**CHAPTER 1:**
**Freshman Year – Lakeside High School, Hot Springs, AR**
**Fall Semester, August 26 2025– First Day
The mist didn't chase me from Nashville.
It was already here, curled around the Rams marquee like it had been waiting three years for the right set of lungs to breathe it in.
Mom's old Tahoe coughed to a stop in the drop-off loop. "First day of high school, Celeste Valentina Morau. Try not to break any hearts before lunch."
I tugged the hood of my white-and-pink hoodie lower over my platinum bangs. "Hearts are overrated. Bones heal faster."
She laughed, kissed my forehead, tasted like sweet tea, and goodbye. I kicked the door shut, slapped my skateboard to the asphalt, and rolled.
Forty-seven steps from curb to front doors if you walk.
I counted twenty-three pushes on urethane wheels instead.
Inside, Lakeside High smelled like floor wax and boiled peanuts. Lockers slammed like gunshots. A banner screamed **RAMS Verses. MALVERN – FRIDAY!** in blood-red letters that dripped when the AC kicked on.
I kept my head down. Platinum hair + Japanese-German-Romanian cheekbones + skateboard = instant target in a town that still says "yes ma'am" to teachers who fought in Vietnam.
**1st period – Arkansas History, Room 108**
I took the back corner by the window. The lake steamed outside, upside-down coyotes flickering under the surface if you stared too long.
The girl in front of me—**Brittany Rae Lynn**, cheer captain, ponytail so high it could pick up a satellite—turned around.
"Love the hoodie. Hollister?"
"Thrift store in Nashville. Five bucks."
She blinked like I'd spoken Martian. "Cute. I'm Brittany. Captain of freshman cheer. You should try out."
I gave her the smile Mom calls my "public polite." "I fall off moving objects for fun. Not sure that's cheer material."
Across the aisle, a boy with long black hair braided tightly laughed under his breath. Freshman, but his eyes looked older. **Remy Tsatoke**—I'd seen the name on the freshman roster taped to the cafeteria window. Caddo Nation blood, quarterback of the freshman team, lives with his grandma in a trailer off Carpenter Dam Road.
He didn't say anything. Just tapped his pencil once against his desk—*tap*—like a coyote testing thin ice.
**5th period – Photo Lab, Room 13**
The room smelled like darkroom chemicals and something metallic underneath. Red bulb glowing over the enlargers.
Mr. Bathory stood at the whiteboard writing **"Expose. Develop. Fix. Repeat."** in perfect cursive.
Tall. Pale. Black hair slicked back like he'd stepped out of a 1940s film noir. Rumor said he'd been teaching at Lakeside since the seventies and never aged a day.
"Seats, please." His voice was soft, eastern-European, the kind that made freshman girls clutch their cameras like rosaries.
I rolled in late—wheels squeaking on linoleum—and he didn't even look up.
"Miss Morau. The darkroom is sacred. Wheels are not."
I kicked the board up, caught it. "Sorry, Mr. B. Won't happen again."
He finally met my eyes. Something behind the irises moved—like mist behind glass.
"See that it doesn't."
He assigned partners.
"Celeste Morau and… Seras Nakamura."
Seras sat two enlargers down—black hair, red streak, smirk sharp enough to cut film. She didn't look at me. Just slid a negative strip across the table like a dare.
**Lunch**
I didn't do cafeteria chaos. Too many eyes measuring the new girl.
I slipped into the darkroom instead—door code still 1975, because nobody ever changes anything in this town.
Red light. Safe.
I loaded the disposable I'd shot on the drive down I-40: Nashville skyline fading, Hot Springs mountains rising.
Used spring water from my hydroflask instead of distilled. 104 °F. Didn't matter.
The first print came up slow.
Me, standing on the dam at 6:03 a.m. yesterday.
But in the negative, something stood behind me.
Tall. Translucent.
Made of mist.
It had **my face**, but the eyes were wrong—too wide, too hungry.
The door creaked.
Mr. Bathory stepped into the red glow. His shadow stayed in the hallway.
"You used spring water." Not a question.
"It develops faster."
"It also **remembers**."
He reached past me, fingers brushing the print. The paper sizzled where he touched it.
"Careful, Miss Morau. Some things prefer to stay undeveloped."
He left.
The mist in the tray **curled into a coyote head**, then sank.
**After school – Lake Hamilton Dam**
I skated the service road, wind off the water cold enough to bite through my hoodie.
Remy Tsatoke was already there, skipping rocks that didn't skip—they sank like stones in syrup.
He wore a cut-off Rams jersey, scar running from collarbone to elbow shaped like a spiral spring.
"You're the Nashville girl," he said without turning.
"Guilty."
He finally looked. Amber flickers in his eyes, gone fast. "This lake doesn't like outsiders."
"Too bad. I'm stubborn."
He laughed—short, surprised. "Grandma says the mist marks who it wants. You smell like it already."
I lifted my camera. "Smile."
He flipped me off instead.
Click.
The shutter sounded like a bone snap.
That night, my new bedroom window fogged from the outside in.
Phone buzzed—unknown number.
**Text:** *"Stay away from the darkroom. Some negatives can't be fixed. – S"*
Another buzz. Blocked sender.
**Photo attachment:** Me asleep on the dam railing, taken from inside the water.
Caption: *"Welcome home, Celeste."*
I looked out the window.
The mist pressed against the glass like it wanted to kiss me.
It **waved** with five foggy fingers.
Then it wrote a single word on the pane, backward so I could read it from inside:
**MINE.**
Freshman year just started.
And the valley already knows my name..