The sun hung high in the cloudless sky, its warmth spreading across the schoolyard like a blanket. It was the kind of day that should've been perfect, the kind where kids laughed until their stomachs hurt and forgot all about homework and bedtimes.
Zoey Bellerose sprinted across the playground, her long legs carrying her faster than anyone else in her first-grade class. She could hear the other kids behind her, their footsteps pounding against the wood chips as they tried to catch up. For a moment, just a brief, shining moment, she felt normal. She felt like she belonged.
"Can't catch me!" she called over her shoulder, grinning as the wind whipped through her dark hair.
But normalcy never lasted long for Zoey.
She didn't see Brandon Miller's foot until it was too late. One second she was running, and the next she was airborne, her arms windmilling uselessly before she crashed hard onto the ground. The wood chips bit into her palms and knees, and she tasted dirt.
"Giraffe Freak!" Brandon's voice cut through the playground noise like a knife.
Zoey pushed herself up onto her elbows, her vision blurry with tears she refused to let fall. Not here. Not in front of them.
"Ladder Legs!" Another boy, Tommy Chen, joined in, his laughter sharp and mean.
She tried to stand, but her knee throbbed where she'd scraped it. Blood seeped through the tear in her jeans. Around her, a circle was forming. Kids who'd been playing just moments ago now stood watching, their eyes wide with that particular mix of curiosity and cruelty that only children seemed to master.
"Looks like the giant fell off her stilts!"
That voice made Zoey's head snap up. Madison. Her supposed best friend. The girl who'd come over to her house just last Saturday, who'd eaten pizza with her and played with her toys and promised they'd be friends forever.
Madison's face was flushed, her expression caught between guilt and desperation. Their eyes met for just a second, and Zoey saw Madison mouth the words "Sorry, Zoey" before looking away.
It wasn't the first time. Madison always apologized quietly and always pretended she didn't have a choice. But she did. They all did.
Zoey knew why they stuck around. Her parents had money, the kind of money that meant pool parties with the fancy inflatable slide, goodie bags stuffed with toys that cost more than most kids' birthday presents, and trips to the amusement park where everyone got fast passes. Take away the money, and the friends disappeared faster than ice cream on a summer day.
She'd dealt with this before. The names, the shoving, the fake friends. She'd learned to keep her head down, to laugh it off, and to pretend it didn't cut deep every single time. Her mom always said that being tall was a gift, that someday she'd be grateful for it. Her dad told her that kids were just jealous, that they'd grow out of it.
But right now, with dirt under her nails and blood on her knee and an entire playground of kids laughing at her, Zoey didn't feel gifted. She felt angry.
No. Not just angry.
Furious.
Something hot and sharp twisted in her chest, spreading through her body like lightning. Her hands clenched into fists, and she felt something else, something foreign and powerful, stirring beneath her skin. It felt like her blood was boiling, like there was too much of her to fit inside her body anymore.
"Freak!"
"Crybaby!"
"Giant!"
The voices piled on top of each other, each one adding weight to the fury building inside her. Her vision went red at the edges. Her heart hammered so hard it hurt.
And then something inside her snapped.
The ground beneath her rumbled.
It started small, just a tremor that made a few kids stumble. But then the wood chips began to shift and scatter as thick, green vines erupted from the earth like grasping fingers. They burst upward with enough force to send chunks of playground equipment flying, their thorny surfaces gleaming in the sunlight.
Someone screamed.
The vines moved fast, faster than anything that grew from the ground had any right to move. One wrapped around Brandon's ankle and yanked him off his feet. Another caught Tommy around the waist and lifted him into the air. Madison tried to run, but a vine snaked out and grabbed her, pinning her arms to her sides.
"Let me go!" Brandon's voice had gone from mocking to terrified. "Let me GO!"
But Zoey couldn't stop; she didn't want to stop.
The vines swung the kids around like rag dolls, slamming them together with sickening thuds. Brandon's face smashed into Tommy's shoulder. Madison's head cracked against someone's knee. They screamed and cried and begged, but all Zoey could hear was years of "Giraffe Freak" and "Ladder Legs," and fake apologies whispered like they meant anything at all.
