Chapter Text
The stage lights pressed down upon her like hands of the dead. Wednesday could feel them, that much remained. The heat, the pins and needles along her nape, the density that signaled four hundred bodies breathing and shifting and waiting for her to be extraordinary.
Vibrations rippled up her bare feet, which the audience would interpret as yet another affectation from the conservatory’s most unsettling prodigy. They would whisper about it during intermission (“Did you see? No shoes. So strange, but so committed!”). They would assign meaning to a desperate truth: it was the only way she could hear music.
One-two-three-four.
She counted internally, body swaying into the third movement. Elgar’s Cello Concerto in E Minor—the piece that destroyed her as she sobbed into her mother’s lap, age seven, while Morticia stroked her hair and murmured, “Yes, darling, that’s the correct response to beauty.” Wednesday learned to play it by ten. Performed it twice by fifteen. Loved it the way she loved very few things: completely, obsessively, with pure devotion.
By nineteen, she couldn’t hear it.
The conductor’s baton moved in her peripheral vision—Maestro Greaves, a man whose ego proved tedious but technical clarity earned respect. She watched the stick rise and fall in a metronome she couldn’t trust, because if her count drifted, disaster would strike before awareness. Her hearing aids caught the orchestra, yes, but their frequencies smeared beyond recognition. She knew violins played—or were they violas? She knew her cello produced notes—or was she hallucinating the thrum against her ribs? Whether they were correct or simply beautiful was a question she could no longer answer.
One-two-three—
The baton hesitated.
Greaves adjusted something, perhaps, or responded to a cue Wednesday couldn’t hear. Either way, her stomach dropped.
Did she miss an entrance? Was she ahead, playing into a void? Or had she fallen behind, clinging to an outdated count like driftwood in an open sea?
She had no way to know.
Her fingers continued moving. Her bow continued drawing. Her internal count continued with the faith of a martyr to flames. Because hesitation would be worse, because stopping would be confession, because the only thing holding her together was momentum.
Eight bars left.
Eight bars of uncertainty that stretched into eight years.
Wednesday drew the final note and let it decay before she lifted the bow.
If applause erupted, she wouldn’t know. Her hearing aid supplied a roar of what could’ve been ocean waves or radio static. She stood, regardless. She bowed, regardless. She stepped into the role of “grateful musician,” regardless. It was another piece of performance from memory. Her body knew how to hold a cello, how to make the melody sing, and how to angle herself toward an approving crowd.
Morticia found her from the front row, eyes rimmed with pride. Gomez wept beside her, clutching a handkerchief to his shaky chest.
They were proud, Wednesday knew, and they had no idea she was terrified, no idea survival came in the form of mastery, no idea that their daughter—their dark little prodigy—was held together by twisted hope.
She moved on instinct: stood, bowed, cased her cello, and left the stage before anyone could see her hands shake.
Backstage swallowed her whole. One step past the curtains and everything narrowed from a wall of faceless bodies to the cramped artery of black drapes, tangled cables, music stands, and people who suddenly had mouths and real things to say. The air grew hotter somehow, clogged with sweat and dust and the metallic tang of stage blood. Hawthorne Hall always smelled of past performances, as if the old sanatorium simply traded one haunting for another.
Someone thrust a stand aside to let her pass. Someone else reached for her elbow until she angled away. Her hearing aids delivered occasional sound—bursting laughter, a clattering chair, the house doors opening for intermission—but all of it fell like snow through frosted glass.
“Wednesday!”
Her name arrived as a shape rather than sound: the distinctive rounding of lips for the ‘w’, the way their jaw dropped and teeth flashed for the hard ‘d’. She recognized the face alone: Professor Langley, head of strings, already turned half away from the violinist he’d been eviscerating. He approached, mouth forming rapid words.
Wednesday only caught fragments—“extraordinary… control… Elgar would… proud… emotional authority”—before the rest blurred. She had perfected the art of nodding in the right places, of letting her brows crease in modesty when cadence suggested praise, of saying as little as possible so that people would fill the silence.
“Thank you, Professor,” she said, careful to pitch her voice appropriately. “I’ll review the third movement. I’m not yet satisfied with it.”
