Chapter 1
Beating them was easy.
Most people liked to believe they were intelligent. They built entire identities around it. Degrees framed on office walls. Promotions. Titles. Accomplishments. They pointed to these things as proof they understood the world.
They didn’t.
People saw what they expected to see.
That was the weakness.
If you smiled, they assumed you were kind. If you listened, they assumed you cared. If you repeated their own opinions back to them, they trusted you completely.
The first time I realized this, I was surprised by how little effort it required.
A compliment here.
A favor there.
A carefully timed apology.
Most people practically handed you the keys to their lives.
The funny thing was that they always searched for monsters in the wrong places. They imagined wild eyes, violent tempers, and bloodstained hands. They never considered the possibility that the person sitting beside them at dinner might be far more dangerous.
A monster who understood patience.
A monster who could wait.
The greenhouse in California taught me that.
By the time anyone began asking questions, I was already gone.
Thousands of miles away.
Driving east with Ariel beside me and Vermont waiting somewhere beyond the horizon.
That was my favorite part.
Fear changes people. It strips away the masks they wear and reveals what they truly are. The confidence becomes uncertain. The loyalists become suspicious. The innocent become desperate to prove themselves.
And while they searched for a monster hiding among them, I sat quietly in plain sight, listening, smiling, and waiting for my next move. Of course this was not my first setting that I had brought chaos to. I searched forever to find the next stop after destroying the giant greenhouse in Southern California.
Vermont was an easy choice. It was far from the three dead greenhouse colleagues. Far from California. Far from anyone who might connect me to the things I had left behind.
Ariel came with me.
She was always with me.
She was stupid too. Maybe the most dense of them all. She lived beside me every day and never once questioned anything that mattered. When I suggested leaving the small town in North Carolina for California, she practically packed before I finished the sentence. Three years later, when I told her Vermont would be our next adventure, she reacted the same way.
She was excited about the weather.
The weather.
Not the fact that we had uprooted our lives twice in less than five years. Not the fact that I never stayed anywhere long. Not the fact that every place seemed to end with people disappearing from my life.
No. She was excited about sweaters, autumn leaves, and the possibility of seeing her first real blizzard.
She bounced around our apartment making lists of things she wanted to do. Visit maple farms. Buy winter boots. Learn to ski.
I smiled and nodded at all the appropriate moments.
The truth was that Vermont offered something far more valuable than snow-covered mountains and postcard-worthy foliage.
It offered anonymity.
The boarding school sat tucked into the hills, isolated enough to feel forgotten. Hundreds of students and faculty moved through its campus each day, yet nobody truly knew one another. People arrived from every corner of the country carrying secrets, reinventions, and carefully crafted versions of themselves.
It was the perfect place to disappear.
And, if necessary, the perfect place to begin again.
The drive took eight days and I played the part, smiling at the right places, offering Ariel encouragement, a laugh when she needed one, and the occasional reassuring touch. She believed every bit of it. Most people did. That was the easy part.
The second night I even splurged on a suite at some cabin resort outside Rollins, Wyoming. Ariel thought it was romantic. I thought it was insurance. Happy people ask fewer questions.
Wyoming confirmed everything I already suspected about it. Endless stretches of nothing. Flat land, empty roads, scattered cattle, and skies so wide they felt unnatural. Mile after mile of emptiness. I was grateful I had not chosen Wyoming. There was nowhere to hide there. Nowhere for secrets to settle.
By the time we reached the lodge, I had spent the entire day thinking about the school. The anticipation sat inside me like a living thing. The long hours of driving gave my mind nowhere else to go. Every exit sign, every mountain pass, every gas station only brought me closer.
Closer to the next chapter.
Ariel chattered as we carried our bags up the wide wooden staircase. The old boards groaned beneath our feet. She talked about Vermont, about the lodge we would eventually rent, about how beautiful the fall would be.
I barely listened.
The truth was, Ariel didn’t excite me. She never had. She was useful. Predictable. Comfortably blind. She accepted every explanation I gave her because she wanted to believe them. People always saw what they wanted to see.
That weakness fascinated me.
I had learned years ago that pain wasn’t always physical. Sometimes the real thrill came from watching someone trust you completely while you slowly dismantled their world. Watching confusion replaces certainty. Fear replaces comfort. The moment they realized they had misunderstood everything.
That was the part I loved.
As Ariel struggled with the room key, I stepped to the railing and looked out into the darkness. The wind cut through the trees below. Somewhere in the distance, an animal cried out and then fell silent.
I closed my eyes and imagined the school.
The students. The faculty. The routines. The carefully ordered lives.
They believed they were safe.
They believed evil announced itself.
That was the funny thing about evil.
Most of the time it smiled, held doors open, and helped carry luggage.
Then it waited.
Getting the job at the school wasn’t difficult. I had the background they were looking for. A history degree from Wake Forest. Internships in Germany and Romania. Experience managing a greenhouse in California.
At least that’s what I told them.
The history degree was real. The internships too. The greenhouse management position, however, belonged to someone else.
But interviews aren’t about the truth. They’re about confidence.
I spoke about children’s programming, the importance of connecting students with the natural world, developing curriculum, and increasing participation numbers. I talked about community outreach and educational opportunities. I knew exactly what they wanted to hear during the virtual interview.
The headmaster nodded.
The head of academics smiled.
I got the job.
Of course it was all a lie.
Not the numbers. Not the programming. Not the success.
Just who deserved the credit.
It wasn’t me.
It was her.
Lauren.
Even now her name settled into my thoughts differently than anyone else’s.
Lauren had thick golden hair that was always a mess. It never seemed to matter how many times she tied it back. By noon there would be strands hanging loose around her face, dirt smudged across her cheek, and leaves tangled somewhere they didn’t belong.
She talked with her hands. That was what I remembered most.
Most people spoke because they enjoyed hearing themselves. Lauren spoke because she couldn’t contain her excitement. Every idea seemed to spill out of her faster than she could organize it. One moment she would be explaining soil composition and the next she would be describing a children’s garden project she wanted to build behind the greenhouse.
She believed in things.
Plants.
People.
Possibilities.
It was almost embarrassing to watch.
The children loved her. Parents loved her. The board loved her.
And somehow she assumed everyone else was as good as she was.
That was Lauren’s flaw.
She never understood that some people watched the world differently.
While she was dreaming about gardens, I was studying people.
While she was building something, I was learning how easily things could be taken apart.
I often wondered when it started. The fascination. The desire. Whether it was the way she smiled at everyone as if they had earned it, or the way she trusted so completely.
Maybe it wasn’t one moment.
Maybe it was watching someone possess everything I lacked and never once realize how vulnerable it made her.
By the time I left California, the greenhouse was thriving.
Everyone credited Lauren.
Everyone should have.
But sitting in front of that interview screen, thousands of miles away, I discovered something important.
The dead don’t correct résumés.
Perfectly Imperfect 