glowed. She already had enough to be afraid of between axe-wielding maniacs and realistically violent dreams. She wasn’t going to allow Claire to wiggle her way onto that list.