His smile sharpened. “That’s what makes you exceptional, Miss Addams. Never content. We’ll talk phrasing next week. There’s an entire generation of cellists who play Elgar like they’re auditioning for a film score. But you…” His lips moved, hands sketching arcs to illustrate God knew what. “...authentic gravitas… you understand grief.”
Wednesday blinked.
She did not tell him that she understood grief because a disease ate her cochlea and turned symphonies into ash. She did not tell him that whatever “gravitas” he’d heard tonight was fear stitched into memory. Instead, she inclined her head.
“If I’m going to be compared to a film score, I at least insist on Bernard Herrmann.”
He laughed, delighted—at the reference, at the casual cruelty, at the confirmation that his darkest star was still sharp enough to wound. His hand brushed her shoulder until she stepped back.
More people materialized.
A second-year pianist from chamber ensemble, eyes bright beneath too much eyeliner. A donor in an aggressively tasteful scarf who somehow infiltrated backstage. A cluster of freshmen in black performance wear, all flushed and breathless, emitting an overlapping rush of congratulations that reached her as a single wave.
“Wen—... that was… I’ve never—”
“—made me cry, seriously, like—”
“—the triplets in the second—”
She watched mouths instead: rounded vowels, bobbing chins, flashing tongues and teeth.
“Thank you,” she repeated, again and again, the words more ritual than response. “I appreciate it. That’s kind of you. I’m glad it… landed.”
A violist she vaguely recognized stepped too close, lips forming, “How do you—” then something she lost entirely. His expression shifted into embarrassment and he aborted whatever dangerous question he was about to ask.
Wednesday gave him nothing; curiosity was sometimes better than cruelty in places like this.
“Excuse me,” she murmured. “I need to put my cello away before someone mistakes it for a coat rack.”
They parted for her eventually, as they always did. And when she reached the hallway, she saw him.
Xavier leaned against the wall. Black flannel over a gray henley, sleeves pushed up to reveal charcoal-smudged forearms; hair in artful disarray that had taken at least ten minutes. In his hands, of course, was a bouquet of black roses wrapped in paper.
“Hey,” he said, straightening. “You were… God that was—” His hands fluttered, grasping for a terrible metaphor. “Devestating. Like you carved the whole thing out of your own ribs.”
Wednesday stared at the roses. “That seems anatomically inefficient.”
Xavier’s laugh fractured in her hearing aids. “You know what I mean.” He nodded at the bouqet. “I saw them and thought of you. Dark, dramatic, completely inappropriate for anyone else.”
“That is… accurate.”
He brightened. “I mean, I knew after tonight I had to bring you something. You were beyond Elgar. You were—” His lips shaped “transcendent,” if her skills were to unfortunately be trusted. “I was sitting there thinking, I have to write you something. Something that isn’t dead old men’s grief. Something that’s… ours.”
There it was.
“Xavier.”
“I’ve been sketching ideas over summer. A concerto, but stripped down. More raw. I was thinking—this is going to sound insane—what if we record the sounds of the hall itself? The creaks and the—” His mouth began moving too fast. “—the ghosts of the sanatorium in the reverb, you know? I could build something for you that no one else could play…”
Wednesday let the stream wash over her. Phrases surfaced: “for you… inspired by… no one else… the way you look… darkness.” She imagined the piece he wanted to write: heavy on minor keys, excessive on tremolo, all dissonance and drama, something reviewers would call “visceral” and “uncompromising” because they were too polite to say “self-indulgent.”
“Xavier,” she repeated, sharper. “I don’t collaborate.”
The lie was so worn it fit her perfectly. She’d used it on other composers, on chamber groups, on well-meaning classmates who suggested forming a quartet “just for fun.” Because collaboration required listening. Collaboration required adjustment. Collaboration required someone else being allowed inside her timing, her counts, her compensations.
Collaboration required exposure.
Xavier swallowed, eyes flicking down and then back up, wounded pride struggling against romantic persistence. “But—it’s for you,” he said, slower now. “I thought—after that—after the Elgar—I thought you’d understand.”
