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Love, Wednesday Addams thought, was an infestation. It seeped in through the smallest cracks, took root where it was least wanted, and left the host hollow and unsalvageable. She had always regarded it as a parasite disguised in sonnets, fattening itself on delusion until it rotted.
Tyler Galpin had been her experiment in tolerating humanity. For a time, she allowed him proximity—a calculated risk. He brewed coffee with meticulous precision, spoke in a cadence that didn’t gnaw entirely at her patience, and maintained an aesthetically pleasing symmetry in his features. But like all things that promised civility, he broke apart into the predictable sequence of betrayals.
Now, he lingered like smoke from an arson she had not lit.
His persistence was almost admirable in its obliviousness. In the weeks since she had severed whatever frayed connection they had, Tyler had perfected the art of appearing where she was—on the quad, in the library, even once in the cemetery where she thought the sheer bleakness might deter him. He was the kind of presence that made her feel like a fugitive, always glancing over her shoulder for the dull thud of his footsteps.
Today, she had already evaded him twice.
But the air in Nevermore’s hallway felt wrong now—bloated with static, heavy with the promise of irritation. She knew he was close. The sensation at the base of her skull prickled like a prelude to a storm.
“Wednesday—wait!”
Tyler’s tone carried down the stone hallway, ragged with the effort of chasing her.
She did not wait. Her boots struck the marble in a quickening rhythm, her braids swinging like a pendulum counting down his annihilation.
“You can’t keep pretending I don’t exist,” he called, closing the distance.
Without turning, she replied, “Your existence is not a matter of pretense. It is a matter of unfortunate reality.”
He kept coming.
Enid’s neon hair clip gleamed ahead, a small beacon in the dull wash of Nevermore gray.
Right, Enid.
Wednesday tolerated her in ways she tolerated no one else. Enid’s endless chatter should have been as abrasive as sandpaper, yet she never silenced her. Her colors—so violently cheerful they might blind a saner person—had somehow not driven Wednesday into a homicidal rage. She trailed glitter like pollen, and still Wednesday breathed.
It unsettled her.
Enid looked at her as if she were not a problem to be solved, but a page already read a hundred times and still liked. Wednesday did not understand it. Nor did she understand why she sometimes found her steps in sync with Enid’s without conscious decision.
Perhaps, that's why when she spotted Enid by her locker at the far end of the corridor, she felt something sharp click into place. She knew the decision she'll do next wasn’t a decision. It was a spark, a leap. An uncharacteristic act of improvisation, like a cornered animal hurling itself into the nearest thicket without knowing what lay inside.
She reached Enid in five strides. Tyler was still approaching.
And then she kissed her.
The contact startled her first. Enid’s lips were warm, softer than Wednesday would have imagined—if she had ever imagined, which she certainly hadn’t. There was a faint taste of strawberry lip balm, underscored by something sweeter she couldn’t name.
Enid froze, her hands lifting halfway as if caught between pushing away and pulling closer.
The hallway seemed to still around them, the air thick with the collective gasp of an audience.
Somewhere to Wednesday’s left, a sharp intake of breath—Agnes, her self-proclaimed admirer, reappearing from invisibility, mouth perfectly round.
Tyler stopped in his tracks. “What the—”
Wednesday pulled back with surgical precision, severing the contact like a ribbon cut clean.
Enid stared, wide-eyed, lips parted.
“I see you’ve met my girlfriend,” Wednesday said, directing the words at Tyler with the flatness of a statement carved into stone.
Tyler’s face paled, his mouth opening and closing without producing words. Behind him, Agnes squeaked, “Oh my god, Wednesday, I didn’t know you—”
“You know nothing, Agnes,” Wednesday cut in sharply.
The crowd seemed to exhale. Tyler muttered something under his breath before retreating. Agnes vanished again with a faint shimmer, though not before casting one last glance that promised the story was already halfway to the farthest dorm.
Enid hadn’t moved. She was still looking at Wednesday—not with anger, not with embarrassment, but with an unreadable searching.
“What was that?” she asked finally, her voice barely above a whisper.
“A tactical maneuver,” Wednesday replied.
Enid’s lips twitched in something like a half-smile. “Right. Tactical.”
Love was useless. Wednesday had seen its innards and found them wanting. But Enid Sinclair had never fit into her definitions.
When she had closed the distance between them, it hadn’t been just to escape Tyler.
It had been to find out something.
And perhaps she had.
Maybe, it wasn't tactical at all. But Enid does not need to know that.
Or not yet.
If this was infection, Wednesday thought, she would not seek the cure.
--
The hallway was already stirring back to life, students murmuring in half-whispers that weren’t nearly as quiet as they thought. Wednesday could feel their eyes prickling at her back, the gossip knitting itself into existence even before Tyler had fully disappeared.
