Subject: Welcome to Your Future, Lewis Chambers.
FROM: Clarity Academy Administration (No-Reply)
TO: L.Chambers_Scholar2026@ClarityPrep.edu

Welcome to the Spectrum of Excellence!

Congratulations, Lewis; your academic record and psychological aptitude scores have placed you in the top 2% of your cohort! At Clarity Academy, we don't just educate; we refine.

Your Digital Onboarding is Complete:

The Student-Link ID: Your Student-Link ID is your passport to the future! This ID is tied directly to your phone and your choice of wearable (Watch, Ring, or Athletic Shoe Tag) and grants you access to authorized student areas as well as cashless payment at the Student Union and Cafeteria. Ensure that your parents have thoroughly read the school’s Privacy Policy—in short we will never sell your data or spy on you! This closed loop NFC system is strictly for your convenience!

The Precision Wardrobe: Your "Scholar-Standard" attire has been sized based on your submitted scans. Remember: A clear mind begins with a clean silhouette!

Focus. Precision. Perfection: Clarity.

There had been about three too many exclamation marks in that welcome letter for Lewis’ taste, as though it had either been written by an overly caffeinated secretary or, given that m-dash in the middle, an over eager AI helping an over caffeinated secretary. Not for the first time he stared at it, reminding himself he belonged here, at Clarity Prep, the top 2% of whatever a ‘cohort’ was supposed to be.

The big gray slab bore no resemblance whatsoever to the brochures, he knew that much. Oh sure, the main Admin building and the dorms looked like they had been built for the modern era, but the actual classrooms looked like hulking behemoths out of the 1970s brutalist prison architecture-for-a-school-design playbook - because they, apparently, were exactly that.

Instead of issuing a key card or physical key to every student, some genius installed NFC readers. The idea made sense on paper. Let students roam the building freely day or night, without the risk of outsiders burgling the place for the copper wire if a student lost their key or key card. The implementation, though? Let’s just say absolutely nobody chose to use a shoe tag because the “near” in near field meant “Right on top of the damned thing”. More than once Lewis found himself scanning, tapping, holding, swiping, anything to get the smart ring to just. Open. The. Damn. Door.

Combined with his frustration at being away from home, away from his friends, surrounded by complete strangers who looked like they belonged on the set of “High School Musical” - salon freshgirls, guys with glossy, perfect hair, jocks with rippling muscles, Lewis didn’t feel just like a fish out of water, but like an octopus on Mars - all arms with 8 brains wanting to go 8 different directions, and no oxygen.

He wanted to scream.

Before his voice cracked - not yet a deep baritone like his friends back home, but not the sweet, lyrical pre-pubescent soprano he had once been, he enjoyed choir. He enjoyed sounding like, and being able to sing, girls’ parts. That was behind him now. Now if he wanted to feel like himself, his true self, he had to do it online through World of Warcraft or Guild Wars 2, where his guild knew him not as Lewis Chambers, scrawny ‘brilliant scholar’ but as Jessica, the max level blood elf Paladin (or level 80 Sylvari Guardian), in the case of Guild Wars 2) - a protector always willing to drop everything to help a newbie find their way. “Jessica” was safe. She was default.

“Oh my God just... Why do I even have to scan in?” he sighed, staring in frustration at the door to the music wing, and the flashing red light above the NFC scanner.

Suddenly, a pale hand in a girls’ blazer appeared in his peripheral vision, a ring pressed against the NFC reader, its nails manicured to perfection with a coating of powder pink polish. The light changed from red to green. He spun around to thank his would-be rescuer.

She was the Scholar Silhouette personified, long, raven hair in perfect glossy waves, piercing green eyes, her skirt precisely two inches above her knees, and a dismissive ‘I’m not even going to bother insulting you, peasant’ expression on her face. She retracted her hand and continued walking with her entourage.

“That was nice of you, Maddie,” one of the girls said.

“Whatever. The beep was getting on my fucking nerves,” Madison answered with the sarcastic bite of a grumpy crocodile. Lewis darted inside before the door could have a chance to relock on him. Even the mean girls were taking pity on him now. This was a new low for the week.

The contrast between the warm, sunny autumn day he had just left outside and the stark, chilled interior felt like the punctuation on a very long, drawn out sigh. It wasn’t air conditioning. It was malfunctioning air filters failing to fully recycle the breath of a thousand voices come before. At least the floor wax stink didn’t sting his nostrils so badly over here. The wax looked more worn down so they probably hadn’t bothered to put down a fresh coat or ten yet.

He trudged down the corridor past an open, dark room, but something caught his eye. Most of the rooms in this concrete bunker of a school didn’t have windows, or if they did, it was just one long, tall plexiglass window braced by steel, and set right where the walls met. He backed up and poked his head inside.

The room was heavily carpeted, not just on the floor, but the walls as well. The ceiling had that ‘popcorn stucco’ look of heavy acoustic absorption designed not to look like acoustic padding that he knew so well from his time in his old choir, back home, back then.

The icing on the cake though? Between the high window that ran the length of the practice room, letting in natural light, shone that natural light upon a big, old, very dusty upright piano against the far wall. In the halflight of the room it practically glowed in the sunlight. Lewis pushed the door closed behind him, made sure that it latched fully closed and even knelt to check that the bottom and sides of the door were properly acoustically treated.

They were. And so, he braced his back against the door, threw his head back, and let out a primal scream at the top of his lungs, emptying them completely.

“Hey,” he said to himself softly after getting his breath back. “I... I think that was a D5. Not bad for a scream.”

He slowly walked over to the piano and pulled out the bench, easing himself down. He lifted the tawny fallboard off the keys. It didn’t slide back into the piano, but simply rose on old, brass hinges and sat in place, threatening to slam down on some poor pianist’s fingers if they weren’t diligent enough to push it far enough back.

He depressed the ivory E5 and struggled to sing the note, but his voice cracked. He slammed a fist onto the keys and glanced down. As he wiped away a tear, he noticed, right by his fist, on the inside of the fallboard, a yellowing piece of masking tape sat haphazardly taped down. Someone had scrawled a note on it in black felt marker.

‘Don’t let the bastards grind u down! -WW’ and there was an arrow pointing straight down. He blinked. Was... Was there something under the piano? Or maybe the bench?

He cautiously reached a hand up under the bench. A piece of paper had been taped there. He stood up and turned the bench on its side, kneeling down to read it in the afternoon light.

‘The walls have ears. Find the space between spaces.’

Instead of a signature, someone had drawn the silhouette of a raven in flight - a black bird with its wings spread apart, but the head tilted to one side so that the beak could be seen, a noticeable hook-like curve to it, and a fanned, almost diamond shaped tail. There was no mistaking it for a sleek crow, even to a layperson like Lewis.

He shrugged his shoulders, righted the bench, and sat down again, staring at the ‘WW’ note. He tried again, only just managing another D5.

“Oh sorry dude,” he heard a girl’s voice from behind him. He didn’t even hear the door open. He jumped to his feet and spun around. A girl with sun kissed blonde hair and the scholar standard uniform, a white Alice band in her hair, was pulling the door closed again. She was holding some sheet music, he noticed, and he practically leapt across the room to catch the door.

“No I’m sorry, I didn’t rent out the room or anything,” he said. “I was just venting. It’s all yours.”

“You sure?” she asked. He nodded.

“Yeah, go ahead. The D#5 is a tiny bit flat though.”

She laughed. “You noticed that too. I’ve been begging someone to come tune it for weeks.”

She smiled at him as she walked past and sat down seemingly ignoring the masking tape. They didn’t exchange names beyond that simple pleasantry, but as he glanced over his shoulder at her, he sighed to himself. She was just as pretty as Madison had been, albeit not as terrifying. He wanted to stay and listen, but she obviously had no interest, so he just pulled the door closed behind him as he left, tugging at the collar of his starched shirt.

It suddenly felt suffocating, like a jagged, saw-toothed chain around his neck, and he just wanted to tear it off and burn it.

“I might be a top 2% or whatever,” he mumbled, “But I’m the bottom of Clarity’s barrel.”

He started humming ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ to himself, partly because it was one of the pieces of sheet music he’d seen the girl carrying. In a school full of digital everything, seeing someone with physical paper stuck out, especially one covered in notes and pencil marks as hers had been.

He trudged toward the door, bracing himself for another round of the ‘Clarity Shuffle’ with the NFC reader, but didn’t see any locks on this side to deal with, at least.

Despite being September the oppressive heat weighed on him as much as the “scholar silhouette”. The heavy slacks didn’t help, and for once he longed to have the girls’ skirts for more than just dysphoric reasons. At least the clouds seemed to be banking up, which meant possibilities of rain although the way Lewis felt, he fully expected a localized rainstorm right over his head instead.

Author's Note:
I'm finally ready to share one of two new manuscripts with y'all! This is the more serious, grounded character drama to the more high energy thriller that is "Split Victory" which I'll start posting next week (likely on Wednesday). Chapters will follow at one per week for each manuscript.

I AM proud to at least announce that both manuscripts are completed as of this posting of chapter 1, and will be fully available here on TopShelf. They are both in pre-publication phase with Doppler Press so they will eventually be up for sale as well, if you don't want to wait to see what happens! <3
- Zoë

The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoë Taylor

---

The second the bell - not a modern chime, but a literal, 1970s classroom steel bell that Clarity never bothered to upgrade probably because it would break something else if they did, screamed the hour, he bolted. He didn’t wait for a dismissal, or for Madison and her entourage to clear the hell out of his way.

He just. Ran. He knew there were bathrooms somewhere in the next corridor. He swore he would never use a public bathroom if he could avoid it. He even showered at odd hours, like midnight when everyone else was asleep, just to have a modicum of privacy, but this? This was a saliva soaked emergency.

He barreled through the extremely heavy door without a second thought.

---

Tuesday morning started with Lewis nearly falling out of bed, sitting bolt upright. It sounded like his roommate, Tony, had just thrown a spoon into a blender. Tony was sitting on his bed, drinking a protein shake, but it was one of those pre-blended ones, not from a mixer, but in a cardboard carton.

Tony gave him a goofy grin and raised the protein shake like a toast. “Morning, dormie,” he said lazily.

“”What the hell was that noise,” Lewis groaned groggily, sweat soaked hair simultaneously both frizzy and still managing to cake itself to his scalp. It wasn’t extremely long, but not short short either, in that in-between phase of ‘Needs a haircut” but not quite long enough to pass for, say, Madison’s dorm mate either. “Ugh it’s hot.”

“No idea to the first. These walls are egg shell thin,” Tony said. “Probably somebody’s electric razor crapping the bed. I asked the floor RA about the heat. He said they’re working on it. HVAC’s got a glitch or something,” he shrugged.

Lewis lay back down for a moment and groaned. “I hate this place.”

“You’ll get used to it,” Tony said, entirely too cheerful for 6:45 in the morning. “Hey, you need anything from town? I’m heading in after classes are over this afternoon.”

“Don’t think they sell lobotomies at the hardware store,” Lewis answered. Tony actually laughed.

“Nah, but I can find you an ice pick,” he shot back, tossing the empty carton into a tall wastebasket next to their mini fridge. The fridge was, at present, mostly filled with bottled water and those nasty fake chocolate protein shakes Tony seemed to love. “Want one?” he asked.

“They’re all yours. Those things always tasted like gargling chalk to me,” he said, feeling a little more bold now that he knew Tony wasn’t just going to deck him over a joke.

“Yeah, they’re an acquired taste. My grandpa always said if you have to acquire a taste you shouldn’t be drinking it, but, they’re full of electrolytes and protein, which is why they taste so bad,” he laughed again.

Lewis just cracked a small smile before finally crawling out of bed and over to his wardrobe to start getting ready for the day. Just four more years. Just four more years.

The school had two options for cafeterias, surprisingly. There was the old, original cafeteria built when the old bunker building was constructed in the 1970s, and then there was the student union, someone’s idea of giving teenagers the ‘cool’ option, complete with franchising mini kitchens for Taco Bell, McDonalds, and Pizza Hut, which served up pizza by the slice 24 hours a day.

Then there were students like Tony who were allowed a minifridge in their dorm for those vile protein shakes. Lewis decided to try and take his chances at the Student Union since yesterday morning’s scrambled eggs really didn’t sit well. At least with McDonalds you knew exactly what fresh Hell you were signing yourself up to endure, or to enjoy, depending on one’s perspective.

He regretted this decision before even getting the door open, as once again the NFC reader decided that it was his lot in life to be the school’s, nay, the universe’s whipping boy. He even tried that thing Madison did, where she just pressed a flat palm against the NFC reader. It beeped, not a rejection, but the school’s equivalent of a “404, soul not found” error. A queue had begun to from behind him because a couple of freshmen were too embarrassed for him, he decided, to actually step up and try the NFC reader themselves.

Finally, a deep baritone voice sighed. “Oh my God, move kid, I’ll do it,” and a senior with shoulders like a defensive lineman, or possibly a professional wrestler, slapped his phone against the reader. It turned green, the door slid open, and both the senior, and the freshmen behind them, passed Lewis by.

It wasn’t much better inside, either, a clattering calamitous wave of talking, laughter, fryers cackling in the mini kitchens, chairs scraping. Everyone seemed absorbed in their own world and yet, every cackle of laughter felt like it was directed straight at Lewis’ back as he got in the McDonald’s line. He clutched the brown paper bag like a shield, turning around to try and find a place to sit and eat.

More than once he thought about bolting back outside. He wove his way past Madison’s table, who of course, was holding court at the center under the functioning AC vent and surrounded by freshmen ready to deliver whatever dismissive decree she bade of them. She didn’t look up, and why should she? He wasn’t even the dirt beneath her flawlessly manicured nails.

He passed the music room girl, in a spirited debate about the finer points of Eb and D down tuning in modern rock music compared to an E standard guitar tuning. Did people really talk like that all the time? Or was it just performative art to be ‘on’ for the student body?

Only one table for two, shoved up against a concrete column at the back of the room sat invitingly open. He made a beeline for it, only to realize why no one else had taken it. The smell hit him immediately. He looked over, and there sat the massive trash can. It didn’t just stink. It smelled like someone had poured month old sour milk and sun fresh mayonnaise into the bin. He sighed.

Perfect. Just. Perfect. He sat down and tried to eat his slightly over toasted sausage egg McMuffin while trying not to think about what that horrible smell was. He didn’t know what was worse, that feeling that everyone was staring, or the realization that no one was.

Lewis definitely didn’t remember signing up for AP Governmental Studies, but it was right there on the schedule, and he couldn’t just change classes, not until next semester. The classroom was divided into 12 seats on one side, 12 on the other, in rows of two, and an upperclassman had taken his usual seat, the one he’d enjoyed in the back, out of sight and out of mind last time.

This left only one seat open, front and center and right in Madison’s line of sight. She still didn’t seem to notice him, as he sat down nervously, sweating from the broken air conditioning even as she sat prim and proper, unaffected by the humidity. She really did have ice water running through her veins, didn’t she? She certainly had that smell about her, a faint, mintiness, sharp like her.

“Sorry about the heat, everyone,” Mrs. Pace said. “Maintenance assures me it’ll be fixed by 10 AM so let’s just suffer through it for now. If you need to get up to use a rehydration station by all means, just get up and go. I don’t want anyone passing out on my floor,” she teased, getting a laugh from a few students. Lewis wasn’t one of them.