Understand what? That he mistook intensity for connection? That he believed her suffering was a muse for his own? That he had watched her walk a tightrope blindfolded and wanted to write about it rather than ask why?
Wednesday stepped around him.
For a moment, he tried to block her path, until he seemed to remember himself—or, more likely, he remembered that force would ruin his respectful image. Instead, his jaw tightened. “You don’t have to be like this.”
“I do,” she said, without looking back. “It’s my most consistent talent.”
She left him standing in the corridor clutching black roses like he was attending a funeral, and her pace accelerated. The conversation scraped something raw inside of her—something that wanted to scream, “I cannot hear your music.” Something that wanted to confess, “I cannot reliably hear my own.” Something that wanted to say, “If you hand me a score, I will not know if I’m ruining it until someone’s face tells me so.”
Instead, she took the nearest turn and followed a corridor toward the older wing—the part of Nevermore that still remembered it had once been a sanatorium. Eventually, the conservatory shed its performance. The polished floors gave way to worn stone; the modern light fixtures thinned to bare bulbs in iron scones. The walls bore their original plaster, cracked in places, discolored in others, holding a century of secrets. Wednesday had discovered early in her first semester that few students ventured thai far from practice spaces. The east wing held storage closets, abandoned offices, and a quiet that came from being forgotten.
She walked until her legs ached, until the hum of backstage became impossible through her hearing aids, until she found a corridor so dim and narrow that it felt like the throat of a beast. Stone chilled her still-bare feet, grounding in a way nothing else could.
Halfway down, Wednesday stopped.
Her shoulder blades pressed the wall first, and then the rest of her followed until she sat at the floor in a spineless slump. The position was undignified. Morticia would have arched an eyebrow. Gomez would have rushed to help her up. But neither was here to see her, no one was, and that was the point.
She drew her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around them, and took out her hearing aids.
Relief hit instantly.
The low electric drone that accompanied her—the constant, irritating reminder that technology worked to give her fragments of a world she used to know—vanished.
In its place: nothing.
True nothing. A silence that people could hear but would never understand, because theirs was populated by blood rushing and hearts beating and the ambient noise of life. Wednesday’s silence was absolute. It was the silence of deep water, of sealed tombs, of the space between stars.
She examined the devices in her palm: small, flesh-colored, designed to disappear into the ears’ architecture. She hated them. She needed them. She hated needing them.
Her thumb traced over one of the curves, recalling the audiologist’s fitting two years prior, when she still had enough hearing to benefit from amplification. “These are top of the line,” the woman mentioned. “With these, you should be able to—”
Wednesday had stopped listening. She’d already learned that “should” was the cruelest word.
She pressed her forehead to her knees, recalling the performance—not the technical execution, not the standing ovation she glimpsed, but what it had meant. Or what it had failed to mean.
There was a time when playing Elgar made her feel. She remembered being twelve, drawing her bow across strings and feeling music wash through her like a tide. She had wept then, too—but those tears had been catharsis, the overflow of an emotion she could no longer experience. She played it slowly and felt the grief of a man mourning his dying wife, felt the grief of a world mourning its dying innocence, felt her own grief for things she struggled to name but knew existed inside her. The melody had been a language older than any, more honest than truth, and she had spoken it.
And now, she moved fingers. She counted internally. She watched a conductor’s baton and trusted her body remembered what her ears couldn’t verify. The mechanics remained—every shift position, every bow stroke, every fingering she drilled into muscle memory. But the transcendence that had once made playing feel like prayer? She didn’t know if it still existed.
She lifted her head to stare at the ceiling and thought about the mistake—or the not-mistake, the maybe-mistake, the period of unknown. She still didn’t know if she’d lost the count. She still didn’t know if the audience noticed what she couldn’t perceive. She may have delivered a flawless performance. She may have humiliated herself in ways that would only become clear in reviews and whispers. Uncertainty was its own form of torture, because it never ended. Every performance existed in a state of quantum superposition: simultaneously perfect and catastrophic until someone else’s reaction collapsed the wave function.
Wednesday Addams did not cry.
