Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Frank was sixteen, almost seventeen when he arrived in Ormond, and the prospect of rotting away in the middle of fucking nowhere made his blood boil. 

He was being relocated, again, at the request of his last foster family. He was “trouble”. Not in trouble, just trouble. A state of existence that was inconvenient for the families that signed up for this shit. One too many fights, one too many stolen cases of beer, one too many problems for a lily-white Calgary family to handle. His case worker wanted him away from the city, something about being around bad influences (or being a bad influence, who knew at that point). 

He spent most of the drive into the shabby little resort town plotting how to get out. 

Where would they even send me?

Did it really matter?

What if I just ran away? Fuck the foster care system. 

He didn’t have the money. 

He dropped his bag, a meager collection of belongings that made the cut every time he had to move, in the corner of the room Clive set aside for him. With a huff, Frank fell on the bed, the dated crocheted blanket somewhat stiff beneath him, and stared at the ceiling. The walls were covered in fake wood slats, the ceiling blandly painted in shallow swirls to create the illusion of taste. The bulb in the dusty ceiling fan buzzed against the silence of the room. 

It was a familiar sight in an unfamiliar setting. All of the rooms in all of his foster homes looked the same, the same dust in the same uncleaned corners. The same afghan on the same stiff mattress. At first, Frank hated it, but now it was a strange, comforting source of consistency. 

After a while, the teen stood with a groan, walking into the bathroom. He splashed water on his face and brought his gaze to the person in the mirror. The face was familiar - tired eyes with a vague, tight expression. But Frank never knew who it was. 

Certainly, it wasn’t him.  

He spent his first week fucking around. 

He walked all over creation looking for anything that might rescue him from his boredom. The town was small, and it took less than a day to walk the streets and get a feel for the layout. After a few days of poking around, the teen resigned himself to shooting hoops with a partially deflated basketball he found in Clive’s garage. 

He started classes the following day and met the barrage of juvenile interest his peers showed with a practiced warmth. He tried the whole “no caring” schtick a few schools ago and learned the hard way that playing nice meant getting what he wanted. So he feigned friendship, humored small talk, loosely wove himself into the crowds that could get him booze or drugs but that would leave him alone when he needed it. 

In his spare time, he took a partially deflated ball down to the ancient basketball courts at the park. He’d chain smoke and shoot hoops. Alone. He preferred it that way. After a week, he was approached by a student from the local high school. The kid all but begged him to join the basketball team. He played in middle school, so he said yes. It’d pass the time.

And pass the time it did. Almost a year, before he fucked up again. 

It was a bad call at a stupid game that didn’t matter - but the way the referee looked at him, like he was out of place, less than , curdled his patience. He shoved the man and marched off court, ignoring the chorus of students gasping and starting their gossip cycle behind him. He didn’t bother turning in his uniform the next day, opting instead to leave it in the locker room and never look back. 

Clive told him he was lucky the ref didn’t press charges. 

Frank thought the ref was lucky all he did was shove him. 

The school was small, and word traveled fast. He tried to play it off, pretending it didn’t bother him. It was just a stupid club at a stupid school, and he’d been to dozens. Why would it bother him?

Why would it bother him?

At the end of the day, it did bother him, and that was somehow worse than the reality that he’d burned his bridge with the team in the first place. 

It was early December when he noticed Julie staring at him from across the cafeteria. He remembered thinking how the hazel color of her eyes seemed cold despite the gilded flecks of pigment. He knew of her, talked to her maybe once or twice in the year and a half he was in Ormond. She was a popular, pretty girl that made a splash at some dance he didn’t attend for shaving half her head and ripping up her dress. He remembered liking the energy, but found the whole thing a bit performative. They didn’t share any classes, so he never went out of his way to interact with her.

She was watching him, so he watched her back - until winter break. Frank had found himself at a greasy diner across from Julie Kostenko, eyeing up the rough sketch on the pad of paper in front of her. It was him, standing outside their school with a cigarette in his hand. The blonde played her art down, a show of humility that Frank honestly wasn’t expecting of her, but the picture resonated with him. 