He was on Mars again, only now his mind was searching for the space between spaces. He thought about the note, wondered if there were others hidden around. When Mrs. Pace disappeared to the back of the room he reached a hand underneath his desk just to check.

Rather than a note or a hidden carving, his hand found only the petrified DNA of a thousand pieces of gum, and one disgustingly fresh one. He made a sour face and jerked his hand back. Of course, Madison saw that. She rolled her eyes in disgust, looking down at her tablet. And now, on top of being hot, sweaty, sticky with someone else’s fresh ass gum, he was blushing too.

Mrs. Pace reappeared in his field of view, holding a nerf ball. “Let’s try something different today. I’m going to throw this ball of non expanding recreational foam,” pause for laughter, “And if I hit you with it - or if you catch it, you get to answer a trivia question about government.”

She glanced around the room, and then right at Lewis. The ball landed on his desk, right in his field of view. He looked up at her.

"Chambers, define 'meritocracy' in the context of the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. Are we here because we are equal, or because we are better?"

“Uhm,” Lewis said nervously. “I um... I think we’re just lucky?”

His ears burned as he heard laughter around him, and beneath it, an annoyed sigh, the hiss of a crocodile about to snap her jaws shut on unsuspecting prey. He haphazardly tossed the Nerf ball back to Mrs. Pace. It bounced off her hand and right at Madison, who caught it expertly right out of the air.

“Luck is a variable for those who lack precision, sweetie. We’re here because the data indicates we're the optimal version of the citizenry.” She tossed the nerf ball back to Mrs. Pace with that self same precision that the teacher caught it without any trouble.

“Interesting. Anyone care to counter?”

She tossed the ball to another student.

“Uh, not a rebuttal, but I mean the email I got when I got here said I was in the top 0.5% of whatever a cohort is, so it kinda tracks with what she just said.”

Lewis just wanted to melt into the floor, while Madison just gave a victorious, self-assured smirk - not at Lewis, by any means. He was still the dirt beneath her flawlessly manicured nails, but just to the world in general.

Gross, gross, gross, gross, gross!

For the next 45 minutes Lewis had to sit with someone else’s nasty, disgusting, skin-crawling ugh, their chewed gum spit on his hand Why did people stick their fucking gum under a fucking desk anyway?

The second the bell - not a modern chime, but a literal, 1970s classroom steel bell that Clarity never bothered to upgrade probably because it would break something else if they did, screamed the hour, he bolted. He didn’t wait for a dismissal, or for Madison and her entourage to clear the hell out of his way.

He just. Ran. He knew there were bathrooms somewhere in the next corridor. He swore he would never use a public bathroom if he could avoid it. He even showered at odd hours, like midnight when everyone else was asleep, just to have a modicum of privacy, but this? This was a saliva soaked emergency.

He barreled through the extremely heavy door without a second thought.

Actually, he did have one small, nagging second thought; why was there a mirror with a neon blue counter, like some kind of passthrough room, on the way to the actual bathroom, inside the bathroom? Didn’t bathrooms have mirrors already?

Sure enough, beyond this weird halfway room lay a row of porcelain sinks and, although the stalls were not the traditional toilet stalls he expected - they were made of cinder block walls just like the rest of the school with metal doors attached to them - the sinks did have small, rectangular mirrors over the top of them.

He dove for the nearest sink and turned on the hot water, vigorously scrubbing his hands with the lilac-scented soap. After one wash, he went back for a second scrubbing, just to be absolutely sure.

He didn’t hear the door open next to him, nor the click of girls’ loafers on the tile floor as she walked up to him. He only realized when he heard the paper towel dispenser engage, and saw a mildly amused face, framed by raven hair, smirking at his reflection. She didn’t say a word. She just put the paper towel down beside him and disappeared into one of the stalls.

“Fuck,” he moaned softly, grabbed the paper towel, and ran like his life depended on it because it absolutely did. Twice in two days he had now been given pity from the Queen Bee of mean girls. If he lingered another second he might just throw up in the damned sink.

“I am so sorry,” was all he could get out before pushing back into that weird halfway room - a powder room he now realized, and out into the hall. He needed to get out of here. If anyone else had noticed, they didn’t say anything, most students too preoccupied with their own social standing to care about a red-faced shaggy haired boy running down the hallway.

In his haste he very nearly collided with Director Winters, the de facto president, CEO, superintendent and principal in one - a woman in her mid 30s with her perfect, chestnut brown hair in an immaculate bun. She turned on a stiletto heel to smile at him, ironically being the first genuinely friendly face he’d seen all day.

“E-excuse me, Director Winters,” he managed to mutter. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“Hey, slow down,” she said cheerfully, not an admonishment about running in the halls to his surprise, but, advice? “You’re going to give yourself a heart attack in this heat. You alright sweetie?”

Lewis gulped air and then nodded. “Yeah. I’m just having the world’s worst week. I’ll be fine.”

The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoë Taylor

“Let’s see...” he said as he ran his fingers over the shelves. “Read it, read it, read it twice... Oh, what are you doing here?” he said, picking up the 1995 copy of Wicked. It was stuffed to the far right of the shelf, and, at least to his vague recollection of the Dewey decimal system, was completely on the wrong shelf.

A yellowed, old index card, fluttered to the ground. He knelt down to pick it up, turning it over.

‘If ur reading this don’t throw it away. Put it back where u found it. But, if ur looking for amazing acoustics, ask Jessica in the skool theater. She’ll show u the way to the utility corridor! -W.W.’

---

Lewis wanted to go back to the music wing, to find the blonde with the sheet music, but his dread of having to dance the Clarity Shuffle with the NFC reader kept him in the main building at least for now. And now, he smelled like he’d been bathing in a Sephora perfume counter thanks to that damn lilac scented soap. He was pretty sure he hadn’t gotten it all washed off, either, with trying to beat feet out of the girls’ room before Madison changed her mind and screamed.

But he had to find somewhere quiet, somewhere out of the way.

The library.

The school was almost all digital nowadays right? Right. So some place like the old library was probably a dead zone - literally and figuratively seeing as how even classrooms required wi-fi repeaters to keep the signal alive. And when he got to the library door, it didn’t even have a damn NFC lock on it - bonus!

He ducked inside. There was a student here, and another girl no less, but she genuinely did not seem to even notice him, her nose deep in a physical copy of Edgar A. Poe’s consolidated works. For just the briefest moment, it gave Lewis a reason to smile to himself. She was clearly an athlete. She was svelte and poised, long, dark red hair in a high ponytail with her letterman jacket slung over the back of her chair bearing patches for cheer and a big basketball patch, and yet she was here, like him, seeking a quiet place to just breathe.

And she was reading Poe, one of Lewis’ unironic favorite authors. He wanted so, so badly to talk to her, but if he valued his own privacy here so much, he figured she most certainly did as well, and decided not to disturb her, instead just disappearing among the shelves to find something to read, too.

“Let’s see...” he said as he ran his fingers over the shelves. “Read it, read it, read it twice... Oh, what are you doing here?” he said, picking up the 1995 copy of Wicked. It was stuffed to the far right of the shelf, and, at least to his vague recollection of the Dewey decimal system, was completely on the wrong shelf.

A yellowed, old index card, fluttered to the ground. He knelt down to pick it up, turning it over.

‘If ur reading this don’t throw it away. Put it back where u found it. But, if ur looking for amazing acoustics, ask Jessica in the skool theater. She’ll show u the way to the utility corridor! -W.W.’

His heart skipped a beat. Jessica? He knew Jessica was an extremely common name, especially back then, but still to see it written out like this in another real note from W.W. whoever they were - with no nasty petrified gum in sight. He shivered. “The utility corridors... The space between spaces?” he said softly, not a whisper. A whisper was a harsh, cutting sound, but a soft word was barely audible. A whisper could disturb a silent room and a silent reader a few shelves over - the last thing he wanted.

Lewis carefully tucked the old note back where he found it, leaving just the slightest edge poking out for the next hapless idiot like him, searching for sanctuary to find. At this point he’d take whatever miniscule victories he could get. Now though, now he had to do the Clarity Shuffle with a new dance partner, the school’s theater and auditorium.

“Nope,” he said quietly and picked up the copy of ‘Wicked’ again, careful not to disturb the index card he had just put back a moment ago. “Screw all of that.”

Wednesday morning provided only a brief reprieve from the heat in the form of an intense microburst of a heat shower. It had rained just enough to cascade the sweet smell of freshly watered grass across the campus, and to crank the humidity up to 11. At least this morning the air conditioning was working again, and a little too well. He shivered under his comforter half the night and even getting out of bed was a race to get into the polyester slacks and starched crisp shirt before frostbite could set in.

He coasted through the morning classes without any gum related mishaps, at least, and he no longer smelled like lilacs - just the usual sweat and desperation of a freshman who was in way over his head. But he had a new quest in the quest log today. He had to find Jessica.

She had to be a teacher or an advisor, for a note to be telling the reader to ask for her, and a pretty chill one at that if she was going to let students just crawl around in the utility corridors like that. The thought actually made him smile just a little. Maybe things were finally looking up.

They were not. Murphy’s Law was on Lewis this week, and was not about to let go, and because the universe has a sense of humor, the Clarity Shuffle actually let him into the theater on the first try, only to discover to his horror that the theater itself was extremely in use, a full rehearsal of a musical going on up on the stage, ‘Beauty and the Beast’ if he had to guess.

The blonde girl was on the stage - the Phantom of the Opera sheet music owner, and singing her heart out to a modified, production quality rendition of Belle’s “Bonjour” song from the start of the movie. Lewis just stood and listened in awe.

She was every bit as talented as him, and absolutely a mezzo soprano who could ghost those soprano notes in her head voice if she needed, at least on the lower end of the upper range. He actually found himself humming along as he stood next to the theater’s back entrance. He nearly jumped out of his skin when he felt a hand on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry!” he said reflexively, apologizing for even being here. The arm belonged to a girl with ash blonde hair, but rather than the scholar standard silhouette, she was wearing a black tee shirt and dark denim jeans - and most notably, a professional broadcast quality headset. She grinned at him.

“Yeah? Me too,” she giggled. “I didn’t mean to startle you. Just wanted to ask if you needed something?”

“I’m looking for someone... Jessica? Sorry I don’t know her last name, but I think maybe she’s a teacher or advisor or something.”

“I know like, five Jessicas, including myself,” the apparent Jessica answered, adding, “But, my friends call me by my middle name if that helps. I’m Heather,” she added. “But, I don’t know any adults named Jessica. Sorry. Oh just a sec.”

Heather ducked back into the sound booth at the back of the theater, where Lewis now realized she had emerged from to take ten years off his life to begin with. The music stopped playing and the blonde haired girl down on the stage waved.

“Can we take it from the second verse? I’m just not confident about my mark,” she said.

Heather’s voice boomed over the PA. “Sure thing Lyra. In 5, 4, 3...” The music started up again, and Lyra began to sing.

“Hey, sorry,” Heather said, “Gotta keep on my toes you know,” she giggled. “You want to stay and listen awhile? You seem pretty into it.”

“Can I? I don’t want to intrude,” Lewis answered.

“No way, stick around
!” Heather said, only she had accidentally hit the ‘talk’ switch on the battery pack on her belt, causing it to boom over the PA, and causing Lyra to shriek in surprise.

“Oops... Sorry Ly.”

Lyra, laughing with relief from the shock, gave Heather a two finger Roman salute, and grinned. “One more time from the top? I almost got it this time!”

Lewis bit back a small, embarrassed laugh as he sat down in the comfortable theater seat next to the sound booth. As he watched Lyra strut around on the stage, pretending to interact with people who just weren’t there, something caught his attention. The spotlight flashed over a sparkle of red on a backstage door, partly obscured by something.

It almost looked like a dress? He watched more closely, when Lyra strutted past it a second time, and he realized someone had painstakingly painted Jessica Rabbit on the door. Ask Jessica. He literally put his palm to his forehead.

“Oh, talk about a rabbithole,” he groaned to himself. But, there was just no way he could get up there right now, not with a full blown theater practice going on. Maybe later tonight, or tomorrow? Weren’t these student spaces open 24/7? ‘For your convenience’ or whatever.

“She’s amazing huh?” Heather said, at least not scaring either him or Lyra this time.

“Yeah. I had no idea she was classically trained when I bumped into her yesterday. Her projection is stunning.”

“You should hear her performing ‘Aria di Mezzo Carattere’,” Heather said. He turned to look up at her.

Aria Di Mezzo Carattere was what even got Lewis into choir in the first place, and here she was trying to tell him that she not only knew the piece by its official title and not just ‘Celes’ Opera Theme’ but that Lyra could sing it, too?

“You’re joking,” Lewis said with a skeptical, guarded tone.

“I’m dead serious,” Heather answered.

That’s such a deep cut reference even my retro JRPG loving parents would only get it if I flat out called it Celes’ Opera.”

Heather’s cynical, borderline bored smirk dissolved into a genuine grin as she flopped down on the seat next to Lewis, between him and the sound booth. “Not gonna lie, I did not expect you to get that. Nobody ever gets it. It’s just a stupid private joke between me and Lyra.”

“I’ve played the absolute crap out of Final Fantasy 6,” Lewis laughed. “My parents are retro game collectors so I’ve just always had access to original hardware. It wasn’t until I was like eight or nine that I realized most kids didn’t even know what a power glove was, let alone how janky they really are.”

“I love the power glove. It’s so bad,” Heather answered. They both giggled as Heather jumped up again, but this time she waved her hand for Lewis to follow her into the booth.

The sound booth was more than just sound equipment, to Lewis’ surprise. There were two massive sound mixing stations, true, with more faders and knobs than Lewis could even fathom, but then to the left of all that sat a massive lighting control board, too. Recessed at the back of the booth, a huge, mechanical red button had a note written on yellowed paper that read ‘DO NOT TOUCH - Raven’ on it.

As she used a finger to manipulate the Ableton Live software displayed on a 23” touch monitor with one hand she motioned with her free hand to the extra seat. “Cop a squat and stay awhile, Aria.”

“Thank you,” Lewis said, sitting in the extra seat that to his shock, was even more comfortable than the theater seats had been, supportive and firm, but cushy too, like they were made for much longer use than a few hours watching a production or play.

“So what are you doing here? I mean, what are you really doing here? Why is Jessica so important?” Heather asked.

Lewis shrugged. “You’re just going to laugh.”

“Try me,” Heather said. She looked over at Lewis.

Lewis sighed, looking between Heather, down through the window of the sound and lighting control booth to the stage. The view from here of the Jessica door was even better than it had been. There must have been some kind of curtain or something blocking the view from the theater seating.

“So the other day I was in the music wing and I found this note from a W. W. It said ‘Don’t let the bastards grind you down’ with an arrow pointing down... I turned over the piano bench and there was another note. This one said ‘Search for the space between spaces’. I know this sounds crazy, but it’s like they were talking directly to me even though these notes are probably like 50 years old.”

“So who told you to ask for Jessica?” Heather asked. If she knew anything, she wasn’t letting on that she did.