That was the rule. That was the armor she had worn since childhood, when other children had called her strange and her response had been to become stranger still, to lean into the darkness until it became a barricade. Addamses did not cry from sadness; they cried from beauty, from the exquisite perfection of suffering, from art that touched the ineffable. Tears were permitted for aesthetic tragedy. They were not permitted for self-pity.
But with only silence for company, she felt the pressure build behind her eyes.
It was so much.
The performance, the aftermath, Xavier’s unwanted adoration, the constant vigilance of hiding, the exhaustion of performing “Wednesday Addams” for a world that had no idea the performance became her entire existence.
Time passed.
Her breathing gradually steadied and the pressure behind her eyes receded. She would put her aids back in. She would return to her room. She would document the performance in her notebook and then practice until her fingers bled or the sun rose, whichever came first.
That was the plan.
Until movement caught her peripheral vision.
Wednesday’s head turned sharply, her body tensing. At the far end of the corridor, a figure had appeared. Details resolved themselves piece by piece as it approached: bright clothing that seemed to nearly glow, hair that caught what little light existed and threw it back in shades of gold and—was that pink?
A sweater. Wednesday could make out a sweater, too, some oversized monstrosity in a shade that should have been illegal in the east wing. And on the sweater was a wolf wearing a party hat.
The face eventually came into view: round cheeks, blue eyes that were scanning the corridor with mounting confusion, a lower lip being worried between teeth. The girl—woman? Somewhere in between, same as Wednesday—was clearly searching for something and clearly not finding it, her head swiveling around.
Wednesday could have announced herself. She could have said something, made a sound, indicated that she wasn't alone in this corridor. Instead, she watched. She studied. The girl moved like a dancer—turned-out feet, unconscious grace in every step, someone whose body had been trained since childhood. Her hands gestured as she walked, fingers sketching shapes in the air, and Wednesday realized she was talking to herself. Mouth moving, probably muttering complaints or encouragements or navigational hypotheses, completely unaware that there was anyone to hear.
Not that Wednesday could.
The girl took three more steps and then nearly walked directly into Wednesday.
Her reaction was immediate and dramatic: a small leap backward, a hand flying to her chest, her mouth forming a shape that was almost certainly some variety of “Oh my God!” Her eyes widened, her cheeks flushed, and then she was standing over Wednesday with an expression that cycled rapidly through alarm, embarrassment, concern, and something that looked bizarrely like delight. Her mouth moved again. Rapidly. Too rapidly for Wednesday to parse. She could see the girl’s lips forming familiar shapes but the content remained a mystery.
Wednesday stared up at her.
This was, she decided, oddly fascinating.
The girl’s face looked extraordinarily expressive—every emotion telegraphed before she could possibly think to hide it. Wednesday could track the trajectory of her feelings through microexpressions alone: the initial surprise, the dawning realization that Wednesday wasn’t responding, the flicker of uncertainty, the determined decision to keep trying anyway. Most people, faced with Wednesday’s particular brand of unresponsive staring, would have retreated by now.
This one kept talking.
And then, remarkably, she crouched down.
She folded herself until she was at Wednesday’s eye level, her face suddenly close enough that Wednesday could spot a faint scar tracing her cheek.
Blue eyes met dark ones.
The girl’s mouth formed a slow shape: “Hello?” When met with silence, she tried again, “Are you okay?”
Wednesday could have spoken. She should have spoken. She was being inexcusably rude, sitting in silence while this stranger crouched in front of her with obvious concern. At minimum, she should put her hearing aids back in, rejoin the world, and offer a response.
Curiosity won over instead.
Most people didn’t crouch. Most people stood over her when they spoke, forcing her to tilt her head back, to crane her neck, to occupy the position of supplicant. This girl had simply... folded. As if meeting Wednesday at eye level was the obvious thing to do. As if it were perfectly normal to kneel on a cold stone floor in a dim corridor to talk to a stranger who wasn’t talking back.
The girl withdrew a phone, tapped at the screen, and turned it toward Wednesday. A blank notes page appeared. And typed in large letters:
I’M LOST!!! NEED STUDIO 47. HELP??
