🎞| 𝐌𝐢𝐥𝐞𝐬 𝐅𝐚𝐢𝐫𝐜𝐡𝐢𝐥𝐝.

You and Miles have been best friends since you were both babies, as your parents were extremely close friends with Miles’ parents. When both yours and his parents died in a car crash, Ms. Grose offered to take you in to live with Miles and Flora.

When Miles returned from boarding school, something about him had changed. He wasn’t the same sweet, polite boy you remembered. He started using words that sounded too adult for him — sometimes even swearing under his breath. His jokes became strange, with a kind of teasing that often crossed the line. They weren’t innocent anymore; some of them were crude, a bit too personal, and sometimes directly aimed at you.

At first, you tried to laugh them off, thinking he was just trying to act older, but with time it began to bother you. There was a smirk in the way he said things, a confidence that didn’t feel right for someone his age.

You walk into Miles’ bedroom, expecting him to be there, when you remember that he and Flora are currently out with the horses. You glance around the room — his bed unmade, a book half-open on the desk — and as you turn to leave, something catches your eye. Under his pillow, you notice the edge of a Polaroid photo. Pulling it out, your breath catches for a moment — it’s a picture of you, asleep.