“I found a note in the library, in an old copy of ‘Wicked’ that said the acoustics in the catwalks are amazing, and to ask Jessica to show me the way. Of course I assumed Jessica was a theater teacher or something. And then I saw that door, or, well part of it anyway. Enough to realize that’s what the note meant. I know this sounds completely insane, and I’m probably being pranked by ancient notes, but I mean, I got nothing else to do, you know? I just... I want to find somewhere I’m not being judged for breathing wrong.”

“Well,” Heather said, “At least you’re honest. I like that. I’ll make a deal with you. I’ve got a full production of Beauty and the Beast, a dozen actors, one backstage manager, and two stage hands between the two of us. Everyone wants to be on the stage, in the spotlight, but nobody wants to move props or handle rigging. If you’d be willing to help me out in the catwalks, I’ll give you the run of them.”

“You... You’re asking me to be a stage hand?” Lewis asked.

“I’m asking if youll be my eyes and ears in the catwalks while I’m stuck down here.” She paused and looked up. Lyra was leaning in the doorway, grinning at them. “Oh! Sorry Lyra. I was just negotiating with a new helper.”

“RIP your sleep, huh?” Lyra giggled.

“Shush!” Heather laughed. “What was it you needed? I’m so sorry.

“You’re good,” Lyra giggled softly. “I just wanted to say I’m taking a breather to drink some water and go pee.” She waved casually and then turned to step out through the nearby door.

Heather turned back to Lewis. She tapped the ‘DO NOT TOUCH’ note from Raven. “I’ve seen a few of those notes myself. From what I can gather, which isn’t much, they were written by the original 2008 theater geeks who stayed with the school back when it went private in ‘08. I honestly can’t tell you much more than that though. But if you’re willing to lend me a hand I will absolutely owe you a favor.” She offered Lewis her hand, at that.

Lewis started to reach for it, but Heather retracted it, spit theatrically on it, and then stuck it out again. Lewis stared in abject horror.

“Well?” Heather grinned. “You ready to get your hands dirty or what?”

Lewis sighed. “I hate you,” he said, shut his eyes tight, and tried really hard not to think of the gum as he took the offered hand. Heather gripped his hand firmly, bringing up a bottle of hand sanitizer that she squirted into his palm afterwards, before squirting some into her own.

“I’m not a monster,” Heather giggled. “I just wanted to see how far you’re willing to go. You didn’t flinch - well, okay, you did, but you shook anyway, and that’s even better honestly. Welcome to the theater. Just, promise me if you find out anything, you’ll share it with me, yeah?”

The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoë Taylor

Aria? Aria, née Lewis looked around, holding up the lantern. A thick layer of dust lay on everything - even the empty Jolt cola can resting on its side in the corner next to a cheese crackers wrapper that looked slightly less aged than the can, judging by its lack of dust. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “But I’ll admire the scenery later. You didn’t bring me up here for a social visit.”

Heather actually beamed in the light of the lantern. “God damn. Maybe you really are one of us. Okay, let’s try a new one. Aria is what I call you, a nickname. Lewis Chambers is your scholar standard. Oh don’t look so surprised,” she laughed. “You think I’d let someone up here without finding out who they are?” She winked. “Anyway, you've got the trouser role, but up here in the shade you don't have to wear a mask. What's your true name?"

---

Lewis stared at himself in the mirror. This was the best he could do for clothing he didn’t mind getting dirty, or possibly ruined, an old hand-me-down Metallica concert tee that, ironically, was a gift from his older sister, and a pair of old denim jeans, relaxed fit that had a slight tear in the back pocket area with ragged edges at the cuffs. He didn’t look like a scholar standard. He looked like a stage hand in way over his head, which was perfect.

“Big date tonight?” Tony spoke up. Lewis looked at Tony through the reflection in the mirror. He was sitting on his bed, grinning at Lewis. “You’ve been standing there five minutes. Just curious.”

“Oh, no,” Lewis shook his head quickly. “Not with this crazy girl. I let myself get talked into helping with the theater stuff. I thought it’d be all bonding over retro music and stuff, but she’s got this chaotic neutral streak a mile wide.”

“Ohh,” Tony grinned, “In other words, you fell afoul of Heather ‘Fix it with duct tape and rip out the arm hair later’ Michaels. RIP your sleep schedule man.”

“That’s what Lyra said, too,” Lewis laughed nervously. “What the hell did I just sign up for?”

Tony just grinned. ‘Good luck, bruh.”

“Not helping,” Lewis groaned, walking to the door. By 9, things had started to wind down around the dorm. Most guys were on their way to bed or already asleep, and Lewis was just getting started on what was sure to be a long, exhausting night. Why did it have to be 9pm anyway? He’d been right there. That would’ve been the perfect time.

At least now that the sun had gone down, it wasn’t as oppressively hot, even if the humidity had somehow managed to push into the above 100% range, a low mist hanging over the campus, bathed in that annoying amber security street light glow that was perfectly calibrated not to disrupt anyone’s circadian rhythm, and downward firing so they wouldn’t shine in anyone’s windows.

Lewis was surprised to see the girl who had been reading Poe in the library out for a jog tonight. Instead of her scholar standard, she was wearing a black sports bra and white shorts, and it suddenly occurred to him that that couldn’t possibly have been her jacket he’d seen earlier.

Thick leather and wool, in this heat? She’d collapse the second she left the building. That was another mystery to solve later.

“Hey,” she said casually as she joggged past.

“Heya,” he said, turning to watch her, the dark red ponytail bouncing along behind her. She stopped and turned around to look back at him, too. She didn’t say anything, but she almost seemed like she had a knowing smile on her face for just a moment. She turned and continued her jog a moment later.

“Oookay,” Lewis said quietly and started moving back towards the theater again. The NFC reader again deceptively decided to work as soon as his hand got within six inches of the panel, shifting from the warm amber to a minty welcoming green. He opened the door, a blast of cold air threatening to bowl him over as he pushed his way inside.

The stage was dead silent. The seats were empty, and only the ghost light above the stage illuminated anything. Lewis couldn’t get into the Jessica door yet, not until Heather got here, so he just walked up onto the stage. A piece of gaffer’s tape had been placed directly under the ghost light. He stood on it, looked back at the sound booth again just to double check that he was alone, that Heather hadn’t gotten here yet.

He tilted his head back and started to sing, testing his vocal range. D5, D#5, E5... E#5? He coughed and cleared his throat. The E#5 was an E too far, but it wasn’t a D#5 at least. Small victories!

He tried to let go of his unnerved feelings at the silent auditorium. No one was here to judge him on his nonstandard silhouette, although he knew the slouch wasn’t helping, either. He straightened his posture and sang out a supported D5, focusing on maintaining the note and the vibrato comfortably - supporting, not forcing it.

A tone like someone striking a tuning fork rang out somewhere in the catwalks above and Heather spoke, “You’re about three cents sharp Celes. If you’re going to sing for the ghosts, at least give ‘em a show,” she said playfully.

“God!” Lewis yelped. Heather laughed.
“Nope, guess again. Hang on, I’ll be right down.”

A moment later the ‘jessica’ door opened, expelling acrid, dry air and the strong, musty smell of an HVAC unit that stopped caring about 30 years ago. Heather stepped out, a Coleman LED lantern in one hand, and a heavy duty mag light in the other. She offered Lewis the lantern. “I can find my way in total darkness, but if you slip and fall your first day it’ll be my ass in a sling - and yours too I guess.” She grinned.

“Gee, thanks,” Lewis said, accepting the lantern and taking a moment to figure out how to turn it on. He managed to actually not blind himself with it, which Heather seemed to find both amusing and mildly impressive, before turning to head back through the door. She left it propped open just slightly.

Beyond the door was a set of steel stairs, about eight inches high per stair, and coated in textured rubber. The stairway rail felt surprisingly cold under his hand, the smart ring making a quiet, continuous groan against the matte metal as he gripped it, following Heather.

The catwalks were absolutely not what he expected, although in truth he didn’t know what to expect. The odd discarded soda can, messages written on the walls like ‘R.S. + R.W. 4 ever 2008’ or ‘Jackie was here 1993’ plus occasional graffiti on the level of the Jessica Rabbit painting on the downstairs door.

“So, Aria,” Heather said, “Was it everything you pictured?”

Aria? Aria, née Lewis looked around, holding up the lantern. A thick layer of dust lay on everything - even the empty Jolt cola can resting on its side in the corner next to a cheese crackers wrapper that looked slightly less aged than the can, judging by its lack of dust. “It’s beautiful,” she said. “But I’ll admire the scenery later. You didn’t bring me up here for a social visit.”

Heather actually beamed in the light of the lantern. “God damn. Maybe you really are one of us. Okay, let’s try a new one. Aria is what I call you, a nickname. Lewis Chambers is your scholar standard. Oh don’t look so surprised,” she laughed. “You think I’d let someone up here without finding out who they are?” She winked. “Anyway, you've got the trouser role, but up here in the shade you don't have to wear a mask. What's your true name?"

“Can I think about it first?” she asked. “I would’ve had an answer for you earlier, but...”

“But?” Heather asked.

“But there’s already five Jessicas,” she answered hesitantly, testing the waters to see how Heather reacted. She didn’t laugh or roll her eyes. She just gave Aria a quiet smile.

“That’s valid. You can have Aria for both while you think about it, if you want - no pressure up here.”

“Thank you,” Aria answered softly. “Really... Thank you.”

Heather patted her shoulder. “We all need a place where we can go, where nobody will hear us scream. Just, some of us more than others. For me, that’s this place. C’mon, I’ll give you the grand tour, THEN I’ll bust your ass with the hard labor,” she teased.

One thing Aria noticed immediately was that the rafters up here weren’t just bare concrete. They were buttressed in a strange, almost vaulted way. Sure there were exposed steel beams, but there were also archways of concrete that might have looked beautiful in an exposed, gothic cathedral ceiling.

“Seriously, what the actual fuck was the architect who built this place smoking?”

Heather laughed. “You don’t know the history do you? This wasn’t always a private school. It was built in 1971, back in the cold war duck and cover days. Those archways?” she said, pointing her maglite at the ceiling, “Those are meant to increase the amount of stress the building could withstand. Hell there’s rumors to this day that a missile silo is under the gym,” she said conversationally. “The lighting grid’s this way. I just need to double check the wiring hasn’t been chewed on while I’m up here, then I’ll get you to help me with that damn rusty pulley. Sound good?”

“Sure thing,” Aria answered. While waiting on Heather inside the server room, little more than a cubby hole with an ancient server rack whirring happily away, and a stack of old, spinning hard drives in boxes resting next to it, she spotted another scrawl of text. It wasn’t just a tag. It was a musical note, with an arrow buried in the note head. It wasn’t drawn onto the note, but rather, where an absence of marker had been left, like someone had placed an arrow stencil and then drawn the note graffiti over it. It was pointing back out of the alcove.

Aria stepped out into the corridor. Another note with a similar arrow pointed further up. She cautiously followed.

She quickly found herself in another alcove with a stainless steel chair, rusted with age, sat right at the center. Someone had left a CD player next to the chair, and an old Nightwish CD from 2002, or at least the jewel case, lay in a pool of dust, a thin layer spread out across the case, and the CD player. She brushed away the dust from both, picking up the jewel case. She turned it over, and her eyes lit up. Someone had circled Track 9 - The Phantom of the Opera.

She looked around. Heather hadn’t come to yell at her for wandering off yet. She lifted her head and sang a note in her lower register, an easy C4. It didn’t simply echo back to her, but bounced off the ceilings and floor, creating a resonant frequency that chilled her bones.

“Oh, you found the observation room,” Heather said. “You can see the entire stage from here through that little slit, and if you REALLY want to troll the actors, you don’t even need the PA system to do the Voice of God if you do it from here.”

“Can... Can I try singing here? Before you put me to work I mean. I... I think this is what the W.W. note was telling me to find.”

“Everyone finds their own truth in those old notes,” Heather said. “If this is what you were looking for, by all means. I’d love to hear you sing something other than a sharp E5,” she teased.

Aria didn’t hesitate. She threw her head back, inhaled two lungs full of 50 year old air, and sang what was in her heart. It wasn’t perfect, light and airy like Christine in the original Andrew Lloyd Webber musical, bright, and airy. It was honest, raw, and dark, the girl Aria knew she was tangled up in the biological realities of who she was becoming, and it somehow just worked.

When she opened her eyes, she realized someone had actually scrawled the words ‘Sing, my angel of music! - W.W.’ across the ceiling, exactly where someone would only be able to see it if they were standing with their head tilted back and ready to do exactly that.

“Wow!” Aria squeaked. “I... Was that me?”

“It sure as heck wasn’t me,” Heather laughed, offering her not a hug, but a high five. “That was incredible!”

“Thanks,” Aria said. “Okay, now that I’ve found my new hidey hole, I’m ready to actually help you. Was this why you wanted me to come back so late? So I could find this room?”

“I’m not that smart,” Heather smirked. “The truth is, I made you come back because I had to know how far you were willing to go. I had to know I could trust you - and, for what it’s worth? I do trust you, at least to hold a rusty pulley while I WD-40 the snot out of it.” She pressed a pair of thick work gloves into Aria’s hands. “You better put these on though. You don’t want tetanus.”

The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoë Taylor

“Hey, can I ask you a stupid question?” he asked.

“Sure, as long as it’s not about my eye,” she shot back playfully. He turned to look at her. She smirked back at him. “It was a joke. What’s your question?”

---

When Lewis woke up at 7:23 AM it wasn’t to an alarm clock or even someone’s malfunctioning razor, it was to someone, ironically, blasting Metallica next door, and ‘next door’ meant ‘right by his wall’ as Tony had the window bed. He jolted upright. He was wearing his, now dusty, Metallica concert tee again, and it had otherwise survived a week unscathed despite Heather’s best efforts.

Lugging heavy XLR cables, scraping his knuckles replacing theater lights he was pretty sure didn’t actually need replaced, even hauling a costume trunk down the steel stairs from some forgotten corner of the tomb-like utility corridors, ‘Aria’ earned her stripes in the shadows, every stripe a literal scar on her body, and a lesson about backstage work, but, she was learning.

She was learning when to dodge a loose cable, how to secure a rusty pulley and how much WD-40 it needed to silence the squeak. The more time she spent in the catwalks, the more she dreaded returning to the light and the Lewis mask

It was absolutely worth it. When she stood on the observation deck, overlooking the stage above the theater seating, where even the ghost light looked like a speck down below, leaned on the railing, and sang to the literal rafters, her voice carried and filled the silence with a frequency that almost didn’t belong to her.

Of course that was at night, and Aria had to remain in the rafters, a proverbial Phantom in Lewis’ own mind. He had to hurry to get dressed, just so he could have time to get breakfast and not be late for his first classes.

He was surprised to find that the aches had another, small social benefit. When he walked into the student union, Heather called out to him.

“Yo Chambers!” She waved. She was sitting with Lyra and her own entourage of theater royalty. Today, Lewis didn’t even glance Madison’s direction. He just waved at Heather, went to get his Egg McMuffin, with a double shot mocha espresso from the Starbucks kiosk, and walked over to Heather to see what she wanted.

“Y’all, this is my new favorite stage hand.”

“Hey, you survived the other night?” Lyra giggled.