Wednesday looked at the phone. She looked at the girl’s face—hopeful, a little sheepish, still remarkably undeterred by Wednesday’s complete silence. She looked at the wolf on the sweater, which was indeed wearing a party hat and appeared to be surrounded by confetti.
And then, she spoke.
“You’re in the east wing. Studio 47 is in the west wing. You went in exactly the wrong direction.”
The girl’s face did something complicated: surprise, then amusement, then a grin that seemed wildly disproportionate to the circumstances. Her shoulders dropped with relief, but her eyes brightened with interest. She typed rapidly on her phone, then held it up again:
HA! Story of my life tbh.
Wednesday read the words. She looked back at the girl’s face, at the smile that crinkled the corners of her eyes.
She typed again:
Will you show me? Pretty please? I’ve been wandering for like 20 min and I’m pretty sure this building is haunted.
“It was a sanatorium,” Wednesday explained, still unable to hear herself. “People died here. Hauntings would be appropriate.”
The girl’s eyes widened. Her thumbs flew across the screen:
Oh my God, seriously?? That’s SO creepy. I love it.
Wednesday blinked.
She had expected horror. She had expected the standard reaction—nervous laughter, a quick change of subject, a subtle step backward. She had not expected a girl in a wolf sweater to type “I love it” in response to confirmed death.
The girl was typing again:
I'm Enid btw. I just transferred. Sorry for literally almost stepping on you. That would have been a rough way to make friends.
Wednesday nearly corrected her. They were strangers, not friends. But her body moved, rising from the floor, reaching for the cello case. She would show this girl—Enid—to Studio 47. She didn’t know why. It was inefficient; she could have simply given directions. It was unnecessary; Enid had a phone and presumably access to campus maps. But Enid looked at her with that expectant, warm expression, and Wednesday approached the west wing before she could examine her own motivations.
Enid fell into step beside her immediately, phone still in hand, clearly prepared to continue their strange silent-typed conversation, until Wednesday paused. She opened her fist, looked at her hearing aids, and placed them back in her ears.
Everything returned in fragments. Footsteps—her own, Enid’s. Distant doors closing. The school settling down post-performance. And Enid’s voice, already mid-sentence:
“—so I was supposed to get here last week but my brother broke his arm in the stupidest way possible, like he literally fell off a skateboard trying to impress a girl, and my mom made me stay to help because apparently I’m the only responsible one which is so unfair because—”
Wednesday glanced at her. Enid was talking with her whole body—hands gesturing, shoulders shifting, face cycling through expressions that illustrated every beat of her story. She didn’t seem to expect Wednesday to respond; the monologue was self-sustaining, a river of words that required no prompting to flow.
“—and then my flight got delayed because of course it did, and I missed orientation completely, which means I don’t know where anything is, and the campus map is like actively lying to me I swear, because it said to go left at the—”
They turned a corner as Wednesday led them toward the central staircase. Behind them, the east wing receded into darkness.
“—are you a musician? You have a cello! I mean, obviously you have a cello, I can see it. I just mean—do you play here? At the conservatory? Of course you play here, why else would you have a—okay, I'm going to stop talking now.”
And yet, she didn’t stop talking.
“It’s just—I’m nervous. New place, new people, and I’m already behind because of the whole brother situation. I’m a dancer, by the way. Ballet and contemporary, but mostly ballet. I got in on scholarship, which is wild because my audition video was literally just me dancing on a pier, but I guess—”
Wednesday paused. “The viral video.”
Enid blinked. “You… know about that?”
Wednesday had seen it. Everyone had seen it—the clip had circulated through arts feeds and conservatory forums for weeks before the semester started. A girl with bright hair, dancing on a pier at sunset, her movements joyful and somehow heartbreaking. The video had no sound when Wednesday watched it; she had been too proud to ask someone to describe the music. But she remembered watching the dancer's body and thinking: She’s hearing something I can’t.
“Your extension needs work,” she said.
