After school, Marcus was just about to head home when he spotted Katherine with Amy near the school gate. He walked over to them.
"Amy? What're you doing here?" Marcus asked, caught off guard.
"Giving your teacher a ride to your place," Amy said, nodding toward her motorcycle.
"Oh, right." Marcus looked between them. "Any chance I could hop on? I've got my bike and you guys are gonna get there way before me."
Amy grinned. "Sorry, kid. Two seats, two people. Your teacher beat you to it."
Katherine laughed. "See you there, Marcus."
Before he could say anything else, Amy revved the engine and they took off.
Marcus just stood there, watching them disappear down the street. He looked down at his bicycle and muttered, "Man, if I had the cash, I'd get myself a bike. Or a car."
He climbed on and pedaled off, following the Chandler Boulevard Bike Path until he got home.
After parking in the driveway, he headed inside to find his cast already there—Katherine, Mike, and Amy hanging out in the living room.
He felt like a guest in his own house.
"Look who finally showed up," Katherine teased. "We were about to start without you."
The others grinned.
"Yeah, well, some of us don't have motorcycles," Marcus shot back. "Alright, let's go over what we're shooting today."
He sat down with them and pulled up the laptop to review yesterday's footage. This was Amy's first time seeing any of it, and as she watched, her expression changed.
Especially during the scenes where Katherine and Mike were asleep for hours before the paranormal stuff started happening.
She actually shivered. "Wait, you guys filmed this yesterday?" she asked Katherine.
"Yep," Katherine said. "Pretty good, right?"
"It's actually really good," Amy said. "Even without sound effects or anything, it looks so real. Like Mike's genuinely recording all this weird stuff happening around you guys."
She leaned closer to the screen. "If you didn't tell me this was a movie, I'd swear this was real footage. Are you sure this is supposed to be a film?"
Marcus couldn't help but smile at that. "That's exactly what I'm going for. The more real it looks, the scarier it gets."
"Seems like it's working," Katherine added. "It really does feel like watching actual events unfold."
Amy nodded slowly. "Okay, I get it now." Then she frowned. "But wait—did you two actually sleep in that bed for hours?" She pointed at the timestamps on the footage.
"God, no," Katherine said. "It's editing. We faked it."
Mike laughed. "I mean, I would've been fine with it. But Katherine wasn't having it."
They spent the next half hour going through the film while Marcus whipped up some food for everyone. Once Arya and Ryan showed up, they got back to shooting.
The scene they were working on had the paranormal activity ramping up each day, with Mike's character getting cocky and wanting to fight back against whatever was haunting them.
He even brought up getting a Ouija board to talk to the spirits directly.
The script called for this, but the way Mike played it—the way he improvised his lines—made the character come off as a total asshole.
The footage made it crystal clear: Mike's character was selfish as hell and completely ignoring his fiancée's pleas to just call the expert and get rid of the demon.
Amy watched them film, and it was fascinating seeing the behind-the-scenes compared to the actual footage. What Ryan was organizing in the editing software looked authentic and genuinely creepy, but watching them shoot it was a completely different experience.
The cast and crew were actually having a blast, especially when Marcus would improvise and throw in something unexpected that caught everyone off guard.
Like when a plate in the kitchen suddenly flew off the counter and shattered on the floor—nobody saw that coming, so their reactions were completely real.
"What the hell was that!?" Mike shouted.
Katherine freaked out too. Even Arya and Ryan weren't expecting it.
Despite the shock, they kept rolling, with Mike and Katherine improvising their dialogue around what just happened. After they cut, Marcus revealed he'd rigged a string to the plate to make it look like paranormal activity.
"God, I almost had a heart attack when that plate flew off," Katherine said, still catching her breath.
"Your face in the footage is priceless," Marcus said, pointing at her expression on screen. Then he paused on Mike, who'd set the camera down to film the broken plate up close. "Mike's reaction here is gold too."
Everyone cracked up, including Amy. She was genuinely enjoying being here. Even though she only had a small part in the film, she'd decided to stick around and watch them work. She'd even been helping out like she was part of the crew.
By evening, the atmosphere got way creepier. Sure, they were just making a horror movie, but with the whole house dark for the shoot, it was legitimately unsettling—even though it was only 6:30 PM.
Marcus and the others were upstairs in the bedroom filming the sleep scene.
Marcus signaled to Ryan downstairs. Ryan made the chandelier swing wildly while Arya triggered a loud sound through the speaker.
That startled Katherine and Mike awake. They rushed downstairs and saw the chandelier still moving. Mike flipped on the lights.
"Come on! Is that all you got!?" Mike yelled at the empty room, challenging the demon while Katherine tried to pull him back.
But as he shouted, a loud bang echoed from the kitchen. They ran over and hit the lights—the cabinet door was hanging open.
That's what they'd heard. They figured Marcus was improvising again, but honestly, with how dark it was outside now, it was seriously creeping them out.
"You here? Show yourself if you're so powerful!" Mike shouted, still in character.
Katherine tried to hold him back as she moved toward the cabinet to close it. But then she screamed and jumped back. "Ah!"
Mike flinched, breaking character. Arya, Ryan, and Amy all jumped too.
They started to rush over, but Marcus stopped them. He didn't want to ruin the take. They got it.