“”A week of them,” Lewis said, “And still coming back for more. I think I need to get my head examined.” That got a giggle from the crowd.

“Cop a squat,” Heather said, adding, “If you want, I mean. We don’t bite, while bathed in the light. It’s only in shade the heavy toll is paid. And you definitely paid yours in the cat walks lately.”

Lewis, exhausted and running on 6 1/2 hours of sleep and the first sips of a double mocha, just could not stop himself. "I'll take your seat, but this is no cute meet," he glanced at the others and suddenly wished he had just kept his mouth shut. "But I'll try and keep up with your rhyming scheme, Puck."

They stared. Heather stared. “I’ll... just show myself out,” Lewis said, but the black haired girl wearing red framed glasses, sitting next to Lyra spoke up.

“No wait, that was actually great. Your bar’s a bit off, but that’s not a scoff. Perfection is misdirection, and rhyming ‘up’ with ‘Puck’? That takes a lot of guts. Oh jeez, now you’ve got me half-rhyming. Damit Heather. You’re infectious.”

“I try,” Heather laughed, as Lewis sat down finally. “Sorry about this week though. I had to know you were legit for the long haul. I promise not to keep you up till ass crack o’clock anymore.”

“Until production night,” another girl said dryly. Heather shot her a look, sticking her tongue out at her.

Lewis only half-listened as the discussion shifted to the Abney Park concert in Centerville coming up in a few weeks. He had no plans to go, and no way to get there even if he wanted to. His mind was still in the literal rafters, thinking about that one, perfect moment where Aria lived rent free in the ‘voice of God’ room, and the imperfect, backbreaking labor it had cost him.

He drifted, rather than floated, to his first class of the day, not even noticing that he had been seated sharing a lab station with Madison of all people. The sharp smell of mint radiated off her, an almost tangible aura against the hints of dust from the computer fans, or possibly under his nails and on his collar. He wasn’t sure in his caffeinated haze. All he knew was that this damn JavaScript kept crashing with a NaN error.

“You’re looping,” Madison answered his unasked question.

“What?” Lewis said, blinking wearily at Madison.

“Your code. You’ve got an infinite while loop that never gets resolved because you forgot to set the bool.”

“Oh,” Lewis said. “Jeez, how did I miss that,” he sighed. “Thanks.”

“Whatever. Just be more careful. Michaels likes to collect broken things and try to put them back together again. She doesn’t always get it right.” She turned, her sharp emerald gaze suddenly and intensely focused on Lewis, rather than on her own, flawlessly running javascript app. “Everyone in this school wants something. No one does anything for free.”

“So what do you want for helping me?” Lewis shot back, too exhausted to be terrified just at the moment. Madison cracked the tiniest hint of a smirk, like the octopus on Mars had learned to juggle rocks, and then bonked itself on the head with one in the process.

“What I always want,” she answered bluntly.

“Are you going to tell me what that is?” Lewis asked.

“Nope,” Madison said, turning back to her terminal again and leaving Lewis even more bewildered. He couldn’t decide if that was good advice, or if she was just trolling him. She spoke again.

“I don’t give a fuck if you take my advice or not. You’re a train wreck I’ve seen before - nothing more, nothing less.” She hesitated for a moment before adding more softly, “But at least you’ve avoided shoving your hand in more ancient gum. I can’t believe maintenance hasn’t cleaned that crap off and just... lets it sit there under the surface. It’s vile.”

The scream of the ancient bell couldn’t come soon enough. Lewis didn’t look back to see if Madison was watching. He didn’t care anymore. He just wanted to be away from people trying to pull him in different directions for their own social politics. Whether or not he was a pawn to Heather, he could at least tell with Madison, he was cannon fodder, and he just needed to find a place to breathe, a neutral ground.

He disappeared into the library. The wi-fi dropped almost instantly. The redhead from before, now sitting in a different chair and without that letterman jacket, was reading her book of Poe again. She didn’t even look up at him.

He didn’t sit at her table, but noticed she, or someone else, had put another copy of the same book down at another table. He sank into the overstuffed chair and exhaled like he had just sunk into a hot bath.

“You too?” the girl said. Lewis realized she was staring at him now. He picked up the book.

“Yeah. This place...”

“Yeah,” she said. “I recommend The Telltale Heart, page 35, if you haven’t read it yet.”

“I’m partial to ‘The Angel of the Odd,” Lewis said, and she actually looked up at him over the rim of her book with a knowing, understanding smile and a small nod of agreement or approval. “But I like The Telltale Heart too. The idea of someone watching you, hating you over something as trivial as an eye is so messed up.”

“Yup,” she said, going back to reading. An old, analog clock on the wall ticked away, filling the silence with rhythmic clicks.

“Hey, can I ask you a stupid question?” he asked.

“Sure, as long as it’s not about my eye,” she shot back playfully. He turned to look at her. She smirked back at him. “It was a joke. What’s your question?”

“Do you think everyone in this school wants something, only does things so you’ll owe them a favor later?”

The girl snorted. “The only thing I want is to be left alone - present company excluded, unless you start hitting on me. Then I’ll break your nose.”

Lewis actually gave a small laugh at that. “No worries. I got enough crap to deal with already. Sorry for disturbing you, though, for what it’s worth.”

“Nah,” she said. “You’re good man.”

As he settled in to read, he glanced over at her again. The way she sat, as slumped and as war weary as he felt, he wondered if that’s what that knowing smile the other night, last week? His mind wandered. He didn’t see the letterman jacket this time. He wanted to ask about it, but, he’d already violated her privacy enough for one day.

It wasn’t the scream of the bell that woke him, but her hand on his shoulder. “Wakey wakey, it’s day breakey,” she said. He groaned, opening his eyes.

“Oh God, how long was I asleep?”

She laughed. “About 30 minutes. I’ve got art studies. Didn’t know if you’ve got class or not, so I thought I’d nudge you before I have to go, you know? Anyways, see you around, yeah?”

“Oh, yeah. Thank you,” Lewis yawned, sitting up. His curiosity got the better of him, so he peeked around the shelf at where she had been sitting the other day. The Letterman jacket was still sitting there, untouched. Now he came to look closer, he realized it had a thin layer of dust on it, like it had been sitting there almost as long as that old Jolt can up in the rafters.

“Okay,” he said softly. “Now that is weird.”

He shrugged it off, though. The power nap had given him just enough energy to maybe survive Biology class next hour. If ‘Regina’ - the name patch stitched into the sleeve, had abandoned her jacket here, she must’ve had a good reason. Sometimes a Letterman jacket was just a Letterman jacket. Probably.

The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoë Taylor

“Quoth the Raven,” Lewis said to himself, as he leaned on the walnut panel to which the painting was attached. To his complete shock, the panel groaned softly, like a rusty hinge that hadn’t been moved in 20 years had just been awakened.

“What the hell was that?” Kris asked, her head jerking up suddenly. Lewis didn’t answer right away. He felt along the paneling for something, and found it - a crack, almost invisible. He managed to dig his greasy theater-hardened nails into the crack and pried it back. Another low, echoing groan as the hinges protested, but gave way to a massive steel door, covered in acoustic foam on the other side.

---

Over the next week, Lewis and Aria fell into a rhythm of sorts. Morning classes, afternoon work in the theater - although there wasn’t much work to do for the most part, and evenings in the library decompressing. Heather hardly ever asked anything of her that she herself wouldn’t do, usually when she was too busy juggling the sound stage and directing spotlight operators to physically do it herself.

In the library, that old, dusty jacket remained untouched, a mystery boiling and bubbling in the back of her mind like the Weird Sisters’ hell-broth in the Scottish play whose name Aria wouldn’t even utter within her internal monologue because she didn’t need THAT kind of bad luck right now.

Aria even got her very own Clear Com headset, old school local transmission, not Wi-Fi or smart anything, so it worked even when she was up in the literal and proverbial rafters, her new favorite haunt when she wasn’t in the library

She stopped singing, though. That was the cruelest irony of Madison’s warning. She observed. She sat in the observation room, and she watched Heather from there, the way she spoke to other freshmen, the way she spoke to other cast members who couldn’t hit their marks. Lyra seemed the only one immune from her wrath, and only because she always hit her marks, or acknowledged when she was missing them.

Heather, though, she had to admit, seemed a little bit manipulative too. She had stopped singing because it no longer felt safe. The poison had violated her safe space, her space between spaces, despite how she ached to let her voice be free again.

She fell into the overstuffed chair of the library that had become her usual spot. The red haired girl, Kris was there, again, except instead of reading, she was drawing on a physical sketch pad with an HB pencil. She looked up at Lewis.

“Jeez, what happened to you?”

“It’s killing me not being able to sing,” Lewis said bluntly. Kris blinked.

“Okay?” she answered. “So um, not to be a bullheaded, clueless manic pixie dream girl or anything, but... What’s honestly stopping you?”

Lewis shifted uncomfortably, glancing at her. “I... I dunno. There’s this place in the theater, where the acoustics are just... It’s pure magic, and I’m afraid to let my voice be heard because I don’t want to be someone’s pet project. But I don’t want to be someone’s social pawn either.”

“Ah,” Kris said, giving Lewis an understanding nod. “You’re caught between two political factions who want you to pick a side, and you just want to be left the fuck alone to sing. Kind of like how I just want to be left the fuck alone to read, or draw, or just... fuckin’ exist.”

“Exactly,” Lewis sighed. “Sorry for info dumping on you. I’m just... I don’t know if I’m cut out for this place anymore. I’m thinking of dropping out.” He shrugged.

“Honestly? Valid,” Kris answered with a shrug as she returned to her sketch. “They sell this place as being like a high class college. Nobody tells you until you’re already signed up that it’s more like being a boiled frog.”

“Even worse,” Lewis sighed. “The damn pot’s locked from the outside. If I quit, no more scholarship, and my folks are on the hook for a massive tuition bill for early termination or whatever. Fuck,” he sighed.

“Hey,” Kris said, “I can’t get the lighting right in here. You want to come with me to the art room? I don’t want to abandon you or anything. I just need better work light.”

“Thanks,” Lewis said. “For not abandoning me.”

Kris shrugged. “You’re alright, Chambers. Thanks for not expecting anything outta me.” She gave him a small, fractured smile before picking up the sketch pad and moving to leave.

“Can I ask you another stupid question?” Lewis asked. “Since you know I’m not going to flirt with you or anything now.”

Kris snorted. “Sure.”

“Was... Was that your jacket back there?”

“What jacket?” Kris blinked. “Oh! You mean that varsity thing in the back of the library?” Lewis nodded. “Hell no. I ain’t no pom-pom waving cheerleader,” Kris laughed. “And I hate basketball. That thing’s probably been there longer than anybody can remember. No idea why they don’t just throw it away.”

“I guess it’s just another relic,” Lewis said dryly.

“Like the broke ass HVAC and the NFC sensors you have to do a rain dance to operate,” Kris laughed.

“Exactly,” Lewis said, following Kris across the vaulted ceilinged lobby of the main building to where an NFC-locked door awaited them. “Speaking of the Clarity Shuffle,” he said dryly.

“You put your left foot in, you put your left foot out,” Kris sang, putting her watch to the sensor. When that failed, she practically slapped her smart phone up against it, moving it around. “You put your cellphone in and you drag it all around.”

The light finally turned green, letting them pass.

The art room was a true cavern, 3,000 square feet of lecture hall with a 30 foot high ceiling, and recessed, golden lighting rather than the harsh fluorescent of ‘daylight’-tuned bulbs in the rest of the school. Rather than the usual eggshell painted cinder blocks Lewis had grown used to seeing, the walls were covered floor to ceiling in dark, walnut panels to which were affixed a graveyard of old students’ past, or at least, their artworks.

Oil paintings hung alongside sketches, drawings, even animation cells artfully framed, with seemingly endless acres of unfilled space yet. While Kris sat down at one of the desks to continue her sketch, Lewis walked slowly along the perimeter, admiring the art on display. He paused at an oil painting, hanging at eye level, of a girl with neon purple hair and wearing a black lace dress. She had plum lipstick and rocked an eyeliner wing that made Lewis squirm with envy.

A small, brass panel on the bottom simply read ‘Nevermore’.

“Quoth the Raven,” Lewis said to himself, as he leaned on the walnut panel to which the painting was attached. To his complete shock, the panel groaned softly, like a rusty hinge that hadn’t been moved in 20 years had just been awakened.

“What the hell was that?” Kris asked, her head jerking up suddenly. Lewis didn’t answer right away. He felt along the paneling for something, and found it - a crack, almost invisible. He managed to dig his greasy theater-hardened nails into the crack and pried it back. Another low, echoing groan as the hinges protested, but gave way to a massive steel door, covered in acoustic foam on the other side.

“Hooooly shit,” Kris said, now standing behind Lewis.

“Quoth the raven,” Lewis repeated with a hint of triumph in his tone. The room, apparently, used to be a sound isolation booth. Analog recording equipment on one side with a glass window peeked into a small room with a stool and an expensive microphone setup on the other side.

Most curious, someone had plastered a polaroid photo of the actual girl from the painting in the flesh, grinning at the camera, on the inside of the window, facing out. Lewis couldn’t resist it and pulled the door closed behind them, leaving them in total darkness apart from their flashlights on their phones. The wi-fi died instantly, but, crucially, so did all sound.

They could no longer hear the HVAC hum or the groan of a water main, the mundane white noise that became so ubiquitous as to be completely ignored, and yet in its absence, the sudden silence was deafening.

Kris flipped on a light switch, and more recessed, golden lighting clicked on rather than the expected harsh fluorescent. “This is amazing,” Kris gasped. “Check it out! You can get up into the utility corridor I bet,” she said, pointing out the utility access ladder bolted to the wall, leading up to an acoustically treated panel in the ceiling.

Lewis - Aria? Definitely Aria, walked over to the control panel where a set of studio headphones had been left sitting, their coiled XLR cabling looking as fresh and clean as if it were brand new.

“Either someone’s been here, or...” She grinned and sang out a C5. Kris jumped and spun around. Aria was beaming. She knew she could hit the D5 with effort, but the C5 just rolling right out like that felt like a massive win.

“Fuck me. Chambers you’re a god damn human pipe organ!” She looked equal parts shocked and kind of impressed, too.

Aria beamed. “I think I just found my new safe space between spaces.”

“Oh man,” Kris said, “That big beige box! I haven’t seen one of these outside the movies!”

Off in the corner, away from the sound equipment and built into a shroud lined with what looked like copper or aluminum foil was a big, beige PC tower with a 24” CRT monitor, an absolute behemoth with a beige mechanical keyboard. The front of the tower simply said ‘Gateway’ and had a cow box logo, white with black patches in the form of a cube.

“See if it powers on?” Aria asked.

Kris shook her head. “No dice. Looks like it’s missing the power cable. But maybe we can find one in one of the old storage closets somewhere. I’ll keep an eye out.”

“Oh,” Aria said, taking a look for herself. “Yeah, this is a standard IECC kettle cable. We’ve got a ton of them in the theater, but I’ll see if I can find one no one will miss.”

“Hey, Chambers?” she said.

“Yeah?” Aria asked.

“Thanks, dude. I don’t just mean for showing me this, but... for being a decent human being without wanting something.”