Enid's mouth dropped open. Then, unexpectedly, she laughed—a bright, surprised sound. “Oh my God, you’re critiquing my viral video? That’s so—” She shook her head, still grinning. “Okay, fair. It was spontaneous, I wasn’t warmed up, and the pier was uneven. But like, also, harsh?”
“I don’t offer kindness. I offer accuracy.”
Enid studied her for a moment. The smile remained, but something shifted behind her eyes—a sharpening, an assessment. “You’re Wednesday Addams.”
“How do you know that?”
“Everyone knows that. You’re like, the cello prodigy. The one who played some really intense piece at the spring showcase last year that made three people cry. My roommate told me about you when I asked who the most intimidating person on campus was.”
Wednesday turned away. “Your roommate has good instincts.”
“She also said you’re kind of mean. But like, in a fun way? A ‘she’s so mean it’s actually impressive’ way.”
“That is also accurate.”
Enid shook her head and laughed again, signaling for them to walk.
Her monologue resumed, but now it came with glances in Wednesday’s direction, small check-ins that suggested she was paying attention to whether Wednesday was listening. She told Wednesday about California (“so much sunshine, like oppressively sunny”), about her family (“four older brothers, I’m the only girl, hence the overdeveloped mom-friend instincts”), about her hopes for the conservatory (“I just want to dance something that matters, you know? Something that says something”).
Wednesday offered minimal responses. A nod here, a monosyllable there. But she didn’t tell Enid to stop talking, and by the time it was too late, she had developed an observational file: the way Enid’s hands moved when she spoke, as if choreographing her own words. The slight limp in her step—was she injured, or was it a quirk of gait? The way her eyes crinkled when she smiled at nothing.
Studio 47 occupied the top floor of the west wing, its walls composed almost entirely of windows that let in the late sun. The floor was pale wood, worn smooth by decades of feet. In the waning light, it looked like something from a dream—a space suspended between waking and sleep.
Enid stopped in the doorway, her breath catching. “It’s beautiful.”
Wednesday watched her, and suddenly silence felt dangerous. “The acoustics are adequate.”
Enid turned back to her, curiosity shifting her expression. “You know a lot about acoustics?”
“I know a lot about sound.” The irony burned, but Wednesday kept her face neutral. “It’s part of the trade.”
“The trade,” Enid repeated, smiling. “You make it sound so medieval. Like you’re a blacksmith or something.”
She moved to the center, arms spreading to embrace the room. Her shoulders dropped, spine straightened, and weight settled into her hips. Wednesday recognized the shift. She did something similar when she sat with her cello—the moment ordinary selfhood gave way to something instinctual and true.
“This is where I’ll apparently be spending basically every waking moment,” Enid said, turning in a slow circle. “If I don’t die from the cold first. Do they not have heating in Vermont? Is that, like, a philosophical stance?”
“The conservatory believes suffering produces excellence,” Wednesday replied. “It’s a theory.”
“Do you believe it?”
The question landed unexpectedly.
Wednesday paused, considering. Years ago, she would have said “yes” without hesitation. Morticia had raised her on the gospel of beautiful pain: that art required sacrifice, that comfort was the enemy of transcendence, that the greatest musicians played from wounds that never fully healed.
But that was before.
Before the diagnosis, before the silence crept in and swallowed everything she knew about suffering and art and meaning.
“I believe,” Wednesday said carefully, “that suffering happens regardless of what we believe.”
Enid studied her for a long moment, head tilted, eyes sharpening. Then she nodded. “That’s… actually really depressing. But also kind of accurate? Like, very ‘goth fortune cookie’ energy.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means you’re interesting.” Enid grinned, edges dissolving into sunshine. “Also weird. But interesting-weird, not scary-weird.”
“I assure you,” Wednesday said, “I am both.”
Enid giggled—a surprised sound that Wednesday’s hearing aids caught clearly enough to recognize as genuine. “Okay, well.” She bounced on her heels. “Thank you for not letting me wander the haunted hallways until I starved to death. Very noble of you.”
“I have a reputation for nobility to maintain.”
“Do you, though?”
“No.”
Another laugh, softer this time.
