Ravenna

I wasn't me, I was my friend with the almost-twin sister. Georgiana, we used to call her. We looked alike, but we were caught in different places at the wrong times. Georgiana had a boyfriend, but he was caught in the same wrong place as me.

They came into the school and took it over and covered everything with their darkness, and I didn't speak up because I couldn't get out and I needed to be there for my sister. They kept her in the high office and they plugged her in with wires and they wouldn't let her out. They called her Ravenna and they dressed her all in black and they covered her in black tattoos of eyes.

"Do you like my tattoos?" she asked, the second time I got in to see her. I hid my horror and faked a yes. They were taking her mind, and I could see it, because most of what was in the dark hazel eyes under a stamp of black eyeliner wasn't her anymore. I had to be patient if I was going to get her out.

We didn't know how to get her out, Gregory and I. Gregory was her boyfriend. We would go get sandwiches in the well-lit corridors in the wide, wide atrium with all the sandwich shops, and we would talk in low voices about how to get Ravenna out. We had to talk in low voices because all the sandwich shop servers were in black now.

I woke up next to Gregory one day. We didn't know why; we'd both been waking up next to a lot of different people. They were slowly taking our minds, too. But we told Ravenna on that second visit, and she leapt up in anger, her lip quivering under the mounds of purple lipstick. Maybe that anger was more her than them. Maybe she was about to come back. But he came in at that point, the leader, buttoned-down black, and he calmly asked what was wrong. They say calm rage is the most dangerous. I think it is, because I couldn't remember anything after that. He took our minds completely.