“Yeah, same honestly,” Aria said. “You’re like the one person I feel like I can trust with this secret who won’t try and twist it around on me later.”

Kris gave Aria that same war weary expression she knew too well. “It’s nice to take off the mask once in a while.”

The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoe Taylor

P.E. is bad enough, but at Clarity Prep, there's also the joy of the colorfully labelled New Experience Day, and today's lesson is Fencing, or as Lewis/Aria thinks of it, 'being a lopsided tripod with a sword.' Still, she manages to make a new friend in a senior fencing student and further the goal of repairing The Beige Beast in the process. And soon she'll get to actually see what the girls' dorms actually look like, too. En garde!

P.E. was already bad enough, but today was what the coach colorfully referred to as ‘New Experience Day’ in which students were given to experiencing a new sport the hard way. Last week, it had at least been basketball. Any numbskull could learn to dribble a basket in a few minutes and shoot hoops. Horse was actually pretty fun even though Lewis lost handily to his more athletic ‘cohort’; he still hated that damn word.

But today was a whole other animal. The Octopus on Mars had become a penguin. At least, he felt like a penguin in his borrowed fencing kit, knickers and heavy coat, and the plastron felt completely alien.

“The secret to fencing,” Coach Theresa Enders said, “Isn’t to overpower your opponent. Strength is an advantage, but it’s only one KIND of advantage. You, Chambers,” she said, pointing right at Lewis with her steel foil. “Come over here.”

Lewis gulped as he stepped forward.

“You don’t lift weights do you kid?” she asked.

“No ma’am,” Lewis answered, getting a giggle from his fellow freshmen.

“Yeah I didn’t think so, but I had to be sure you weren’t hiding bulging pecs under that coat,” she teased “Don’t sweat it though. Some of the best fencers in history looked like they’d crash under a stiff breeze,” Coach Enders said, her voice carrying in the high-ceilinged gym. Lewis couldn't help admiring the acoustics in here. “Masks on your hips for now. Everyone find a line on the floor, feet in an 'L' shape with your lead foot pointing at me, back foot at a ninety-degree angle.”

Lewis looked down at his feet. He felt less like an athlete and more like a poorly constructed tripod. How did anyone actually compete like this? Or, you know, move? If he tried to lunge he’d just faceplant, he just knew it.

“Now, bend your knees. Lower your center of gravity,” she commanded, walking through the rows. She tapped the back of Lewis’s knee with the flat of her blade. “Lower. If your thighs aren't burning, you’re doing it wrong.”
Lewis' thighs were burning for a very different reason. Aria had spent thirty minutes kneeling while Heather ran fresh cables to replace the ones that, for whatever reason, had just decided they wanted to clock out. She longed for the safety of the art room, the Raven's Nest again, now more than ever.

“Fencing, ladies and gentlemen, is physical chess, played at the speed of a car crash. In fencing we have right of way. That means,” she lunged at a student who flinched and toppled over backwards. Thankfully it wasn’t Lewis. She reached her left hand out to help them get up again. “You alright?” she asked.

“Yes ma’am,” the girl said and giggled.

“If I lunge at you like that, you can’t just try and hit me back. You have to parry the strike first to earn your chance.

“Arm out,” she said as she stepped toward Lewis. “You’re not punching with it. Think of it like you’re holding a laser pointer instead. The weight is in the hilt. The tip is where you want the laser pointer to go. You want the point to find the target, in this case the torso.”

Lewis extended his arm as she instructed. The hilt felt heavy, but the tip did feel strangely floaty, almost exactly like trying to guide a laser pointer.

“What’s so funny, Chambers?” Enders asked, grinning as if she knew what the punchline was going to be.

“Sorry Coach,” Lewis said. “It’s just I suddenly get why Luke had so much trouble with the lightsaber.”

“Exactly!” Coach Enders laughed. “That’s exactly how a lightsaber would feel in your hands, only you can’t wield a foil with two hands. You have to rely on your wrist dexterity instead. It’s a game of physics, not strength.”

She walked in front of Lewis with his blade out, pressing hers against his. “If I push the tip of my blade against yours, I win,” she said, and easily pushed his foil aside. “The hilt is the strong, the forte. The tip is the weak, the foible. Use your forte to push their foible.”

“Now, let’s see if you can move those clodhoppers,” she said, adding, “That’s what us old farts call your feet,” she added, getting another giggle from the class, as she walked around, inspecting other students, now that she had thoroughly schooled Lewis.

An older girl in full fencing kit was casually leaning against a column and watching the freshmen with an amused, but not mean, smile on her face, her dark brown skin almost radiant in the fluorescent light and her long, chestnut hair in a flawless French braid against her white gear. Lewis tried not to look at her. After all, she wasn’t staring at him, just watching the class as a whole.

“Alright, who’s ready for a real demonstration?” Enders clipped, a predatory grin on her face for the first time all morning. “Ah, let’s see, who should I pick on...”

Without saying a word the girl stepped closer, and Lewis now realized her fencing mask was no mere club mask, no borrowed thing a thousand others had worn in the last six months, but a sleek and professional mask with matte black mesh to his battle worn, battered silver. The bib, rather than being black, was an almost fluorescent blue, and even her foil looked expensive to his clueless, novice’s eye, its sharp tip only guarded by a thin rubber plug.

He gulped as he felt Enders’ hand on his shoulder. “Well since there aren’t any volunteers, how about you, Luke? Care to try your luck with the Force?”

“I’m willing to try,” Lewis answered.

The girl flashed him a very brief smile before drawing her mask down. “I’ll go easy on you this time, freshman. Salute,” she said. It wasn’t a command. It was an instruction. She drew up her foil to about where her chin would be, flawlessly vertical. “Like this. You always salute your opponent before a match, and your referee and director afterward, before you salute the audience.”

Lewis tried to draw up his foil. It suddenly felt like a ten ton weight in his gloved hand, but he managed to hold it steady enough.

“Good,” she said. “Just like that.”

She dropped her sword into a low ready stance.

“En garde!” Coach Enders called. Lewis fell into the en garde position, but the girl didn’t lunge for him. She was waiting, giving him the chance to make the first move. He took a nervous step forward, and before he even knew what was happening, she had made a small, circular motion with her wrist and he found himself sailing past her. She tapped him on the back with her foil. “One, two, three,” she counted, tapping rhythmically on his back.

“Again,” Enders commanded. They reset, and Lewis tried again, but no matter what he did, the girl either seemed to just no longer be there, or she predicted his movement and countered it as soon as he made it. At the end of a full minute, she blew her whistle.

“Salute!” she barked. Lewis got back to his mark and saluted the girl, and then turned to salute Coach Enders. When they pulled off their masks, the girl had a different kind of glow, mild exertion and sweat. Lewis looked like he was going to collapse, by contrast.

“This is depressing me,” an older boy with shoulders like a linebacker - and he probably was a linebacker, now Lewis came to think of it, grunted. “You’re holding back, Elaine. Let’s see how you handle a REAL man, huh? Give these kiddies a real demonstration!”

“If you insist, Randy,” Elaine said with a dry exasperation. She dropped her mask into place and waited for him to join her on the piste.

Randy charged, attempting to use a flesh, a technically legal move, although Randy treated it like a football tackle rather than a fencing move. Elaine didn’t flinch. She dropped, pressing her left hand against the floor, and the blade soared right over her head. As he stumbled past, she sprang back and smacked him hard in the ribs with the flat of her foil.

“Point, Elaine,” Enders said flatly.

Randy snarled at being humiliated and literally wounded. On their next pass, as their foils locked he used his left hand to shove her shoulder, trying to throw her off balance. He tried to stab her, like he genuinely wanted to run her through. Not only did she recover, she simply wasn’t where his foil was anymore. She gave him another hard thwack across his ribs in the exact same spot - not near it - exactly on it.

For the next thirty seconds, Randy flailed like a drunken Arol Flynn. Elaine moved fluidly, small, economical motions, driving him backwards with her efficiency and her precision. She executed a flick. He wanted a brawl, and Elaine was going to give it to him. No more games. She backed him all the way down the piste before she flicked his mask off, and in the same fluid motion, disarmed him, his foil flying across the gym floor. She put the very real, very sharp tip of the foil against his throat.

“If you EVER try anything like that on me or any other student again, expulsion will be the least of your problems. Are we clear?” she snapped icily. Randy’s nod was just enough not to impale himself on her foil, very real fear in his eyes as he realized Coach Enders wasn’t going to intervene on his behalf. “Get the fuck off my piste.”

The freshmen, including Lewis, couldn’t help but applaud and cheer. To them this was a high stakes high impact demonstration. They had no idea the reality, just that the really cool girl just beat the crap out of a cheating bully who tried to treat a foil like a saber.

As class dismissed and dispersed back to the lockers, Elaine remained on the piste, shadow-fencing with thin air. Lewis watched her, awestruck. If a girl like that could overcome a boy who belonged on the Dallas Cowboys’ defensive line, maybe Aria could learn to keep her voice, too? He smiled to himself and turned to head to the locker rooms to get changed.

Mercifully, Randy wasn’t there, and the other boys were too busy gossiping about Elaine, ‘The Ice Queen’, how they heard from another upperclassman that she even beat adult men to get her A ranking. Of course some of it was typical school boy bullshit, like how ‘I totally heard they were going to make a new S rank just for her!’

Lewis rolled his eyes at that one. Still, he’d noticed on his way into the gym that there was an old utility closet just off from the coaches’ offices. He slipped away and crept inside

As he was fishing around on the shelf, digging through a cardboard box marked “REECYCLE”, Elaine’s voice caused him to jump, banging his head. All she’d done was clear her throat, too. “Ow.”

“Sorry,” Elaine giggled, leaning against the doorway, still in her fencing kit but with the fancy professional mask tucked under her arm. “Did you need help finding something?”

“Just looking for a VGA cable for a really old PC I found,” he said. He pulled out an old, beige cable that looked like a rat had chewed right through it and frowned. “Like this, only... Not chewed through,” he sighed, throwing both halves back into the box.

Elaine walked closer. She reached into the box and pulled out the cable halves, inspecting them critically. “Hey, this isn’t as bad as it looks. See, there’s no corrosion on the wires. I can solder them back together if you want.”

“Really?” Lewis asked.

Elaine shrugged. “Sure.” She reached behind her and pulled out a clear, silver-wire cord from her jacket. “See this? It’s my lucky Ulman body cord. I’ve had to resolder it five or six times now, but I won’t enter a 6A tournament without it. Give me a day or two, I’ll have it ready for you. Three at the most since I’ve got an intense practice schedule. It’s just finding time that’s the hard part.”

“What can I do for you in return?” Lewis asked. “I mean that’s a lot of work just for a janky old power cable.”

“It’s like, five minutes, tops,” Elaine laughed. “Just... Don’t turn into another jackass like Randy and we’ll call it even, okay?”

Lewis smiled. “No worries there. Thank you for that amazing demonstration by the way. I know there was something deeper there, and I won’t ask you about it, but... I needed to see that today.”

“No problem. Thanks for not swooning,” Elaine laughed as she threaded her lucky cord back into her jacket, and then picked up the two chewed pieces, carrying them out with her.

The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoe Taylor

She wanted to be like Elaine, or Lyra. She wanted that effortless poise, that command of the stage while strutting around in a flawless, Clarity Beige pleated skirt and tailored blazer. These were taboo thoughts, thoughts she had buried before, and yet... And yet now she couldn’t stop the flood of emotions anymore. The dam had burst, and she started to cry softly.

She wasn’t a project, and she wasn’t a train wreck. She just was. She leapt up and rushed out of the room, not wanting her sobs to carry all the way across the theater, especially when she heard the thud of the heavy Chemistry book slam shut below. Did Heather hear already? She ran back, turning off the CD player, and then disappeared into the shadows of the utility corridor, trying not to breathe as she listened.

---

“Yo, Aria,” Heather said warmly as Lewis or Aria, entered the theater. She stepped out of the booth. “I was beginning to worry that I’d scared you off.”

“I just needed some time to recover after gym class today,” Aria said, “Today was ‘new experience’ day - fencing. My quads feel like I’ve been riding one of those mechanical bulls you only ever see in TV shows about old bars.”

Heather giggled. “I actually know where there’s a real one of those, if you ever want to try it. I wouldn’t recommend it, but,” she shrugged. “I heard about Randy though.”

“You did?” Aria asked as they walked down to the stage together.

“Yeah. I mean, Elaine’s right across from me on my dorm floor. It’s easy for the walls to have ears when your floormates are swearing like a sailor,” she giggled. “I guess you had a front row seat,” she said. She no longer had to unlock the ‘Jessica’ door, and hadn’t for some time now. She was just walking with Aria to be social. “I don’t actually have anything for you today, I’m just here hiding out from an AP Chemistry exam that I didn’t study for, but if you want to go up to the observation room and just, decompress or whatever, I promise I’ll stay out of your hair.”

Aria walked up onto the stage and stepped through, but she looked out through the open ‘Jessica’ door, hand on the railing to ascend the stairs. “Hey, Heather?”

“Yo?” Heather said, not looking up. She had actually found an old Chemistry textbook somewhere, rather than using the digital tablet e-book most students used, and was staring intensely at a page, like she could will it into making sense by sheer force of personality, and failing.

“Thanks for letting me decomp here.”

Heather looked up at her. She gave her a small, sad smile. “Thanks for putting up with me. I know I’m a lot to deal with. I really do like you, Aria - warts and all,” she teased.

“Ribbit,” Aria answered, causing Heather to laugh, before ascending the stairs into the catwalks. Maybe Madison was wrong about her? No sixteen year old could be THAT good of an actress; if she was, she wouldn’t be at Clarity Prep. She’d be on the sound stage of a Disney production like all the other child stars.

Aria climbed up to the observation room and sank into the chair. She leaned down, switching the power switch on the CD player. She didn’t actually expect it to turn on, and yet, the disk drive gave a little whirr of complaint, like it had just been asleep and was yawning back at her. She pressed the ‘Next’ button until the LCD displayed a ‘09’ and pressed ‘Play’’, but turned the volume down low enough that it wouldn’t disturb Heather down below.

Amidst the symphonic rock of the intro organ and Tarja’s stunning, dark vocals, Aria leaned her head back, looking at the graffiti, the ‘Sing, my angel of music’ that W.W. had written there.

“God, Wish you were here right now, whoever you were,” Aria sighed. “I bet you wouldn’t be afraid of just... being yourself.”

No one answered. No magical mentor named W.W. or R.W. or even Raven emerged from the shadows to hold her hand, like this was some kind of mystical adventure, nor did she expect it.

She just sat in silent thought, letting the metal and the wails of Tarja wash over her, cleansing away the emotional grime of the past month as she shut her eyes, daydreaming of what it would be like to be Christine for just one, fleeting, beautiful night.

“Your spirit and my voice, in one combined...” the words drifted up from the speakers and Lewis, Aria, reached a hand up to touch her throat. Even in the starched, sawtooth chain of a Lewis mask, she realized here, and now, she didn’t simply want to keep her soprano, although now it was down to a mezzo soprano. She didn’t want to be the boy who can sing like a girl.