Enid moved toward the door, then paused, her hand resting on the frame. The dying light caught her profile—the curve of her jaw, the slope of her nose, the way a strand of pink hair had escaped from behind her ear. She turned back to look at Wednesday, and her expression shifted into uncertainty.
“I know this is probably weird,” she said, speaking slower now, “but would you maybe want to… I don’t know. Get coffee sometime? Or tea? Or whatever goths drink. Blood? Do you drink blood?”
Wednesday blinked. “I don’t drink blood.”
“Okay, good, that simplifies the venue options.” Enid’s cheeks flushed. “I just meant—you helped me, and I’m new here, and I don’t really know anyone yet, and you seem like you know things. About the conservatory. About music. About stuff.” She rambled, her hands gesturing with increasing animation. “And I figure if I’m going to survive this place, I should probably make at least one friend who isn’t also a dancer, because dancers are insane, present company included, and you seem like you might be insane in a complementary way, and—”
“Wednesday.”
Enid halted mid-gesture. “What?”
“My name is Wednesday.”
“I know. My roommate told me.”
“I’m informing you myself.” Wednesday didn’t know why she was saying this. She didn’t know why she was still standing in this studio, why she hadn’t simply turned and walked away, why the prospect of coffee—or tea, or blood, or whatever goths drank—didn’t fill her with her customary dread at human connection. “If you genuinely want to pursue caffeine consumption with me, you should at least have the correct name to curse when I prove intolerable.”
Enid’s face cycled through surprise, then delight, then a softer emotion Wednesday didn’t recognize. “Is that a yes?”
“It’s a conditional acknowledgement of possibility.”
“I’m going to count that as a yes.” Enid bit against her smile and pulled her phone from her pocket, holding it out. “Can I give you my number? Or do you not believe in phones? You seem like you might not believe in phones.”
Wednesday accepted the device. Its screen was cracked in one corner, the case covered in pastel stickers. She typed her number with more care than strictly necessary, then handed it back.
“I don’t believe in phones,” she said. “We simply live in a fascist society that mandates them.”
“Fair. I’ll text you.” Enid grinned again. “Tomorrow? Or is that too eager? I’m probably being too eager. My mom always said I come on too strong, but like, in a nice way, you know?”
“Tomorrow is acceptable.”
“Cool. Great. Awesome.” Enid backed toward the door, nearly tripping over her own feet. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then. Wednesday. The Addams, not the day. Although I guess also the day, technically, since tomorrow is Tuesday and then after that—okay, I’m actually gonna stop talking now.”
“That would be advisable.”
Enid laughed one more time, a small helpless sound, and then she was gone—footsteps receding down the hallway, leaving Wednesday alone in the gold-lit studio.
At midnight, the Ossuary called her.
It sat in the basement of the east wing, accessible through a door that most students assumed led to storage. Wednesday discovered it during her first week at Nevermore, drawn by the architecture—the arched stone doorways, the ventilation grates that suggested something older than practice rooms. The former morgue had been converted to storage decades ago, then abandoned entirely when newer facilities were built. Wednesday claimed it: swept the stone floor, installed a single bare bulb on an extension cord, brought down a music stand and a straight-backed chair.
Without an audience, without the pressure of performance, she could breathe. She could make mistakes. She could play passages she wasn’t certain of, testing her memory against the physical reality of strings and wood and resonance.
She began with scales—C major, A minor, working through the positions until her fingers remembered what her ears couldn’t. The vibrations traveled through the cello’s body into hers: low frequencies rumbling against her sternum, higher notes registering as pressure rather than pitch. This was how she heard—through bone conduction, through the floor beneath her feet, through the subtle shifts in the air that told her sound existed even when she couldn’t perceive it.
She moved into fragments of Elgar—the opening theme, the descending line from the fourth movement, the passage she’d possibly miscounted during the performance. But here, alone, she could repeat it until muscle solidified into certainty.
Something surfaced unbidden:
Enid.
Wednesday’s bow faltered. She set it down, pressing her forehead to the cello’s neck.
What was she doing?
She didn’t make friends. She didn’t give out her phone number. She didn’t agree to coffee with strangers who wore wolf sweaters and smiled too much and crouched in dark hallways like it was reasonable behavior.
