haunted, m.sturniolo(✔️)

The year is 2025. College life buzzed with an unfamiliar energy around Diana, a stark contrast to the quiet turmoil within her. As Peach, her ever-enthusiastic best friend, prattled on about new skincare and campus gossip, Diana could only nod, her gaze unfocused.

Today was the first day, and though she sat in the passenger seat of Peach's open-top car, wind whipping through her hair, she felt nothing but a dull ache. The memory, three years old yet as fresh as yesterday, clung to her like a shroud. Brent. Halloween night. It was a wound that refused to close.

She'd tried, she really had, to be excited, to embrace this new chapter. But how could she, when every new face seemed to hold a flicker of that past horror? Peach and Jasmine believed she was healing, or close to it, so Diana kept her silence, burying the raw pain deep inside. Her brother, Declan, meant well, but his suffocating protectiveness only added another layer to her confinement.

College was supposed to be a fresh start, a chance to escape. Yet, as they pulled onto campus, Diana felt only the weight of unspoken trauma, the silent promise she'd made to herself to stay away from men. A promise that felt both necessary and impossible to keep, especially as she prepared to step into a world she wasn't sure she wanted to join.