She wanted to be like Elaine, or Lyra. She wanted that effortless poise, that command of the stage while strutting around in a flawless, Clarity Beige pleated skirt and tailored blazer. These were taboo thoughts, thoughts she had buried before, and yet... And yet now she couldn’t stop the flood of emotions anymore. The dam had burst, and she started to cry softly.

She wasn’t a project, and she wasn’t a train wreck. She just was. She leapt up and rushed out of the room, not wanting her sobs to carry all the way across the theater, especially when she heard the thud of the heavy Chemistry book slam shut below. Did Heather hear already? She ran back, turning off the CD player, and then disappeared into the shadows of the utility corridor, trying not to breathe as she listened.

When she didn’t hear the telltale steps of sneakers on metal floor grating, she knew she was safe. She pressed her back to the wall and threw her head back. Instead of a scream like in the music room, she inhaled deeply, straightened her posture, and let a clear, deep, resonant note ring out. Tarja had a beautiful, dark, brooding voice full of body. Aria wanted a voice like that.

“The Phantom of the opera is me, inside my mind,” she sang, voice echoing, carrying and filling the corridors with the somber song. She knew she had to get to class - one last class to end the day, but now? Now she could face it, Lewis mask be damned.

For just the briefest moment, she thought she could smell a hint of mint in the air. It was as alien as, well, as an octopus on Mars, come to think of it. The dry, acrid, dusty air being disrupted by the sharp, fresh scent of mint just made as much sense as a screen door on a submarine, but there it was. Aria wrinkled her nose. It was gone now. Probably just a phantom smell. She turned to make her way back downstairs. English Lit 1 waited for no man - or woman.

Outside, a rainstorm had finally begun and it wasn’t just the heat shower microburst of the other day. This was a full gale, heavy rain and thunder, and by the time Aria got to class, small bits of hail had begun to pelt her. To her relief, the NFC readers were all glowing a solid green. Apparently someone had initiated an emergency weather override, at least on the external doors. She ducked inside, panting heavily.

Aria entered the classroom and immediately removed her wool blazer, hanging it across the back of the chair so it would dry faster. Lewis would have just suffered with it. Aria was more pragmatic, and frankly, cared less about the Clarity Silhouette inside a classroom anyway. The teacher, Mr. Pearce, was standing next to the digital smart board, preparing the day’s lecture and glanced over his shoulder.

“Wet enough for you?” he said jokingly.

“It’s the second coming of Noah out there,” Aria laughed. “You don’t think there’s going to be a tornado do you?”

“Nah, I think we’re only at a 1% risk, Torcon 1,” he answered jovially. “Although with how blasted hot it’s been for September, nothing would surprise me. If there is an emergency,” he said, pointing up at the old intercom system, its boxy brown speaker perched like a wart on a very large, beige frog as he continued, for the benefit of the other students coming in,”They won’t announce it over the Clarity network. They’ll use the old intercoms. That way everyone knows what’s going on.”

The smell of mint caught Aria for a second time in the past ten minutes, and she glanced up. This time, it wasn’t Madison either, just a freshman girl taking an Icebreaker mint from a packet in her purse. She smiled and offered the packet to Aria.

“Oh,” Aria said, graciously accepting it. “Thank you.”

“I forgot to brush my teeth this morning,” the girl admitted with a sheepish smile as she put the packet away again. ‘Dont’ judge.”

“Now, I believe we left off previously discussing the standard interpretations of novels such as The Great Gatsby and The Strange Tale of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.” He tapped the smart board, and a rendering of Victorian London appeared. “So, as you may recall, we were discussing how the common interpretation is that Jekyll’s failure was his inability to compartmentalize his so-called ‘non-standard’ urges. In essence, he lost control of the transition. Anyone have any thoughts?”

Aria felt her ‘Lewis’ mask tighten, but not because of the starched too tight shirt collar. This was one of those moments where Lewis would just smile, nod, and accept the established answer as being the correct one. Aria’s hand shot up before she could stop herself, and the Lewis mask became a passenger in her own mind - not a split personality or a whole new person by any means, not like Jekyll and Hyde. It was just that the mild mannered Dr. Chambers mask was finally off, and Ms. Aria was in control.

“I don’t think he lost control of the transition, Mr. Pearce..” Her voice rang out more clear and resonant than it had in the last two weeks. “I think he just realized that Hyde was the only one actually breathing, actually alive.”

The room fell as silent as a Victorian graveyard at midnight, the sounds of rain, small hailstohnes, and punctuating thunder more prominent in the background now than they had been just a moment ago. Mr Pearce paused, stylus mid-air above the digital whiteboard. He turned to look at Aria. “Care to elaborate?” he asked, intrigued. That was not the standard textbook answer, and Aria knew it, but, she was prepared to defend her stance.

“In the book, Hyde is portrayed as a deformed version of Jekyll, but what if Hyde only looks deformed because he’s being viewed through a standard, conformist lens? Jekyll didn’t drink his serum to be a villain. He drank it because in his world, being the perfect, respected board certified scholar was a slow, agonizing suicide by attrition. He failed because he tried to live in two worlds that were built to exclude each other, like an octopus on Mars, eight brains trying to pull him in eight different directions, and the air finally ran out.”

Mr. Pearce nearly dropped the stylus, his jaw briefly open. “That... definitely isn’t an interpretation I’ve heard before, but I’m going to accept it and give you a 10 point bonus for adequately explaining your point. This brings to mind the philosophy of the death of the author. Is anyone familiar with the concept?”

To Aria’s surprise, she heard Kris’ voice at the back of the room. She didn’t even know Kris was in this class.

“Death of the author isn’t a literal death, but the concept that the author’s intent dies as soon as the written word gets into the hands of a reader. It’s up to us as readers to find our own meaning in works, just as much as we should try to interpret the author’s original intent. It’s what makes art art, and not AI slop.”

That got a round of applause, including from Aria. It was the perfect punctuation, a searing exclamation mark on her own statement. Or, maybe the extremely powerful Icebreaker mint was just starting to burn her tongue enough to make her feel alive. Six of one.

Kris caught up to Aria after class, and playfully bumped her shoulder. “Octopus on Mars? Jesus christ dude, that was fucking poetry.”

Aria giggled. “It better be. It’s how I spent my first month and change here - feeling exactly like that. Now, it feels more like the octopus finally figured out how to work the rocket’s controls and it’s on its way back to Earth, at least.”

Kris laughed. “Nice. Oh hey before I forget, Elaine says she’ll have that cable ready this afternoon. You can come by the girls’ dorm and pick it up after class, or I can bring it to you.”

“Wait,” Aria said, stopping to turn and face Kris, who stopped as well. “You know Elaine?”

“Yeah,” Kris shrugged. “She’s my dorm mate. You got assigned an upperclassman too, didn’t you? The whole “Put the new blood with the old and hope they don’t bleed out into the hallway” thing. She’s actually pretty chill though, for a girl.”

They paused as a loud clap of thunder quite literally made the walls around them shake. “I’ll see what the storm does,” Aria said. “If you don’t see me standing outside the girls’ dorm drenched to the bone by, say, 4PM go ahead and bring it, but I’d love to see what it’s like in no man’s land.”

Kris rolled her eyes. “It’s just like the boys’ dorm but with a lot more perfume and body spray. Just tell the RA or floor advisor or whoever we invited you if anyone asks, but I doubt they will, honestly.”

---

Author's Note:

Just a fun, useless piece of trivia to chew on, but this chapter, and the next two chapters, are set against the aftermath of the very real September thunderstorms that rolled through Iowa in 2025. So if you live in the midwest and you remember those storms, I'm sorry for the PTSD flashbacks I may be about to cause you <3

The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoe Taylor

They both gasped. “Jesus Christ,” Elaine said. “Did... Did you actually run through that?” she asked, pointing her hand with the cable toward the door, where hail stones slammed hard against the glass, ineffectually trying to penetrate the newfound fortress.

“I was already halfway here so I didn’t really have a choice. I thought the hail was over, then,” she paused, another thunderclap causing her to flinch, “It opened up like the wrath of God.”

“Well,” Elaine said as she strolled over, placing the cable down on the arm of the sofa next to Aria, “I’m sorry to say, you’re not going anywhere until this lets up. I hope you can stand our company that long.”

---

The Student Union only had one color of umbrella available, and in that cosmic humor way, it wasn’t Clarity beige, but neon purple. To add insult to injury, it only kept the rain and then the quarter sized hail stones that were falling straight down from concussing her. They did absolutely nothing to stop those being blown by the 25 mile per hour wind straight into her body, ignoring the meager protection entirely.

By the time she arrived at, and burst through the doors of the girls’ dorm, soaked to the bone, shivering, and battered, she was ready to collapse. “In case anybody’s curious,” she groaned, a soft croak as every muscle in her body panged from exertion and newly bruised flesh, “There’s quarter inch hail falling now.”

“Jesus Tap Dancing Christ,” a girl with black hair, wearing red framed glasses said, and leapt over a foot stool to rush to Aria’s side. Aria was too exhausted, cold, and in too much pain to realize she was one of the ‘theater royalty’ just at the moment. “You actually ran through all that?”

“Didn’t have a choice,” Aria groaned. “I was already halfway here when the hail started. I was on my way over to meet with Elaine,” she said, as the girl took her by the arm and guided her into the common room, making her sit down.

Rather than the tang of sweat, aftershave, Axe body spray, and testosterone, Aria settled almost immediately into a soft, welcoming cloud of vanilla rose perfume left by whomever had been sitting in the space previously., and probably applied it there, seeing as how just the act of sitting down kicked it up all around her.

“Let me get you a hot cocoa,” the girl said and quickly scurried over to the coffee bar and espresso machine. They had one in the boys’ dorm too, but as far as Aria knew, nobody ever used it. This was the first time Aria had ever seen anyone using the electric kettle.

“You didn’t get hit in the head did you?” she asked conversationally as she waited for the electric kettle to boil the water. Aria shook her head.

“No, thankfully. Just everywhere else. The umbrella kept most of it off, but it’s not falling straight down. The wind’s knocking it sideways. I feel bad for anybody who didn’t put their cars in the parking garage. Thank you so much,” she said as the girl brought the steaming cup of hot cocoa over and carefully placed it in her hands.

“Don’t mention it,” she said. “Chambers right?” she asked. “Puck with up,” she ribbed gently.

“Yeah,” Aria said, sipping the cocoa.

“I’m Vanessa. My roommate Heather talks about you all the time.”

Aria lifted her gaze to look at Vanessa. “Oh no. What does she say?”

Vanessa laughed. “Just how much she appreciates someone willing to roll up their sleeves. And honestly? Me too. If Heather is the theater’s drill sergeant, I’m its conductor. Costumes, backstage directions, while she’s managing the big picture I’m in the back praying to God the super tack holds long enough for Juliet to stab herself without a clothing malfunction.”

Aria shivered, clinging to the porcelain cup in her hands as if it contained pure, liquid oxygen and the rocket ship had just crashed back down to the Martian surface. Vanessa watched thoughtfully, and that didn’t help. She was... studying her, and it unnerved her.

“I know it’s not my place to say anything, Chambers,” Vanessa said quietly, “But you don’t look like you’re occupying space. You look like you’re hiding in it. Or from it.”

Aria lifted her gaze, trying to formulate a Lewis response, but the elevator dinged. Elaine and Kris stepped out.

Neither were wearing their scholar standard uniforms. Elaine had on a comfortable hoodie, her long, dark brown hair lying back over her shoulders and back now, and she held the beige cable, now patched with a professional black shrinkwrap where it had been soldered. Kris was wearing an extremely loud, neon yellow and blue tie dyed tee shirt that made green streaks where the yellow and blue haphazardly crossed paths, and a pair of baggy cargo shorts.

They both gasped. “Jesus Christ,” Elaine said. “Did... Did you actually run through that?” she asked, pointing her hand with the cable toward the door, where hail stones slammed hard against the glass, ineffectually trying to penetrate the newfound fortress.

“I was already halfway here so I didn’t really have a choice. I thought the hail was over, then,” she paused, another thunderclap causing her to flinch, “It opened up like the wrath of God.”

“Well,” Elaine said as she strolled over, placing the cable down on the arm of the sofa next to Aria, “I’m sorry to say, you’re not going anywhere until this lets up. I hope you can stand our company that long.”

Aria tried her best not to let just how much she wanted to be here right now shine through, but the Lewis mask didn’t just feel like cardboard, it felt like soggy, hail-battered cardboard. Between the aching muscles from fencing class that morning, the soaring high of her own realization in the rafters, and then the intellectual victory, getting a whole ass ten bonus points added to her GPA for the semester, it was getting harder and harder to put up even a little fake resistance.

“I don’t mind,” she said, having finally settled on that as the best compromise she could muster. Kris smirked to herself, but didn’t say a word as Elaine walked over to the coffee bar. “Kris? You want the usual?”

“Yeah, if you don’t mind,” Kris answered, taking a seat while Aria watched out of the corner of her eye. She wasn’t performing reconnaissance, by any means. She was just curious what ‘the usual’ would be for a girl like Kris, an absolute enigma of a person.

She was a little surprised then, to see Elaine fire up the electric kettle, pour up some hot water, and take a muslin saché of Lady Grey, dropping it in the cup, while she busied herself with the steam of the espresso machine for her own drink.

“I hate coffee,” Kris said, seemingly noticing Aria’s interest.

“I have to have it doped with sugar and some kind of syrup,” Aria said. Outside the golf balls had graduated to baseballs, and their frequency had increased - literally and in volume.

“You and me both,” Vanessa said, finally releasing Aria from her scrutinizing gaze. “If I don’t have at least two shots of mocha and a dollop of oat milk I can’t. I refuse,” she said as Elaine brought Kris’ tea over to her, and Aria realized that since arriving, this was the most time she’d spent in a common room.

“So, hey,” Elaine said, “Kris said you guys found an old Gateway PC, an actual cow box from the early days?” she asked, nodding toward the patched cable.

“Oh, oh yeah, somebody went to a lot of trouble to hide this thing. Not only is it off the network, it’s in a DIY Faraday cage. But, that might just be to keep it from blasting out EMI because there’s a couple of expensive mics and some old sound boards in there, too. It’s like a hidden recording studio - top of the line 20 years ago. I love going there to practice singing without bothering anybody.”

Elaine nodded thoughtfully. “Damn. That’s like lifting your bed and finding buried gold underneath it. And it was just... hidden this whole time?”

“Yeah, right under everyone’s noses,” Kris laughed. “Everyone but Chambers here, anyway.”

“Hope it was worth it at least,” Vanessa said. “You look like you went to war for that damn beige snake.”

“I feel like it,” Aria said honestly, finishing her cocoa just as a particularly loud chunk of hail slammed against the brick wall. Another inch to the right, and it probably would have shattered the window. Everyone but Elaine jumped, and Kris even squealed. Elaine just sat, quietly sipping her espresso.

An older girl, definitely senior in every respect, stepped into the common room. She looked poised and polished, and even her ponytail looked symmetrically planned, which made her Minnie Mouse tee shirt haphazardly hanging on her frame look even more comical.

“This isn’t letting up, so I’m enacting emergency dinner plans. Someone’ll be here soon with an armored delivery truck.” She wasn’t joking. She didn’t smirk when she said it, and, Aria had no trouble believing her. Clarity didn’t half-ass anything. They probably had one of those ‘Dominator’ vehicles storm chasers on YouTube and TikTok loved so much, exclusively to deliver meals on wheels to the dorms.