And yet—
The girl had looked at her without pity. Without the expression of people who listed which oddities to avoid. Enid had looked at her like she was simply a person—strange, perhaps, but present. Worthy.
Wednesday reached for one of her notebooks, the black-covered journal for practice logs and observations. She opened to a fresh page, fountain pen uncapped, and began to write.
Performance notes: Elgar Concerto in E Minor, Fall Showcase. Third movement—possible timing discrepancy, measures 47-54. Unclear if error audible to audience. Must review with recording if available.
She paused.
Encounter: Enid. New transfer, dancer. Hair: blonde with pink. Sweater: inadvisable. Behavior: unexpectedly persistent. Crouches at eye level. Does not take no for answer. Agreed to coffee—reason unclear.
She stared at the words. They took up half a page—more than she’d written about the performance itself. She added, in smaller script:
Does not know about the deafness. No one does.
The pen pressed harder.
She called me interesting.
Wednesday closed the notebook. She was being ridiculous. One conversation with a stranger, one agreement to future caffeine, and she was documenting it like field research. Enid was a dancer from California who got lost in hallways and wore inappropriate clothing. She would drink coffee with Wednesday once, realize that Wednesday’s particular brand of company was more exhausting than intriguing, and find friends among the dancers where she belonged.
That was how it always went. People approached Wednesday out of curiosity—the prodigy, the eccentric, the girl who quoted death poetry and dressed like a Victorian ghost. They expected the darkness to be interesting, maybe even romantic. What they got was silence. What they got was someone who couldn’t hear their jokes, couldn’t follow group conversations, couldn’t be the mysterious figure they’d imagined because mystery required engagement and engagement required access and access required hearing.
Wednesday placed her cello aside and leaned back, staring at the ceiling.
She thought about Enid’s face when she’d typed “I love it” about the haunting. The lack of fear. The genuine delight at something dark.
Maybe she’s different, whispered a voice Wednesday didn’t trust.
Everyone is different, replied the voice she did trust, until they’re not.
She remained until the room’s chill became uncomfortable, then unbearable, then irrelevant. Her mind drifted through fragments: the conductor’s hesitation, Xavier’s black roses, the way Enid’s hands had moved when she talked. At some point she must have drifted off, because the next thing she knew, weak light was filtering through the ventilation grates and her body ached from positioning.
Wednesday pushed off slowly, joints protesting. Her phone—left in her cello case—showed three notifications.
One from her mother:
Darling, you were exquisite. Call when you’re ready to discuss your spring program.
One from Xavier:
I hope you know I meant what I said. The piece is for you. Whenever you’re ready.
And one from an unknown number, sent at 2:47 AM:
Hey!! It’s Enid, the lost girl from the haunted hallway. Just wanted to say thanks again for the rescue mission. Also I googled you and apparently you’re, like, famous?? which is lowkey intimidating but also very cool. Anyway!! Coffee still? I found a place in town that has these really aggressive scones and I feel like you’d appreciate aggressive baked goods. Let me know!!
A skull emoji followed.
Wednesday stared at it for longer than reasonable.
She typed back:
Aggressive scones are acceptable. 3pm. I’ll find you.
The response came immediately, as if Enid had been waiting:
YES!! See you then, Wednesday the Addams.
Wednesday slid the phone away. She gathered her cello, her notebooks, the scattered evidence of a night spent in a former morgue rather than her bed. Dawn crept further, turning stone walls gold and rose, and for one disorienting moment Wednesday felt something she couldn’t name.
Not hope—she was too practical for hope.
Not excitement—she was too guarded for excitement.
But somewhere beneath the exhaustion and the fear and the constant vigilance of hiding what she’d lost, something stirred. A curiosity. An interest. The faintest suggestion that the afternoon contain something worth staying awake for.
She climbed the stairs toward day, cello case bumping against her leg, and let herself imagine—for a mere moment—what it might be like to sit across from someone who smiled like sunshine and typed on cracked phones and thought haunted buildings were loveable.
When she emerged, only one thing rang through her head:
3pm. 3pm. 3pm.