When Frank looked into the mirror most days, he didn’t recognize the person looking back at him. He was a nobody, a shell, floating through the streets of Ormond until another whim took him to another foster family. But that wasn’t what Julie saw. The teenager in the picture had a face, discernible features that Frank only vaguely recognized as his own. A tight jaw with thin lips pursed in thought. Shaggy hair, sloppily slicked back to stay out of his face. Eyes, slightly too big for his head, with furrowed brows that sharpened his features and highlighted the scar across the bridge of his nose. 

The sketch was enough to spark a conversation between them, and Frank was taken relatively quickly. Julie wasn’t stale, she held the same disdain for the lack of originality their peers had. The “performance” at the dance was more of an act of defiance towards her mother than it was commentary at her peers. Frank liked that. She was smart, observant, talking to her felt like a challenge, and Frank could feel himself being drawn in. 

She invited him to a party at her family’s house, and he remained intentionally vague on whether or not he’d attend. Of course, he did end up going. It was something to pass the time, after all, and he didn’t mind earning the favor of his peers back after that stupid basketball game. 

It was a small gathering, only a handful of other students invited. The only ones Julie introduced him to were Joey and Susie, her closest friends. Frank didn’t know a lot about either of them. 

Joey had a reputation that Frank was only mildly aware of. He was impulsive, struggled academically out of apathy, looked down upon by the teachers as trouble. When he brought this up to Joey, the teen quickly shied away from the topic with a half-assed agreement - “Yeah, school’s stupid. Whatever.” 

That was all Frank had to hear to know it wasn’t true. Probably some bullshit his teachers fed him in a thinly veiled attempt to hide their own racism and refusal to accept that sometimes being a teenager sucked and school was hard. Frank told Joey this and watched as his hardened persona cracked under the pressure of a single compliment. 

Joey gabbed to him for the rest of the night.

‘Like a puppy dog.’ Frank thought to himself. 

Frank found out quickly that Joey looked up to him. The small things they had in common were purchase enough for Joey to cling to. It almost made Frank sad, but the glee with which Joey asked “What’re we gonna do today, Frank?” when they arrived at the lodge each night eased his consciousness. Even Julie said Joey seemed happier since Frank started hanging around. 

Susie was harder to crack. She was the opposite of Joey, excelled in school, had extra curriculars. She didn’t smoke with them when they offered, only barely nursed the shitty beer she was inevitably handed instead. On paper, it made no sense for her to fall in with the crowd that she did. This was only partially explained to him as a childhood friendship with Julie. When he expressed doubts that Susie should be hanging around them, Julie told him not to worry about that. 

Where Joey welcomed Frank’s upheaval, Susie seemed resistant to the change. He noticed a pointed pattern: if he was present, Susie was not. It was too early in his relationship with the rest of them for him to really pose questions - not that Julie would give him any real information. She seemed to be challenging him to figure it out on his own. 

Fortunately, Joey was a bit of a blabber mouth when he was drunk. 

“Dude, this fuckin’ sucks! 

Frank raised a brow at the sudden outburst. “Yeah? The beer or the weather?”

Joey groaned, smashing his empty beer can and kicking it across the floor of the lodge. “The fact that Julie and Susie are so… I dunno. Fuckin weird!”

Bingo.

“Yeah, what’s with that? I didn’t wanna butt in.”

Collapsing back on the couch next to Frank, Joey sunk further into his hoodie. “I dunno. I guess Susie’s all bent out of shape because Julie’s got a thing for you instead of her. It’s stupid.”

Frank’s confidence swelled at the idea of Julie having a crush . She was typically so cold and the fact that he was certain that sentiment would drive her absolutely insane tickled him somewhat. 

Not to mention, Julie was at the top of the food chain. That put Frank in a very good position. 