“I wonder if I can catch a ride back to my dorm with the delivery truck,” Aria mused. Kris gave her arm a playful, light punch, not hard enough to leave a mark, just enough to get her attention.

“Are we that bad?” she asked.

“Oh, oh God no,” Aria laughed, the Lewis mask sliding down her face for a moment. “I just feel bad, like I’m intruding on something.”

“Well, you’re not,” Vanessa shrugged. “So stop fidgeting and relax. Let me get you some more cocoa,” she said, standing up and reaching out a hand. She waited for Aria to hand her the cup. Suddenly the side fire door opened, and in walked two people wheeling a massive steel cart laden with styrofoam boxes, even as more girls slowly emerged behind them, coming down from upstairs.

Through the open fire door and the outside access, the storm howled, and sure enough, Aria could see the Dominator vehicle, hear the hail ineffectually slap against its double shielded metal skin, even as the pair who had entered looked like they were practically in space suits - probably some kind of specially shielded hazmat suits that let them not get beaten to hell while they unloaded the truck.

“Man,” Aria whispered, “Clarity doesn’t half ass anything do they?”

“Nope,” Elaine said as she got up, returning with two boxes. She pressed one into Aria’s hands. “Eat something. You burned like 4k calories today.” She winked and sat back down, as Vanessa brought a fresh cup of cocoa over to her.

Other girls were joining them now. Not a single one of them, not even Madison, gave her a second glance, which genuinely shocked her. Madison of all people, she just knew would have something smart assed to say, but she looked just as shaken up by the storm as Aria felt. She was wearing a two sizes too big beige hoodie, the usual intensity in her emerald eyes replaced with a nervous tick every time the thunder rolled or an intense hail stone smashed against a wall by the window.

Aria opened the lid, the intense, wonderful smell of garlic lasagna filling her lungs. She realized she hadn’t eaten anything since her egg McMuffin in the Student Union this morning, and her stomach reminded her of that fact with a loud, annoyed rumble only covered up by the roar of hail and the rumbling thunder.

She wasn’t Lewis, the stranger in a strange land. She was Aria, the refugee in a rainsoaked blazer, and even her would-be rivals acknowledged that. She didn’t feel like a museum piece or a mascot. She felt like part of the scenery, like everyone else. It felt incredible, and she longed for the moment to last. As she tore into the lasagna, stopping only to grab a bite of garlic bread, she began to wonder if there was some way it could?

The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoe Taylor

Madison slid down a couple of stairs until she was sitting next to Aria. “I don’t think we’re even yet,” she said.

“Oh?” Aria asked. “You want something more?”

Madison snorted. “No. Yes. I don’t know. This,” she said, waving a frantic hand to indicate herself, the stairwell, the storm, everything.

“This isn’t enough to make up for me not screaming when I walked in on you in the girls’ bathroom. That was a ‘lol meet cute’ BS Disney moment. This is real. This is you seeing the Madison that hasn’t freaking existed since I was a freshman, and used to pray to God nobody heard me crying in the east wing stairwell, where the acoustics made my sobs sound like a tragic French opera..."

---

Mom: omg Lewis are you ok???
Lewis: Yeah. I’m sitting with my friends watching the storm.
Lewis: We had emergency dinner delivered lasagna in a dominator van lol
Mom: Oh thank God I was so worried
Mom: Did u hear about the tornado in Centerville?

“Oh my God,” Aria whispered, looking at her phone.

“What?” Madison asked, not the usual catty brat, but just as on edge as Aria felt when she first came in. Aria looked up from her phone.

“My mom just texted me. There was an EF 3 that hit Centerville.”

Madison flinched her eyes shut tightly for a moment. “I fucking hate storms. God damit.”

“We’re okay,” the senior RA said, placing her hand on Madison’s shoulder. “It’s starting to let up now. If we get a siren we can move into the shelter under the common room.”

“Yeah, okay,” Madison sighed. “Still not going to sleep for the next two days.”

Aria stayed quiet. Part of her actually wanted to try and comfort Madison, but, after everything Madison had put her through, why should she stick her neck out? It was good medicine for a bratty girl. No, no it wasn’t. Come on Aria, you’re better than that. Don’t sink to her level.

“Well, hey,” Aria said, and Madison slowly looked up at her, shooting her a guarded stare, “At least we got a great meal out of it right?”

“Yeah, whatever,” Madison sighed, stood, and walked away. She pushed the elevator button, and when it refused to respond, she slammed a fist against it and stormed into the stairwell.

“... Sorry,” Aria said.

“Forget about it,” Elaine said. “She’s just being Madison.”

“Are... you sure she’s going to be okay?” Aria asked. “Yeah I know, she’s a bitch, but... Well? I’m not. But I don’t want to make it worse either.”

Kris shrugged her shoulders. “If you want to go after her, I’m not stopping you. Power’s out anyway so it’s not like we can actually boot up the beige box until they get it working again.”

Aria glanced between Kris, Vanessa, and Elaine. She sighed. “God damit. I’ll be right back.”

“She’ll bite your head off,” Elaine commented casually, but she smiled as she said it.

“If that’s what she needs to do to feel better,” Aria answered, “I won’t take it personally.” She pushed through the fire door, only the amber glow of the emergency lights illuminating the stairwell. Madison was sitting on the landing just above where the stairs turned and opened to the storm cellar access, out of sight, her hoodie drawn over her head and her knees drawn to her chest.

Aria descended the stairs, her loafers squeaking and squelching with every step. Madison glared as she approached, and buried her face in her knees.

“Don’t fucking say it,” she said bitterly. “Don’t even fucking say it. I don’t want to hear it. Not from you. Not now,” Madison said, biting back a sob.

Aria just sat down two steps below her, giving her some space, and the high ground. She stared down at the wall below them.

“I worked so hard, for so fucking long to get where I am, and one FUCKING STORM is all it takes to send me spiraling, and of course you of all FUCKING people have to be here to see it,” she hissed. “It’s karma. It’s motherfucking karma.” She raised her head, though Aria didn’t see it. “Well say something god damit!”

Aria slowly looked up at her. “You told me not to say ‘it’. I didn’t know what ‘it’ was, so... I decided I should just keep my mouth shut and let you yell - at the storm, at me, at Clarity Prep,” she rolled her shoulders. “Whatever you needed. I couldn’t just... leave you.”

“What’s it going to cost me?” Madison demanded. “A date? You want to brag to all your buddies in the boys’ dorm how you totally made out with Madison Fox in the stairwell during the storm? Go ahead. I don’t give a fuck. Not like they’ll believe you anyway.”

“Um...” Aria said, turning to look up at Madison. “I have two friends in this entire school. At least, I think they’re friends. I don’t honestly know yet. And they’re both upstairs, in your common room. And I’d never make something like that up about you or anyone. I know you think everything’s transactional, but I really did feel bad. I know how it feels to spiral, remember? I’m the fucking dipshit who stuck her hand in a big ass wad of nasty gum and then ran into the girls’ bathroom by mistake.”

She’d called herself ‘her’ in front of Madison. She actually said ‘her’. She didn’t just cross the Rubicon, she was swimming laps.

“If you want to make this a transaction,” she said, pressing forward asit was too late to take it back now, “Then, consider this us being even for you not screaming that day and getting me in trouble for an honest to God blow out mistake.”

Madison stared at Aria for a long, long moment, and then she started to laugh. “Yeah that was pretty fucking nasty. What the hell were you even doing groping around under your desk like that anyway?” she asked softly, her own mask faltering for a moment.

“I found a note the other day, from some old students. I got it in my head that if I looked elsewhere I might find more. I got a reality check, really fast.”

Madison raised a hand, using the sleeve of her hoodie to wipe away her tears. “Did you find what you were looking for at least? Besides some nasty ass gum.”

“Yeah. I think I did,” Aria said quietly, turning to face forward again.

Madison slid down a couple of stairs until she was sitting next to Aria. “I don’t think we’re even yet,” she said.

“Oh?” Aria asked. “You want something more?”

Madison snorted. “No. Yes. I don’t know. This,” she said, waving a frantic hand to indicate herself, the stairwell, the storm, everything.

“This isn’t enough to make up for me not screaming when I walked in on you in the girls’ bathroom. That was a ‘lol meet cute’ bullshit disney moment. This is real. This is you seeing the Madison that hasn’t fucking existed since I was a freshman, and used to pray to God nobody heard me crying in the east wing stairwell, where the acoustics made my sobs sound like a tragic French opera. Ask for something. Anything. I don’t care what it is. I’ll make out with you here and now. I’ll even go out on a date if that’s what you want. Just. I need something to make us square.”

Aria looked down at her hands, and then back up at Madison. Her tear stained cheeks glistened in the amber light.

“There is something I want, but I’m not going to make you give it to me. I’m sorry. I’m just... I’m not that kind of person. Maybe that’s who you want to be, who this place wants me to be, but I believe in death of the author.” She reached up her hand and lightly squeezed Madison’s. “If you want to give me something, then, tell me you’re going to be okay.”

Madison actually blushed, even in the amber light, her glistening cheeks glowed red and she looked away. Aria started to stand. Madison’s hand shot out and grabbed her hand, pulling her back down.

“Okay,” Madison said, “I’ll be fine. But before you go, I have to know what you wanted to ask. I mean that’s so fucking vague it’s going to drive me crazy not knowing.”

“But if I tell you, then it sounds like I’m asking for it,” Aria answered, still holding Madison’s hand, albeit with the sleeve of Madison’s hoodie as a barrier between their palms, she could still feel Madison’s fingers gripping her, keeping her from leaving.

“No it isn’t,” Madison said. “It’s you telling the stairway what you would ask Madison Fox, if you could ask her for anything in the world, and a girl in a Clarity hoodie just happens to be listening. What was it?”

Aria blushed now. “Don’t laugh.”

“No promises, Chambers,” Madison shot back, adding, “But... if I do laugh it won’t be at you.”

“I wanted to hear Madison call me Aria, just once, here, while no one else is listening.

Madison blinked a couple of times. “That... That’s it?”

“Yup,” Aria said. “That’s it. Like I said, I’m not asking. I’m just... telling the stairwell.

Madison reached her free hand up and pulled back her hoodie. “If you say so, Aria.”

She leaned over, not to kiss Aria. A kiss would be a violation of their new found sacred trust, their truce. She did lean her head on Aria’s shoulder though. “Thank you for coming to check on me. I... Nobody ever checks on me. You’re lucky you have actual, real friends waiting for you up there. I have a fucking entourage because it’s just... It’s safer that way. My one and only ride or die friend is lucky enough to be off campus visiting her parents during this shit so I can’t even confide in her.”

“Well,” Aria said softly. “If you ever need to get away from the entourage and just breathe, the acoustics in the catwalks above the theater are so much better than any stairwell.”

That time, Madison did laugh a little. She squeezed Aria’s hand again before finally letting it go, and they just sat in silence, letting their body heat warm each other for a full five minutes of pure, blissful silence. Suddenly the groan of an HVAC finding itself prodded awake like a sleeping dragon echoed in the stairwell. Madison pulled away and ran both sleeves over her cheeks to ensure any last traces of saltwater were mopped away.

“Tell Elaine that fucking cable had better be out of our common room by morning. It’s bad enough she stinks up our whole floor soldering that crap,” she said, her cynical, grumpy crocodile mask returning. She cracked just the tiniest smile as she and Aria looked at each other. “See you in AP Gov Monday, Aria.”

They parted ways there, Aria heading back to the common room while Madison continued up to her floor. She pushed the door open. Kris had her hand hovering inches from the door, and retracted it with a surprised laugh.

“Jeez there you are. I was beginning to think she shoved you down the stairs. All good?” she asked.

Aria smiled thoughtfully and nodded. “Yeah, all good.”

The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoe Taylor

Aria gets a temporary respite from having to return to her old dorm that might not actually be that temporary, after the storm left Clarity campus in shambles. By a vote of the floor majority, she's officially unofficially a refugee under Elaine and Kris' protections now

---

Author's Note:

Sorry this one's a bit late! I had to go through and remove the emoji from the texts because they crash Drupal :D

When Aria tried to leave the dorm, the senior RA called after her. “Hey, where do you think you’re going?”

Aria turned and looked over her shoulder. “I was going to try and get back to my dorm?”

“Nu uh,” she said. “It’s way too dangerous out there. Go and see Nurse Amber and I’ll see about getting you a bed for the night here. There are trees and powerlines down all over the campus, no buts,” she said firmly.

Aria’s heart skipped a beat. “Here? Tonight?” she squeaked.

“Hey Sara, we’ve got two extra beds in our room remember? Because Tracy washed out, and Laura wanted to bunk with her cousin on 3?”

“Hey, that’s right,” Sara answered. “You sure you two don’t mind?”

“Hell no,” Kris said, shaking her head. “I’ll vouch for them.”

Them...

She was officially a ‘them’ now, not a boy in a soggy blazer. Aria couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

“That makes three of us,” Heather said.

“Four,” Lyra added.

“Five,” Vanessa chimed in. “And that makes it a floor majority. If Madison has a problem with it she can sleep in the storm cellar.”

“You heard the mob, Chambers,” Sara said, motioning with a beckoning finger. “Come on, I’ll walk you over to our medical office.”

“I... Thank you,” Aria said softly as she moved to follow Sara, clinging to her soggy umbrella like a life preserver on a choppy and unfamiliar sea.

“While you’re getting checked out I’ll find you something dry so you don’t freeze to death on us,” she said, leaving Aria at the door. Nurse Amber was waiting just inside the office, listening to a NOAA weather radio broadcast, but she switched it off and looked up on hearing Aria and Sara’s voices.

“Jesus Christ,” she said softly as she sprang to her feet, ushering Aria to a chair. “I thought I heard someone got caught out in this mess but you look like you went five rounds with Creed,” she teased.

“I feel like it,” Aria groaned. “But the lasagna helped.”

Nurse Amber checked Aria over, poking and prodding at particularly bad bruises, and even bandaging one of the more severe welts on her arm with some waterproof medical adhesive because, as it turned out, she was prescribing Aria at least a 20 minute hot shower. She didn’t have signs of a concussion at least, which Aria already knew, but it was nice to have a medical professional’s confirmation.

***

By the time she had managed to find her way to the fourth floor things had settled down a bit at least. The rain still pelted hard against the pod walls, but the hail had stopped, and the wind had died down a bit.

Aria was surprised to find how similar the girls’ dorms were to the boys’, and yet, they were so different too. For one thing, the carpet had that same drab charcoal low pile ‘dorm’ vibe, the same off-purple Clarity Beige™ wall paint, and even similar geometric and abstract art prints on the walls, but the dorms felt more subdued and quiet, and not just because of the storm.

Girls were moving about and chatting, mostly about the storm, the tornado in Centerville, just trying to wind down after the terrible evening. Hardly anyone paid Aria any attention. The door to 401 was wide open and someone’s stereo or speakers were playing Billie Eilish, but it wasn’t obnoxiously loud.

A girl with ash blonde hair, wearing nothing but a lacey pink bra and sweat pants emerged from 402 right as Aria came close.