"I'll kill you!" The words ripped from her throat, raw and jagged. More vines erupted, tearing through the playground equipment. The slide twisted and collapsed. The monkey bars bent like they were made of clay. "I'll kill you for the years of suffering! I'll kill you for thinking you were ever better than me!"
Tears streamed down her face, hot and angry. Her whole body shook with the effort of controlling, or maybe not controlling, whatever was happening. The vines kept growing, kept spreading, wrapping around swings and benches and anything else they could reach.
Teachers ran toward the chaos, but one vine whipped out and sent Mr. Peterson flying backward into the fence. Mrs. Chen tried to grab one of the kids, but a thorny vine wrapped around her wrist, and she yelped, pulling back.
Somewhere in the distance, Zoey heard sirens. But she was too far gone to care. The darkness inside her, the part that had been quietly gathering every insult, every shove, every fake smile, had finally found its voice, and it was screaming.
Then something stung her shoulder.
Zoey blinked, her concentration wavering. She reached up and felt something small and sharp sticking out of her shirt. A dart?
Another sting, this time in her arm. Then her leg. Her back.
The vines slowed, their movements becoming sluggish. Zoey's vision started to blur, her legs going wobbly beneath her. She tried to hold on, tried to keep the vines moving, but her body wasn't listening anymore.
Fifteen darts. She counted them as her knees hit the ground. Fifteen tiny needles pumping whatever-it-was into her blood.
The last thing she saw before darkness swallowed her was Madison's tear-streaked face, eyes wide with terror.
Good, Zoey thought dimly. Now you know how it feels.
Cold woke her first.
Then pain a dull throb in her shoulder that spread down her arm. Zoey groaned and tried to roll over, but her body felt wrong. Heavy. Like someone had filled her bones with concrete while she slept.
She forced her eyes open.
The room was small. Really small. Smaller than her walk-in closet at home. The floor was covered in black and white checkered tiles that reminded her of the kitchen in her grandmother's old house. A single window sat high up on the wall, but instead of glass, it was covered with thick metal bars. Sunlight, or maybe it was moonlight—she couldn't tell—filtered in thin stripes.
There was a bed. If you could call it that. It looked more like a camping cot someone had forgotten to add padding to, with a thin, scratchy blanket folded at the foot.
And the door—
Zoey sat up too fast and immediately regretted it. Her head spun, and her stomach lurched. She pressed a hand to her mouth, waiting for the nausea to pass.
When her vision cleared, she looked at the door again.
It wasn't a door. Not a real one. It was a metal gate, like the kind in old prison movies her dad watched late at night when he thought she was asleep. Through the bars, she could see a hallway with more checkered tiles and fluorescent lights that hummed and flickered.
Her heart started to race.
"Hello?" Her voice came out hoarse and small. "Is anyone there?"
No answer. Just the hum of the lights and the sound of her own breathing.
Zoey stood on shaky legs and made her way to the gate. She wrapped her hands around the bars—they were cold and solid—and peered out into the hallway. Empty. No people. No furniture. Nothing but tiles and lights and other gates like hers stretching in both directions.
"Hello?!" She rattled the gate, but it didn't budge. "Let me out! I want to go home!"
Still nothing.
Panic clawed at her chest. Where was she? Where were her parents? What happened to the other kids? Were they okay? Were they—
The playground. The vines. The screaming.
Oh no.
Zoey backed away from the gate until her legs hit the cot and she sat down hard. Her hands were shaking. She stared at them as if they belonged to someone else.
She'd hurt people. She'd hurt kids. With—with plants? Vines? How was that even possible?
"This is a dream," she whispered to herself. "This is just a really bad dream, and I'm going to wake up, and Mom's going to make pancakes, and everything's going to be normal."
But the cold tiles under her feet felt too real. The ache in her shoulder, where the darts had hit, felt too real.
And the silence, the horrible, pressing silence of this strange little room, felt most real of all.
Zoey pulled her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them. For the first time since she woke up, she let herself cry. Not the angry tears from the playground, but the scared, confused tears of a six-year-old girl who just wanted to go home.
Outside her cell, the lights continued their eternal flickering, and no one came.