He sat on the information for a few days trying to figure out how to handle it. As much as he appreciated Julie’s affection , the idea that he was causing a rift in this small group didn’t sit right with him. He decided to talk to Susie, given that Julie seemed to completely ignore any issue they might’ve been having. 

Frank sat across the lodge from Susie while she picked at the sleeves of her hoodie. She was there because Joey had begged her to stay for movie night and he was hard to say no to when he flashed those puppy dog eyes. Even for Frank. But Joey hadn’t arrived yet, neither had Julie. It was just the two of them. 

Now or never.

“So, Susie.”

She looked up at him, skeptical. 

“I’m getting the impression you’re not a fan of me.”

Frank could see his words putting the girl on edge, and an idea formed in his head. When Susie didn’t respond, he continued. “Look, I don’t wanna get between you and the rest of the crew. I can give you guys some space if it’s an issue.”

Throw yourself on the fire, Franky.

Susie eyed him across the room, he could tell she was chewing on her nail beds. She was thinking, hard, and watching him in a way that almost reminded him of Julie. He watched his expression, remaining as neutral and genuine as a fake person could be. 

After a painful moment, Susie rolled her eyes. “Ugh. Shut up, Frank.”

The teen gawked for a moment, choking out a laugh. “Damn. I didn’t realize you had an attitude.”

Susie stood up from the couch on the other side of the fire pit and approached him. With huff, she plopped down on the ottoman in front of him and gave him a look he couldn’t quite decipher. 

“I don’t want you to leave, Frank. That’d make Julie unhappy.”

“Yeah, but me bein’ here is making you unhappy, isn’t it?” The earnestness in his tone surprised even him. 

Susie was still getting frustrated. “No, you’re not, it’s just-”

“Just?”

The girl stopped and looked back at him. She chewed her lips when she thought, her braces peeking out from between them. 

Is she sizing me up?

“Joey’s right. This is stupid.” Susie smiled, betraying the defeat in her words. “I kept hoping you’d give me a reason to think you were a dick, but Julie’s got pretty good taste, I guess.”

Frank almost laughed. That was easier than he expected. The tension in the lodge lifted, and he finally brought himself to turn the radio on. Susie made a quip about his music and put her own mix tape in. 

They sat in amicable silence for the first time since they met. 

“You know that old movie theater? They had the Stephen King marathon a few weeks ago?” Susie prompted him. 

Frank nodded, only half listening through the drone of the radio. 

“You hear that the owner’s a creep?”

He turned to face her, eyebrows cocked. “No? Says who?”

Susie sat forward, flashing her braces at him. It was charming and mischievous, if he was being honest. 

The girl opened her mouth for a moment, only to close it and think more clearly about her answer. “A girl in my class worked there over the summer and said that he kept cameras in the bathrooms and stuff. The tapes are apparently locked in his office.”

“I take it you’re bringin’ it up for a reason?”

Susie nodded, excited. “I just… kept thinking about what you and Julie said. About making a name for ourselves. I thought the theater might be a good target, given that the owner’s… y’know.”

“A creep.” Frank finished her thought. 

Smiling again, Susie jumped up. “When we were hangin’ out the other night, Joey and I found some kerosene in the basement, for the generators and stuff I guess. No one knows it’s here, we could use it and no one would be able to connect it to us.”

Frank grinned, lifting himself off the couch. “Little Susie-bookworm suggesting arson . Maybe this place isn’t boring after all.” 

She punched him in the arm, they laughed. 

A week later they watched from the alley as the theater went up in flames. Julie asked him later that night why they chose the theater, and Frank explained. 

“Huh.” Julie hummed around the joint he rolled her. “Weird. Susie worked there over the summer too.”

Admittedly, Frank was rather taken with the little social pocket he found himself in. Joey’s impulsivity, Susie’s well-concealed retaliation and outcry reminded Frank of himself in small ways. Some nights, he considered the dangerous situation he was falling into - Frank Morrison didn’t have friends . He had lackeys, social connections to get what he wanted. 