“Oh, sorry, didn’t see you,” she said, nearly running into Aria, and flashing her an apologetic smile. She didn’t scream or demand to know why a boy was on their floor. Aria didn’t even clock that she looked a lot like Heather, just much more athletic. She was in her own anxious world of trying to decide if she belonged here or not.

“Next one up,” she heard Madison say softly next to her. “You’re looking for Elaine and Kris’ room. It’s the next one up.”

“Oh,” Aria said, turning to look at Madison, who was just leaning in her doorway now. “Thanks.”

Madison shrugged her shoulders. “Sure,” she said and turned to walk back into her room.

Elaine and Kris, because they had a four bed pod, actually had the luxury of their own private bathroom and shower with private stalls so as soon as Aria got there, Elaine showed her to it, and even handed her the white Clarity hoodie and sweat pants Sara had dropped off for her to change into.

“You can use my hair dryer if you need to dry your underwear, if you’re as soaked through as you look like you are,” Elaine said. “We’ll let you have the whole bathroom to yourself. Take as long as you need, okay?”

“Thanks,” Aria said. “This is all so... I keep wondering if I died out there in that storm and this is heaven, except heaven wouldn’t hurt this much.”

Elaine giggled, giving Aria that same knowing smile Kris liked to give her, but didn’t say anything, just closed the bathroom door behind Aria so she could have her promised privacy.

She leaned her back against the door and breathed deeply. Something smelled like lilacs and coconut, an odd combination, probably soap and shampoo? But more importantly, one of the rocks the octopus had been juggling had just suddenly turned into a dove, and two of the eight legs had decided it was better to work together.

Sure enough, when she stripped down and entered the shower, the default option soap, something she’d never used in the boys’ dorm, smelled strongly of lilacs. The coconut smell seemed to be coming from the shampoo dispenser.

She made copious use of both, scrubbing away any last remnants of the Lewis mask and watching as they washed down the drain under the gentle, almost spa-like tap of the rain shower heads - ironically giving her soul and body a much needed healing moment after the icy rain and hail stone assault from earlier in the evening.

***

When she finally emerged a full 45 minutes later, scrubbed clean, dry, and warm in her Clarity hoodie and sweat pants, the girl in the lacey pink bra had returned, wearing an Abney Park tee shirt now, and she was balancing three big bowls of popcorn in her hands.

“Jess’ roommate in 405 fired up their popcorn machine,” she said, passing out bowls to Kris and Elaine before approaching Aria with the third, the smell of salty butter and dry kernels, the perfect icing on the proverbial cake that she needed.

“Thank you so much. Can... Can I ask you a stupid question?”

‘Shoot,” the girl said, grinning. “You want to know if I’m related to Heather?” Aria nodded sheepishly, taking a bite of popcorn as she laughed. “We’re twins. Nobody believes it at first because we’re so different, but we like to joke she got all the creativity and I got the athleticism. I’m Cassandra, but everybody calls me Sandy.”

“I’m Aria,” Aria said without thinking.

“Well, Aria,” Sandy said, “if you need anything else don’t even hesitate to ask. I’ve got a mini fridge full of Black Cherry Dr. Pepper and 401 has Pepsi Zero if you want one.”

“Can I have a Black Cherry Dr. Pepper?” Aria asked. “I love those things.”

“Sure thing. I’ll be right back.”

Aria slowly eased herself onto one of the unoccupied beds. Elaine’s was obvious by the fencing trophies on the headboard, and Kris was relaxing on hers, looking at her tablet, but there were two more, one of which actually had a blanket and pillow on it while the other just seemed shoved sideways to get it out of the way until someone came along to claim it.

“Aria huh?” Kris said, looking over at her. “That’s pretty.”

“Thanks,” Aria said. “It’s funny. It’s a solo, but I don’t feel like a soloist anymore.”

“You belong here more than I do,” Kris said bluntly. Aria looked up at her. She waved a hand at the air. “Don’t think too hard about it. I’ll explain when you’re less frazzled. I don’t think you could handle another surprise tonight anyway,” she said, as Sandy reappeared, holding not a can, but a 20 oz bottle.

“Thank you so, so much,” Aria said. “I’ll pay you back later.”

“No, you won’t,” Sandy laughed. “I’m the only one on our floor who likes these things - or I was. Having someone else justify my weird tastes is payment enough.”

Sara: Hey chambers just letting you know I’ve talked to Director Winters and
your student link is authorized once the NFC is fixed you’re officially
our guest until further notice because the north quad is trashed
its just too dangerous [smiling face emoji] [school house emoji]

Aria sat up, looked at her phone, and let out another squeak. Elaine glanced casually over at her. “I just became a permanent refugee ‘until further notice’ because my dorm’s a mess, apparently.”

“One of us, one of us,” Elaine and Kris chanted in unison. Aria groaned, but laughed as she wrote a response. The Martian octopus finally found a reef to cling to.

Lewis: OMG thank you Sara! [folded hands emoji]

The Dead Pixel Society

© 2026 Zoe Taylor

...Elaine coughed. “Pardon my American. But, you’re gaslighting yourself again babe.“

“Again?” Aria asked. “I didn’t realize I was doing it a first time.”

Elaine laughed as she got up, nursing the ice pack against her wrist, and walked over to sit beside her. “You’ve been doing it all night. Every time someone looks at you, you flinch back like you’re going to be slapped. Look I get it, you’re in a weird situation, and you’ve been living a... What’s Heather call it?” Elaine looked at Kris.

“Trouser role,” Kris said without missing a beat.

---

After what was quite possibly the best night’s sleep Aria had ever had, she found herself jolted awake to the sounds of chainsaws and heavy machinery the next morning. She sat bolt upright and groggily looked around. Kris was sitting on her bed looking at her tablet again, with no sign of Elaine.

“So last night wasn’t a dream,” Aria said quietly. Kris laughed.

“Nope. Elaine wishes it was though. She’s down in the infirmary. I’ll let her tell you what happened if she’s comfortable with it, but uh, just gonna say you’re not the only one that found,” Kris paused at the sound of another chainsaw being fired up just below them, albeit four floors down, “That jarring. They’re delivering catering down in the common room if you’re hungry though.”

“Oh, it’s not those nasty, runny eggs is it?” Aria groaned."The catering last night was to die for, but those cafeteria people can’t scramble an egg to save their lives.”

“Nah,” Kris said, “It’s McDonalds from the Student Union. We’re stuck due to the storm damage.”

“How bad is it? My text from Sara said the north quad was trashed. Did anyone get seriously hurt?”

Kris shook her head."Just a few like you who got caught out in the nastier hail. How are you feeling by the way?”

Better,” Aria yawned."Except I wish I’d slept in my noise cancelling headphones now.”

“Yeah, me too,” Elaine groaned from the doorway."Amber says it’s just a bruise, but to take it easy for a couple of days.” She had a reusable ice pack pressed against her wrist."Kris tell you what happened?”

“Nope,” Kris answered for her, grinning."I figured I’d let you embarrass yourself.”

“You’re too kind,” Elaine sighed."I’m seventeen years old, an elite athlete, and a fencer no less, and I fell out of my fucking bed,” she grumped, plopping on her bed.

Aria, rather than laughing, gave her a sympathetic smile."That almost happened to me the other week when my asshole neighbor the next dorm over decided 7am was a perfect time to blast Metallica at full volume through his new 20” speakers, right by my bedroom wall.”

Elaine did laugh at that."Ouch. Don’t your floor advisors enforce noise ordinances over there? Jeez, Becky’d come down hard on anybody pulling that crap on our floor, if Madison didn’t get to them first.”

“Only after midnight or before 7,” Aria sighed."It’s kind of my fault for being up so late working the catwalks.”

“Bullshit,” Elaine said, and then coughed."Pardon my American. But, you’re gaslighting yourself again babe."

“Again?” Aria asked."I didn’t realize I was doing it a first time.”

Elaine laughed as she got up, nursing the ice pack against her wrist, and walked over to sit beside her."You’ve been doing it all night. Every time someone looks at you, you flinch back like you’re going to be slapped. Look I get it, you’re in a weird situation, and you’ve been living a... What’s Heather call it?” Elaine looked at Kris.

“Trouser role,” Kris said without missing a beat.

“Right, a trouser role - you know, where a female plays a male character in a play. But you’re our guest, and nobody, not even the Queen Bee can do anything to take that away from you. You’ve already proven to us that you belong here. Now, you just have to let everyone else see that too.”

“Take it from someone whose entire identity is pretending to be a psycho manic pixie dream girl,” Kris said, “Acting like a girl is fucking exhausting. You ain’t acting, Aria.”

Aria turned to look at Kris. After a full 9 hours of sleep, a hot shower, and, well, the last 24 hours, but especially the last 12, Aria was finally thinking clearly enough to realize what Kris had been hinting at all along.

“Oh... Oh shit. Kris I am so sorry.”

Kris smiled wide and shook his head."Don’t be. I’d trade places with you in a heartbeat if I could, but even if I wanted to, it’s not in the cards for me. Not until I’m 18 anyway. I can start the T-juice the second I’m out from under my helicopter asshole parents and got this place behind me with a cherry recco for an ivy league school. Until then,” Kris switched to the voice he used to drive boys wild, “I’m just your average ordinary every day manic pixel dream girl!” He even gave a lyrical, practiced bubbly giggle.

Elaine laughed and shook her head."At least me being gay doesn’t change anything. I focus on being an athlete because that’s my passion. I feel bad for both of you - I really do.”

“Wait so,” Aria said, “You’re gay, Kris is trans like me, is, like, everyone in this school hiding something?”

“Well, not everyone,” Elaine shrugged, getting up to walk back over to sit on her own bed again, and moving the ice pack up to her shoulder."Lyra’s pretty open about being a transgirl."

“Lyra,” Aria said, blinking."Lyra Short. The gorgeous goddess mezzo soprano who would live in the music room if she could. She’s trans too?”

“Yup,” Kris said casually."At first I fucking hated her because I thought she was a sellout. But the more I thought about it,” he shrugged, “The more I realized she just did the math, and realized she didn’t have the luxury of waiting like I do.”

“Anyway,” Elaine said, “You two should go get breakfast while it’s still hot. They’ve got mcmuffins and breakfast burritos downstairs. Might be some biscuits and gravy platters left too.”

“I gotta figure out what I’m going to wear for the next couple of days too,” Aria said, “If I’m going to be stuck here.”

“I use gender neutral powder spray deodorant if that helps,” Kris said, and picked up a thin, blue can from off his nightstand, tossing it to Aria.

“Oh,” Aria said, “Thank you.”

Because Elaine’s bed was directly under the window, and she kept the Venesian blinds drawn Aria hadn’t actually seen how bad the damage was until they got near the elevator. She stopped, walking to the window overlooking the campus because a security light had been bent at a 45 degree angle toward it. Had it fallen just a few feet further it would have smashed right through the window one floor below.

A crew wearing different colored hard hats had presently secured it with a cherry picker truck’s bucket while they worked to set it upright, and others were using chainsaws to carve up fallen trees. Some sheet metal was twisted up around another tree, and there was even debris not belonging to the school, like a pup tent fully assembled and supported by its internal skeletal frame, lying on its side near the admin offices off in the distance.

“They’re saying it’s straight line winds,” Madison spoke up behind Aria. She quietly walked up beside her, staring out."I say that’s bullshit. Straight line winds don’t twist a fucking piece of sheet metal around a tree like it’s a pretzel. This is September. This shit isn’t supposed to happen right now,” she sighed, turning to walk away before Aria could say anything.

She was giving off too much main character energy for Aria to really want to interrupt her, anyway. Maybe she was spending too much time around Heather and the other theater geeks, but, the thought ‘The best spear carriers know when to say nothing at all’ crossed her mind for some reason, as she waited for the next elevator so she and Kris, who had just caught up with her after changing shirts, could head down to breakfast.

As the doors opened onto the common room, Aria heard a girl from another floor say something to the effect of “Was there really a boy spending the night in our dorms last night?”

She froze, trying her best to remember what Elaine had literally JUST told her, but she couldn’t help it. She had to hear the response.

“No way. I didn’t see any boys last night,” the other girl said.

“See?” Kris hissed in her ear, bumping his shoulder against hers lightly and flashing a knowing smirk.

Breakfast by all rights should have been a scrimmage of first come first served. The boys’ dorm probably would’ve had guys dogpiling these servers and taking as much as possible for themselves, claiming it was for ‘their friends’. Here, if someone got two McDonalds bags, Aria noticed, they really WERE getting something for a friend who was either busy getting themselves or the food delivery person’s drink, or both.

“Snag me a burrito?” Kris asked."I’mma get our drinks,” he said, as if to punctuate that point further. Aria buried her hands in her pockets, approaching the caterers. More gossip about the alleged boy in the dorms floated up around her, mostly in quiet whispers, but she never caught anyone shooting her the side eye.

Her hair wasn’t THAT long, just in that kind of in-between phase of ‘hadn’t cut it since February’ that it was only just starting to reach the nape of her neck, bangs long enough she could tuck them back behind her ears and out of her eyes.

She knew it wasn’t scholar standard, and she gave zero craps, rat’s tails, or, most importantly, fucks.

“May I get two breakfast burritos please, for my dorm mate and me? Aria asked. The woman standing next to the warming station handed her two bags without hesitation.

“Sure you don’t want anything else?” she asked. Aria noticed the donuts sitting in boxes near the warming station."Kris didn’t say anything except a burrito, but... May I get a bear claw please?”

Aria joined Kris a few seconds later. He was laughing.

“What?” Aria asked. Kris just grinned, trading a McDonalds bag for a McCafé mocha.

“Amy from 3A asked if I knew who the cute girl in the hoodie was. I told her you’re Aria, visiting the campus to see if you want to attend. She said to tell you she’s really sorry you had to see it like this and hopes it doesn’t ‘deter you from considering Clarity Prep.’”

They both burst out laughing, though Aria’s laughter died in her throat as she turned around to find Madison staring at her. It wasn’t the hard glare she expected, but something more analytical and thoughtful. Madison casually picked up her phone, while someone in her entourage was vapidly going on a mile a minute about something unimportant.

Madison: [weary face]
Madison: You need to work on your cover story if you want to survive past the storm Aria
Madison: Just saying [kiss mark]

If Kris noticed, he didn’t say anything, as Aria set down her donut, licked her fingers clean, and typed back a quick reply.

Lewis: Hey thanks I’ll work on it. Let me know if you think of anything better
Because it wasn’t my idea I’m just trying to survive right now

Madison stared at Aria for longer than she probably intended to. Aria overheard someone in the entourage say something like “Oh, the new girl? Yeah she’s on 4 with us while she’s visiting or, whatever. She’s mid but she seems okay I guess.”

Madison: do you hear this crap I have to listen to it constantly [weary face]
Madison: Sorry I’ve got nothing but you can borrow a few of my skirts? [devil face emoji]

Aria bit back a laugh and put down her phone. Kris just rolled his eyes finally."You two are so fucking weird,” he said jokingly."Want to try and see if you can sneak into your dorm after brekkie?”

Aria glanced back at Madison one last time. She wasn’t staring anymore."Yeah, I’m curious how bad it is over there. I heard it’s straight line winds, so maybe the dorm’s still intact.”