"Wh-what happened!?" Mike grabbed Katherine's arm.
Katherine pointed at the cabinet, trembling. "Th-there's..."
Mike's heart was pounding. For a second, he genuinely wondered if something supernatural was actually happening. "What?" he pressed.
When Katherine didn't answer, he turned to the cabinet himself. His eyes went wide. The camera swung with him, capturing what was inside—before everyone exhaled in relief.
It was just a big mouse.
"Jesus, it's just a mouse," Mike said, shooing it away and closing the cabinet.
Arya and the others let out relieved laughs. For a second there, they'd actually thought it was a ghost.
"Cut!" Marcus called out. He noticed Katherine still looked shaken. He quickly grabbed a water bottle and brought it to her.
"You okay?" he asked.
Katherine's hands were still trembling as she drank. Everyone gathered around, genuinely concerned.
It was just a mouse, but she seemed really affected.
"I... I'm actually terrified of mice," Katherine explained once she'd calmed down. "I can't stand being around them."
That made sense to everyone. But Marcus felt guilty. After all, he was the one who'd planted the mouse there as an improvised scare.
A notification popped up in his head—he'd completed the Minor Quest and earned +7 points. But he didn't feel good about it at all.
'There's no way I can tell them I'm the one who put that mouse there,' Marcus thought. He felt genuinely bad for his teacher.
"Alright, I think that's enough for today," Marcus said, clearing his throat.
Everyone started leaving one by one. Marcus was left alone in the house, and honestly, being by himself after filming all that scary stuff was getting to him. He wasn't actually scared—not really—but the guilt from scaring Katherine with that mouse was eating at him, and somehow that guilt was turning into uneasiness.
There's a saying: There's a saying: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions."
Marcus had only been trying to get a genuine reaction for the film, but now the guilt from seeing Katherine so shaken was turning the empty house into something more unsettling than it should be. He knew it was just a small mistake, but knowing that didn't make him feel any better about it.
He sighed deeply before heading to the dining room to eat alone. Afterwards, he went to his room and crashed.
---
The next day at school, Marcus caught up with Arya and Ryan. They talked mostly about the film before class started.
Marcus was relieved to see Katherine seemed fine after yesterday. She taught the entire class normally, and after she finished, he headed to her office.
"Marcus," she nodded when she saw him.
"Hey." Marcus sat down across from her. "I just wanted to check—you doing okay?"
Katherine raised an eyebrow, clearly confused. "I'm fine. Why are you asking?"
Marcus shrugged. "Well, you seemed pretty freaked out after seeing that mouse yesterday. I was worried."
Katherine laughed. "Oh, that? Don't worry about it. The mouse just caught me off guard."
Marcus nodded. Then he hesitated.
"Is there something else?" she asked.
Marcus nodded and forced himself to say it. "Yeah. Actually, I'm the one who put the mouse there. It was supposed to be an unexpected scare for the film. I didn't know you were afraid of mice. I'm really sorry." He got it all out in a rush.
Katherine processed that for a moment. Then she said, "I already figured that out."
Marcus looked surprised. "You knew?"
"Well, yeah. You've been having way too much fun improvising as a director. Of course it was you who planted a mouse in the kitchen cabinet," Katherine said with a chuckle.
"I'm really sorry," Marcus said again.
"It's fine, seriously," Katherine waved it off. "You were just doing your job as a director. I'm not gonna hold that against you."
"I seriously had no idea you were scared of mice," Marcus said.
"Like I said, it's fine." Then Katherine saw an opening. "Though if you really feel bad about it, you could buy me dinner to make up for it."
Marcus's eyes lit up. "Absolutely."
"Perfect. I'm picking somewhere fancy so I can really milk this," Katherine said with a grin.
Marcus didn't mind at all.
---
A few days went by, and they'd made huge progress on "Paranormal Activity." They were almost done—it had been five days since they started filming. In another two days or so, they'd wrap everything up.
Meanwhile at school, Marcus's classmates—especially the guys who had crushes on Katherine—were getting suspicious about Marcus and Katherine's relationship.
At the school basketball court, a group of guys were gossiping like a bunch of old ladies.
"You guys heard? There's a rumor Marcus has been hitting on our teacher, and it's actually working," said a blonde guy in a varsity jacket, clearly a basketball player judging by his height. "Ms. Katherine's been hanging around him way more lately. That's gotta mean something."
"I heard about that. Marcus Crown, right?" another guy sighed. "Didn't think he had it in him. Never thought he'd actually go for our hot teacher. Props to him, I guess."
"Should we invite Marcus to hang out? We gotta get the details!" a tall, lean guy suggested.
"Yeah, let's do that," the blonde guy said. "You know Ms. Katherine's my crush. And this dude somehow got her attention."
"Man, I'm so jealous!" another chimed in.
The rumors weren't just spreading among the guys—even the girls around school were whispering about it. Arya overheard some of the gossip herself.
When she heard what people were saying, she didn't know whether to laugh or roll her eyes.
"If Marcus and Ms. Katherine knew what people were saying about them, I wonder how they'd react," Arya muttered to herself with a chuckle. The whole situation was kind of funny.
But at the same time, she was actually worried for both her friend and her teacher. Rumors like these could be seriously damaging.
After thinking it over, she decided she needed to tell them both what was going around.