When the bell signifies the end of lunch, Natalia Hargrove split off from her new friends to walk to class.

When she arrived, after following the directions Luna had told her, she is assigned a seat near the back. The chair beside her was empty until the very second the late bell rang, signifying class had started.

The boy beside her got his book out, his messy handwriting on the front reading Steve Harrington, before he pushes the book to the side and grabs a piece of paper from his pocket.

It's the same page that had been on his desk in homeroom that morning but this time it had much less words and even more frustrated scribbles. The page looks like it's been scrunched up and flattened out again.

The classroom is rather noisy because everyone was working on an assignment to write a short story so most people were just gossiping about the 'hot new boy', which Natalia obviously did not want to discuss seeing as it's her brother, so she caught her table partners attention instead.

"What're you working on?" his head snaps up at her question.

As his brown eyes meet her blue ones, he seemed distracted for a moment before shaking his head, "uh, it's my college essay. Not that I'll ever get the grades to get into college." He sighs before smiling at her, "I'm Steve, by the way."

"Talia," she smiles back. "And maybe you'd get the grades for college if you did the work in class?"

Suddenly his head moves around the room to see a few people writing before he looks at her notebook to see she also has a few lines written. He also takes a note of the book on her desk, Carrie.

"Oh, what's the assignment?" he asks, confused as he hadn't heard the teacher telling them.

Natalia breaths out a laugh at the expression on his face, "you have to write a short story. Horror."

"Horror? That's hard," Steve mumbles.

"I guess," Talia answers before shrugging, "I mean, horror is all I read, so," she trails off. "When's it due?"

"Huh?" Steve looks back up.

"The essay," she reminds him.

"Tomorrow for early applications," he sighs and, after a moment, lets his head fall to the desk and rests it against his arms as he groans.

"Okay, alright, no need to be dramatic," she laughs. "Do it tonight?"

"I can't, I'm going to this meal with my girlfriend and her friend's parents, it's not something I can get out of," part of him was glad the topic of Nancy came up, not wanting to accidentally lead the pretty girl on.

"Well," she thinks for a moment, "we have an hour now, let's see what you've got."

"What about the work?" Steve asks, looking at her unfinished story.

She shrugs, "it's due in two weeks, there's time. Besides, I can do it at home. I'll only go read a horror book anyway so I might as well write one instead."

"You sure?" Steve double checks.

"Hand it over, Harrington," Natalia holds her hand out as he placed the paper in it.

For the rest of the lesson, she helps Steve with his college essay and they miraculously finish it.

Steve was surprised himself, Natalia was a really good writer, she had actually managed to make him sound like a student worth giving the time of day. By the time the bell went, he had just finished the last sentence.

"There you go, done!" Talia smiles as she packs up her things.

"Oh my god," Steve mumbles in surprise as his eyes skim back over it, finding himself impressed with how it sounds. Then again, that was more thanks to Talia than Steve himself. "Thank you so much, really."

"It's no problem," she shrugs it off, not realising how much Steve meant those last words. "So where are you applying?"

"Indiana University," Steve replies before asking her the same, "what about you?"

"I applied there when I heard we were moving here, but I also applied to some back home. It's more likely that I'll go to school here now that we've moved to this lovely town," she sighs as the pair walk out of class.

"What, you didn't want to move here?" Steve asks, feigning shock and being not at all surprised.

"I know, shocker." She sighs, "I loved California. The beach, the waves, surfing, my friends there. This place feels weird already."

"You got that right," Steve says as he realised he had subconsciously walked her to class.

"This is me," she gestures to the door.

He nods, moving to walk away as she turns to go inside but she turns back round when he calls her name, "thanks again for the help, I really appreciate it."

"Then let's just say you owe me," she smirks before disappearing into class.

——

About an hour after Natalia gets home, she ends up writing her short story, having nothing better to do.