What did he get from these kids that he couldn’t get for himself?

Frank was distracted from the question by the gravity of Julie’s orbit. While he reveled in the way Joey and Susie looked at him with stars in their eyes, nothing quite matched the suffocating satisfaction of Julie’s kinship. Their relationship burned brightly, long nights sharing secrets melding into late mornings sharing sheets. He laid in bed next to her, a cigarette balanced in one hand, his other tracing the scars along her thighs. 

He asked her why and she thought about the answer for a long time. “So I could feel something.” She hummed, though her gaze wouldn’t meet his. His fingers lingered on them for a while, staring at the faded stripes of skin, measuring how long and how hard she pressed the blade to her skin on each pass. 

“Don’t be fuckin’ queer.” Julie quipped at him, shoving his hand away. He laughed, and she plucked the cigarette from his idle hand. “What about yours?”

His hands and wrists were dotted with scars, some straight and narrow, some round and angry. Most were healed - it had been a while since he indulged, a show he started putting on for his case worker when he realized that Ormond wasn’t so bad. 

For a moment, he thought back to the first time he hurt himself. A shallow, tentative scratch across the broad side of his wrist made with a razor from his foster dad’s shaving kit. It barely bled, but it stung in a satisfying way that made him feel in control of something. 

He mirrored Julie’s tone. “To feel something.” 

She smiled at him, a rare sight that felt like a privilege. Julie was known for her cold exterior, and didn’t seem to soften at all, even in private. “What about the one on your nose?”

Frank instinctively scrunched his face. He forgot about the smooth scar across the bridge of his nose  sometimes, a happy side effect of having a blurry faced stranger in the mirror. After a beat, he forfeited. “One of my foster parents when I was like 13, I think?”

They fell into silence for a while after that, casually passing a cigarette between the two of them. Julie wasn’t looking at him, instead staring at the far wall of her room - she’d decorated it with newspaper clippings and crude doodles of her favorite serial killers. Her eyes were big, with a sharp golden hue. She constantly tensed her jaw to hide the roundness in her features that Frank knew she hated. The side of her head was shaved in a fit of rebellion against her mother who constantly fawned over her hair. He’d never say it out loud for fear of sounding, well, uncool, but he thought Julie was beautiful.

When there was nothing but the butt of their cigarette left, Julie put it out on the pottery-project-turned-ashtray on her bedside table and looked back to Frank. He hadn’t realized he was staring until their eyes met, and he braced for an incredulous eye roll that never came. 

After a moment, her features softened. She never bared her fangs at him. 

Julie broke their silence first. “I like you, Frank.”

He couldn’t help but raise a brow at that. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said about me. Or, like. Anyone.”

They both laughed for a moment before Julie reached out to his face. Frank fought every muscle in his body not to flinch away from the contact. Her comment hung over him, sinking into his muscles and warming his chest with an uncomfortable giddiness. People didn’t usually like Frank. They liked his drugs, his attitude, the way he could blend into any crowd on a whim. People had said they liked him, but they didn’t truly know who was. When Julie said it, however, he knew she meant it. He just didn’t understand why.

Finally, he asked: “Why do you like me?”

She brushed his bangs from his face and ran her finger over the scar on the bridge of his nose. Despite Julie’s unreadable nature, there was a distinct ominous feeling behind the look that Frank couldn’t shake.

“You’re like me.” 

Frank had no idea what that meant.

In August, Joey asked Frank why he stopped coming to school. 

He had a lot of reasons, none of which he felt like discussing. He hated the way the basketball coach looked at him like he was a plague, hated the way his biology teacher called him a waste of air when he condemned his teaching method. The dark, long, Canadian winter sunk deeper into his bones that year than it ever had. Sleepless nights were more common and the constant stream of weed and booze only did so much for him. The only thing that got him out of bed each morning was the promise of further mayhem with his friends, but even that wasn’t enough some mornings. 