Enid was still staring at her, and Wednesday found that she did not enjoy the openness of the space around them. Too many eyes. Too much air.
She hooked her fingers lightly around Enid’s wrist. “Come with me.”
Enid blinked. “Uh—where—”
“Somewhere less… infested,” Wednesday said, already pulling her toward the nearest door.
It turned out to be the girls’ bathroom, quiet and echoing with the faint drip of a faucet that someone had failed to turn off completely. The door swung shut behind them with a hollow thud.
Enid leaned back against the cool tile wall, still holding that look—half startled, half something Wednesday couldn’t quite catalog. “So…” Enid began, drawing the word out. “That happened.”
“It was a tactical maneuver,” Wednesday repeated.
“You keep saying that,” Enid said, crossing her arms. “And I keep thinking that’s only, like, twenty percent true.”
Wednesday met her gaze without flinching. “Tyler has the tenacity of a fungal infection. Drastic measures were required.”
“And the drastic measure you went with was kissing me?” Enid’s voice rose an octave at the last two words.
“You were positioned at the optimal angle for both visual impact and maximum deterrent effect,” Wednesday replied evenly.
Enid’s mouth twitched, though Wednesday couldn’t tell if it was amusement or disbelief. “Right. Totally makes sense,” Enid said. “Not because you actually wanted to?”
Wednesday felt the question like a pin sliding neatly under her skin. “I’m not in the habit of wanting,” she said after a beat.
Enid’s laugh was small, a puff of air that barely stirred the space between them. “You know, for someone who claims not to care about people, you’re really bad at making it believable sometimes.”
Wednesday turned toward the sink, inspecting the slow drip of the faucet as though it held the secrets of the universe. “Your assessment is noted.”
They stood in silence for a moment, the sound of water falling into porcelain filling the space.
Finally, Enid said, “You could have just told him to back off.”
“I have. Repeatedly. With increasing bluntness,” Wednesday replied. “He persists. This will stop him.”
“Or it’ll make him start some rumor about us.”
Wednesday glanced back at her. “Let him. It will at least be one based in observable fact.”
Enid’s cheeks flushed, though she didn’t look away. “So we’re just… what, fake dating now? For tactical purposes?”
“That would be a logical extension of the maneuver,” Wednesday said, the words tasting strange. “If you’re agreeable to the terms.”
Enid tilted her head. “And what are the terms?”
Wednesday stepped closer, not out of intimidation but because she disliked shouting across empty space. “Minimal public displays of affection. Mutual attendance at select events. An implicit understanding that we are, to the outside world, a unit.”
Enid raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like a relationship.”
“It’s an alliance,” Wednesday corrected.
But Enid’s smile—small, knowing, just a fraction sharper than usual—made something inside Wednesday coil tighter.
“I’ll think about it,” Enid said softly.
She brushed past Wednesday to leave, the faint scent of her shampoo—something sweet and citrus—lingering in the space she vacated.
At the door, Enid paused, glancing back over her shoulder. “By the way… for a tactical maneuver, it didn’t feel very… fake.”
Before Wednesday could reply, the door swung shut, and she was alone with the dripping faucet and a pulse she couldn’t entirely steady.
Enid’s footsteps faded down the hallway, swallowed by the low hum of distant voices. Wednesday remained by the sink, staring at the slow drip of water as if she could distill answers from it.
A faint tapping broke her focus. She didn’t turn—Thing’s uneven shuffle was as distinct as the sound of her own boots.
“You saw nothing,” she said flatly.
Thing hopped up onto the sink beside her and signed with deliberate slowness: You kissed her.
“It was a controlled decision,” she replied.
A pointed pause. Then: You wanted to.
Wednesday narrowed her eyes. “I wanted Tyler to retreat.”
Thing’s fingers curled into a gesture that might have been skepticism or mockery—it was sometimes difficult to tell with him. You didn’t have to kiss her like that.
Wednesday’s mouth twitched, the barest flicker of something she refused to name. “You’re anthropomorphizing a strategy. It’s unbecoming.”
Thing gave a sharp tap against the porcelain sink, as if to say sure, keep lying to yourself, then crawled off toward the door.
Wednesday exhaled once, smoothed her collar, and stepped out into the hallway. Students milled around, the mundane scent of cafeteria food in the air. She had Chemistry in five minutes.
Distraction would be… useful.
Still, as she made her way to class, her mind betrayed her — flickers of Enid’s wide-eyed look, the warmth that lingered far too long. Irritating. She slid into her seat, opened her notebook, and began sketching something that was not the assigned chemical formula: a wolf with a crown of roses.
Across the quad, unseen by Wednesday, a raven had perched itself high on a gargoyle. It tilted its head toward the windows of Nevermore as if observing. Back at the Addams estate, Morticia Addams looked up from her correspondence and smiled faintly, as though she already knew.
And if she had been there, she would have said, I told you so.