It's titled, 'Ghost Girl on Woodbrook Lane' and is about a small religious town in the late seventies. There was one house that had been abandoned for years, rumours around the town say that it's haunted, but most believe that's just a made up story, a joke, between the kids of the town. The reality is that a girl used to live in that house with her parents, who believed in witchcraft, until they were hung. The little girl knew the town were responsible for their deaths as they didn't agree with her parents beliefs. She was so mad about what they'd done that she haunted the house after casting a spell before her death. Anybody who stepped foot through front door with a stained glass window would be stalked by her for three days until they were eventually found hung to death, the exact way her parents were murdered. The two victims of the story are two schoolboys who decided to test the 'Theory of the Ghost Girl on Woodbrook Lane' on a dare. Both boys were found hung in their front gardens for all to see.

She stared at her short story, wondering whether her teacher would be too disturbed by the story (which has happened before at her old school). She comes to the conclusion that it probably is too gory, and a little too long anyway. When she did a word count, she was way over the 300-500 amount anyway.

She shoved the story into her draw, not wanting to throw away the hour's worth of work, and grabs her pen to start again.

Her new story is titled 'Silent Killer' and it's about a retired detective who moves to a small town in search for some peace and quiet but he finds instead that the town is far from safe. There is one person who lives in town, who everyone believes to be a physical human form of the devil itself, who kills anyone in town who looks them in the eye. The first symptom is an intense headache, the second is hallucinations like seeing your worst nightmares come to life, and the final symptom is death. Blood begins to pour from your nose, then your ears and the corners of your eyes until you eventually start coughing up blood and choke to death. The only problem? Nobody knows who the silent killer is. And by the time the former detective figures it out, he's already choking on his own blood.

She still wonders if it is too gory but doesn't want to waste another story so decides it will have to do. She counts the words to find she has 499 words so, just to please the perfectionist inside, she turns one 'didn't' into a 'did not' before neatly rewriting the story onto another piece of paper as the first edit had become very messy and scribbly as her idea had evolved.

She's just finished the last sentence when there's a knock at her door.

"Come in," she calls as she places the paper into her bag. She smiles at the redhead at the door, "hey Max, what's up?"

"Can I?" she gestures to the bed and Natalia nods, moving up. Max closes the door and sits down, "did you make any friends today?"

"Uh, yeah, a few. Luna, Claire, and Ethan," she tells the younger girl.

"Ethan's a boy right?" Max asks causing her sister to nod slowly, confused as to where Max is going with this. "That's okay, right? To be just friends with boys?"

"Yeah, of course Max," the blonde reassured her. "Why?"

"Well, it's just," she sighs. "None of the girls seem to like me. I don't care, but- I don't know."

The older girl sighs, "well, it's only your first day. Maybe these girls will warm up to you when they find out how cool you are. But yeah, it's fine to be friends with guys. As long as they have good intentions, sometimes having guy friends can be great," she reassured her, thinking back fondly of the small band of musical boys she had befriended in California. "Do these boys seem to have good intentions?"

Max scoffs, "they definitely don't have bad intentions, they're all nerds." Natalia laughs, and so does Max after a second. "So what were you working on before I interrupted? Another story?"

Billy and Max are the only two people in the world who know she writes (mostly short) stories.

Billy knows she writes some things but he doesn't usually read them unless she asks him to, seeing as he doesn't like reading, but he knows she wants to be an author and he always tells her to go for it.

Max, however, is always eager to read everything she writes. She doesn't usually read much, except for her comics, but she always loves all the short horror stories her sister creates.

"You want to read 'em?" Max nods eagerly so Natalia reaches into her bag and hands Max the one for school.

The girl reads it whilst Natalia gets on with her other homework she got that day. Once the girl is done, she tells Natalia her favourite parts and how she really liked it.

Susan then called them for tea but before they left, Max makes the blonde promise her that she can read the other story too. Natalia agreed, telling the redhead she'll put it in her room once she's edited some little bits here and there.

Without another word, the two girls leave the room for another family meal, not wanting to be late with Neil being home.