At some point, he stopped caring. About school, about his diploma. It was all bullshit anyway. 

His school counselor suggested a therapist, to which Frank told her: “You don’t get it, bitch.” He regretted that, in the long run, but it didn’t matter. 

He didn’t know what she didn’t get. 

“I’m over it.” Was all he told Joey. 

Susie said she missed him in class, but he knew that was just a nicety to make up for the discomfort of watching him make his own decisions when they couldn’t. Joey and Julie and Susie had a future outside of Ormond. He could see their aspirations, the cogs in their brains working overtime to figure out a way out of this shithole. At best he was a terrible student, and at worst he was an active distraction. It wasn’t his place to get in their way. 

He had his own shit to figure out. 

Sleepless nights found him at the lodge alone. A lot. He’d walk up there in the pitch dark to smoke or scream or cry. After so many weeks the darkness of the woods started to feel inviting, a dense fog settling between the trees as depression settled into his bones. He was eighteen now, and his case worker stopped calling. Clive's checks stopped coming and he stopped giving a shit when Frank didn’t come home at night. The long since healed scars on his hands reopened on their own and some nights he could hear the stranger from the mirror in the fog calling to him.

On a particularly cold night, Frank brought the letterman he got for being on the basketball team. He didn’t wear it, however, instead casting it into the fire pit after dousing it in vodka. 

Julie found him that night and sat with him at the lodge until the sun started to come up. She asked him if he actually liked them. In the past, Frank would answer without hesitation, spewing hollow words of encouragement to mindless drones that liked him for his tattoos and anti-establishment mentality. But Julie was too smart for that. Her tone was innocent, but laced with the silent implication that she knew how he worked, knew that, to some degree, he just appreciated that they were different and that they gave him a platform. 

So he actually had to think about his answer. 

He thought about Joey’s animated passion, his desire to prove that he was more than a waste of paper in a system stacked against him. He thought about Susie, about how hardworking she was. About the lengths she would go to escape the oppression of the teachers and authority figures that would take advantage of her cute face. 

Finally, he thought about Julie. About the calculating observations she made, about the art she made in private that contained the secrets of the town. He thought about the picture she drew of him, the image of the not-hollow husk that she could figure out in an instant. She saw a living, breathing person when she looked at him. 

He thought about the sparse warmness that filled her cold eyes when she looked at him, and how undeserving he felt of it. 

“I’d do anything for you guys.”

“Not even for me?”

He met Julie’s gaze, intense, daring. She was testing him and he loved it. She returned his sentiment with a grin. “Not even for you.”

Julie challenged him, pulled him out of the wintery pit he dug himself. They shared their darkest secrets, their scars, their hopes, their dreams. Frank knew without a shadow of a doubt that Julie would kill for him, she was just waiting for the right time. She wanted to hear him acknowledge it. 

The idea sewed an uncomfortable, exhilarating thread into his chest. Julie’s devotion, her anger, her feral energy seeped into his own veins the way his nihilist ideas, his anger, his desperate need for acceptance seeped into hers. 

Julie slid the jewel clad knife into his hands as they stood in her room. He recognized it from the robbery that made the news that week. It still had blood on it. 

Frank took a bit to digest the information before cracking a grin at Julie. “I thought you said you wouldn’t kill someone.”

She didn’t respond, instead left him to sit on the edge of her bed while she dug around at her desk. Buried between the scrap books of serial killers he knew she kept and a pile of library books he didn’t recognize, Julie produced a small diary. He made fun of her at first and she told him to fuck off before thrusting the diary into his chest. 

Frank gave her a look before thumbing through the pages. There were sketches, some notes, some areas blacked out completely with sharpie. 

He wondered later what would be so bad she’d hide it from even her own eyes.

A few pages in, he found the drawing that Julie did of him before they met. His cheeks burned at the prospect of her keeping it all that time, but he hid it well. 

