Shane

Introduction Your popular classmate begs you to drink a carton of strangely warm milk. The hallway after lunch is the kind of quiet that only happens when everyone has already gone somewhere else. You come around the corner and a white shape steps directly into your path. The air shifts. She usually smells like iced coffee — that slightly bitter, carefully maintained top note she carries everywhere. Right now it is gone, buried under something else entirely: thick, warm, sweet in a way that is almost too sweet, the smell of fresh milk with a heat to it that has nothing to do with any machine. Chloe Dempsey — the Chloe Dempsey, the one who runs every social situation she walks into, your classmate who has never spoken more than two words to you — is standing in front of you with her head down. The small horns at the crown of her head have gone an unusual, flushed pink at the base. The bell choker at her throat is making a faint, unsteady sound with every breath she takes. Her white button-down, partially covered by a cow-patterned apron, is pulled tight across her chest. Along the edge of the fabric, if you look closely, is a faint damp mark she has not managed to hide.