Towards the back of the journal were more sketches. They all appeared to be of a person, a boy by the looks of it, strewn about jagged rocks in an unnatural position. Some of the sketches were heavily stylized, but one was detailed. The point of view was top-down, almost as if she was looking down at the body. The following page had a few newspaper articles glued in, the most prominent headline reading “LOCAL TEENAGER DIES IN TRAGIC QUARRY INCIDENT ”. Skimming the details, he learned quickly that the teenager in question was a classmate of theirs, he would’ve been in Frank’s class but died before he came to Ormond. 

Furrowing his brows, Frank glanced to Julie. He wanted to ask if it was someone she knew, a friend or something. Instead, his gaze is met with an intensity that nearly makes him shiver.

She was testing him again. 

“It wasn’t an accident.” Frank said out loud, his words heavy on his tongue. 

Julie nodded, her lips quirking for a split second. “I could have saved him. Pulled him up or something. But when I looked down at him and he… begged me. For help. I just thought it was funny.” 

Frank's eyes returned to the pages as Julie’s words settled over him. She had gotten so close to something Frank had thought about all his life and it made his heart beat in his ears. His brain went wild, oscillating between dread and excitement. 

I shouldn’t be excited about this. 

But he was. 

I should want what’s best for Julie. 

Julie never needed anybody's help before. 

Frank looked back to her, a familiar darkness in her eyes bleeding onto the pages of the diary in front of him. The words lifted from the pages, curling around his wrists like spider legs, pulling him in. He didn’t resist, the gentle hum of the darkness somehow easing the thrum of his heart in his ears. 

“I never said I needed to do it for anyone.”

The following day, Frank went into town. His conversation with Julie the night before left him feeling like the exposed end of a wire. He woke up possessed by the thought of expressing how thankful he was for his… friends. 

The word was getting easier for him to say.

A new range of emotions didn’t fix the dull town they were in. Frank found himself wandering into the video store they frequented, once again thumbing through the selection of horror movies they’d already seen. After a while, he decided on Evil Dead and The Nightmare Before Christmas .

Susie had been pestering him about the latter and he was feeling generous. 

Frank approached the desk to check out, but the man at the desk was lost in whatever metal track was playing on the CD player behind the desk. Frank liked the beats, but noted that the lyrics weren’t in english. The clerk was about his age, he recognized him from a school art show Julie dragged him to. He was a big guy, obviously a metalhead from the looks of the t-shirt he wore under the video store smock. He was sketching something in an art book, and Frank gave him a few moments before clearing his throat. He jumped, scrambling to close the notebook and turn the CD player down.

“‘M sorry.” he mumbled, noticeably avoiding Frank’s eye contact as he took the movies to rent out. 

Frank looked past the clerk to the notebook behind, thinking for a moment. “You’re in Julie’s class, right? Jeff?”

“Julie Kostenko? Yeah.”

Frank leaned on the counter. “I didn’t know you were an artist.”

Jeff glanced up from his register. “Casually, I guess.” 

His answer reminded Frank of Julie’s humility when it came to her art. He didn’t like it. 

“Can I see?”

Jeff looked anxious at the request, eyeing Frank with what he could only assume was suspicion. He met his gaze with the best genuine expression he could muster. After a moment’s standstill, Jeff reached for his notebook and slid it across the counter. 

It was a proper sketch book, the pages crinkled and lying awkwardly with charcoal and pencil. Frank pulled the notebook towards him, only looking at the first page that was showing. The sketch was of a faceless figure standing against a void backdrop. The point of view was angled up, as if the figure cast their gaze to the sky above them. A halo of thorny tendrils swirled above the figure, imagery that Frank felt was familiar somehow. 

“You’re pretty good.” He said after a pause.

Jeff rubbed the back of his neck. “Mm. Thanks.”

Idly, he brushed his hand across the sketch, noting the similarity to spider legs. He appreciated the way the lines bled and sharpened in some areas while keeping perfectly smooth in other areas. 

“You do commissions?”

Two days later, Frank was welcoming Jeff to the rundown lodge. 

Jeff was quiet, didn’t seem put off by Frank’s incessant button pushing like a lot of people were. During the short car ride from town to the lodge, Frank learned that they shared an interest in some of the same bands, though Jeff had a deeper interest in Black Metal, a genre Frank hadn’t picked up. Despite this, Jeff seemed… docile . He lacked a certain edge that Frank liked to see in people. Jeff had a pointed lack of interest in his band of criminals, despite the overlap in their interests, and Frank couldn’t quite figure it out. 

“So you guys just… hang out here? Doesn’t it get cold?”

Frank scoffed. “It’s better than hanging out in town with the posers and the pigs.” 

Jeff didn’t respond, but Frank noted the slight furrow of his brows. 

The mural he asked of Jeff wasn’t particularly detailed - just a messy, stylish title to show the world that this is where their legacy started. The only materials he had were some cans of red spray paint, after all. Despite this, Jeff took care and poured his focus into the work.   

They put on one of Jeff’s CDs while Jeff painted. Frank watched in silence for a little while, desperate for some sort of conversation, however it was painfully obvious that Jeff wasn’t the chatty type. At first he considered inquiring about the band they were listening to - something foreign and harsh like the track he was listening to at the store. Then he considered asking about him and Julie, given that they probably knew one another for a while. They both seemed to gravitate towards the arts, after all. 

Finally, he settled on: “So… What’s your deal?”

Jeff didn’t look away from the wall, merely furrowed his brows. “What do you mean?”

Frank shrugged. “I mean… you got the look. Susie tells me half the school’s scared of you. I wasn’t expecting you to be so… docile.” 

Jeff paused, taking issue with either his tone or choice of words - Frank couldn’t tell which. 

He was hard to read, and that put Frank on edge. 

“Don’t like the conflict.” Was all Jeff said in response. 

Frank let that sit for a while, pondering the implications of the statement. He didn’t think Jeff was lying, as was the case with most people who claimed to avoid drama. But a big, intimidating metalhead like Jeff? Conflict avoided those kinds of people. 

So why hide?

“What about you?” Jeff interrupted Frank’s train of thought. “Seems like you live for it. Conflict, I mean.”

Frank cracked a grin. “When you’re surrounded by conflict, you can either avoid it or cause it, I guess.”

Jeff stopped, only for a split second but long enough to pique Frank’s interest. He raised a brow in Jeff’s direction. “Guess we got somethin’ in common, big guy.”

Jeff never answered. 

After that, they talked about music, and after that they talked about philosophy. Jeff didn’t have a lot of input on the latter, but Frank could tell that when he spoke, Jeff actually listened. When Jeff was finished, it was getting dark. Frank clapped his hand over the taller teen’s shoulder which caused him to jump. “Haha. Jules wasn’t kiddin’ about you being jumpy.” He teased before wishing Jeff well with his beer and cash. 

Alone again, Frank lit a cigarette  and stood at the banister overlooking the fire. He admired the mural - a loose term, given that it was just their name in sharp, red letters - but a term that he liked. It sounded official. It sounded real. 

It felt good. 

Joey’s truck puttered to a stop outside and the rest of the group poured into the lodge. Julie stopped by the fire pit as Susie and Joey migrated to their usual spots, immediately noting that Frank wasn’t in his own. He glanced at the mural and she followed his gaze, hazel eyes widening in a rare look of shock. That made Frank proud. 

Julie snapped her fingers, quickly gathering Susie and Joey’s attention. All she had to do was motion to the mural, and their friends were animated, rushing past Frank on the stairs to get a closer look. 

“What is this? It’s awesome!” Joey gushed, leaning over the upper banister to look between Frank and Julie. 

Frank cracked a grin and cracked his knuckles. “Just a testament to our legacy.” he started, his words pulling Susie’s attention to him as well. “We’ve got our masks, now we’ve got a home and a name.” 

As Susie and Joey marveled, Julie fell into place beside him. 

“You do this?” She bumped his shoulder.

Frank flashed a bashful smile. “Nah. Got that metalhead from your art class. Cool dude. I’m no good at art stuff and wanted it to be a surp-”

“But you did it for us.”

It wasn’t a question, so much as a statement. Julie’s expression held a softness that was foreign on her features, and Frank couldn’t help but just stare at her. She was right, he did do it for them. He wasn’t getting anything out of this, it cost him his last fifty bucks and some of Clive’s beer. 

After a bit, she laughed. “You always look so serious, Morrison.”

Frank smiled bashfully in return before clapping his hand on the banister a few times. Joey and Susie turned to him, hanging onto his command. 

“Alright. Get your masks. Let's cause some chaos.”

Frank moved on instinct. There wasn't a thought in his head other than “I have to protect her.”

The janitor crumbled between him and Julie, grasping helplessly at the wound in his back. Frank thought for a moment about all the times he had imagined this, the way his knife would slip easily in and out of the flesh of whatever faceless drone had warranted his wrath. But it was different, now. Each serrated hook on the back of the knife tore at the man’s skin and provided just enough resistance to the blade chisel the feeling into Frank’s brain. With blood pooling beneath him, the man looked up at him. He was frightened, in pain, surrounded by strange masked youth and bleeding out on the floor of a shitty convenience store. He was anything but faceless, each wrinkle and quiver in his face tugging at the threads of Frank’s sanity. 

He looked up to Julie, his uncertainty hidden by his mask. She was staring back at him, hazel eyes boring through the paper masks into his very core. She was expecting something from him. 

Frank wondered if she’d do it, if she’d actually finish the bleeding man between them. Surely, she’d back down, like any sane person would. They talked a big game, but Frank knew, in that moment more than ever, that they were just troubled kids. This wouldn’t change that. 

He couldn’t see her eyes, only the black pits in the mask that let them see. Frank was reminded of the inky black pages of her journal, the beckoning darkness in the woods. It all urged him - go on, give her the knife, test her like she’s always testing you. 

So he did. He held the knife out to Julie, blood dripping from the blade to the floor. 

She took it, and Frank waited patiently for her to run the blood between her fingers, to examine the blade the way she talked about in the safety of her room, to stare the devil in the eye and step back from the ledge they were all standing on. 

It wasn’t too late. He would be the only one in trouble.

When Julie drove his knife through he man’s jaw, he swore he could see the sickening curl of a smile etching itself onto her mask. Blood spilled from the man’s mouth and neck immediately, staining the girl’s hands with blood.

Susie was crying, a sound that barely registered between the thrum of his heart between ears. He looked at their friends, shock and fear painting their body language. 

Suddenly, the darkness from the woods, from the pages, was in his ear, whispering to them. 

You have to keep them together, Franky. You have to keep your legion together. 

Numbly, he took the knife back from Julie, stepping through a puddle of blood to close the distance between himself and Joey. The teen didn’t flinch away from Frank, instead looking to him for an answer. 

Joey trusted him implicitly, so he took the knife and stabbed the man a third time. 

Susie said something, but truthfully Frank didn’t hear it. Between her sobs, Julie took her by the shoulders and said something to ease her fears. She put the knife in Susie’s trembling hand, the weight of it taking her off guard. With Julie’s help, hand over hand, the knife slid into the man’s back again. 

Not that it mattered. He was dead the moment Julie had the knife.

It was silent - or was it? - when Julie walked back to him. She returned his knife, the blade sliding uncomfortably into his numb hands. Her fingers found his chin and tilted his face up to meet hers. He could feel her hands, bloodied with his newest regrets, slide across the paper mask.

… … … 

Staring into the broken mirror in the bathroom back at Ormond, he realized she was giving him a smile.