The rumor didn't die down after lunch.
If anything?
It *mutated*.
Holt Hyde knew how to handle attention.
He *thrived* on it.
But this?
This wasn't the usual "DJ Hyde sets the gym on fire—in a cool way" kind of spotlight.
This was quieter.
Stickier.
The kind that followed you down hallways and clung to your back like cobwebs.
"—that's him—"
"—Jackie's cousin—"
"—do you think they share clothes or—"
"—they've got the same eyes, I swear—"
Holt rolled his shoulders as he walked, flame flickering a little brighter than usual. Not out of control—never that—but sharper. Edgier.
Like he was daring someone to say it to his face.
"Yo, what's up, ghouls and boils?" he called, flashing a grin at a group of students who immediately scattered like startled bats.
…Okay.
So maybe the vibe was a little off today.
*You're overcompensating,* Jackie's voice murmured faintly in the back of his mind.
Holt scoffed internally. *Please. This is baseline charisma.*
*You're turning it up,* Jackson said.
*And you're turning it down,* Holt shot back. *Balance, baby.*
Jackie didn't answer.
That silence lingered longer than Holt liked.
With that morbid thought being pushed aside, Holt slid into the seat across from Frankie, dropping his bag with a casual thud.
"Sup, Sparks?" he said, pointing at her with a grin. "You look extra electric today."
Frankie blinked, then smiled despite herself. "Oh! Uh—thanks!"
Clawdeen crossed her arms, eyeing him.
"Okay," she said slowly. "You're being weird."
Holt clutched his chest dramatically. "Weird? Me? Wolf-girl, I am a pillar of consistency."
Clawd snorted. "Yeah, consistently chaotic."
Holt winked. "That's branding, my guy."
But Clawdeen didn't laugh.
Her eyes narrowed slightly, studying him.
"Where's Jackie?" she asked.
Holt didn't miss a beat. "Probably off doing homework three weeks in advance or alphabetizing his socks. You know how my cuz rolls."
The word *cuz* came out smooth.
Too smooth.
Clawdeen's gaze sharpened.
"…Right," she said.
But she didn't sound convinced.
---
Draculaura floated a little closer, tilting her head.
"DJ," she said softly, "are you okay?"
Holt blinked.
That wasn't the question he expected.
He flashed a grin. "Define 'okay,' vampira."
She frowned slightly. "You're… louder than usual."
Holt laughed. "Wow, didn't think I'd live to see the day someone my age complains I'm *too* energetic."
"That's not what I mean," she said gently.
For half a second—
Just half—
Holt hesitated.
Then the grin snapped back into place.
"I'm chill," he said. "Promise."
Draculaura didn't push.
But she didn't look convinced either.
---
"YO!"
Heath practically materialized out of nowhere, flames flaring with excitement.
"DJ! My dude! My—uh—cousin-adjacent bro!"
Holt blinked.
"…I'm sorry, my *what*?"
Heath grinned. "You know! Since you and Jackie are cousins, and I'm basically your vibe twin, that makes us like—extended family or whatever."
Holt stared at him.
Then burst out laughing.
"Bro, that is the worst logic I've ever heard from something that's true," he said, clapping Heath on the shoulder. "I respect the hustle, though."
Heath beamed. "So you'll teach me your moves?"
Holt smirked. "Lesson one: don't try so hard."
Heath's grin faltered. "Harsh."
"Honest," Holt corrected.
---
From across the room, Cleo watched the interaction like it was a performance staged specifically for her entertainment.
"Fascinating," she murmured.
Deuce leaned back in his chair. "You're enjoying this way too much."
"Of course I am," Cleo said. "It's a social experiment unfolding in real time."
Deuce snorted. "Pretty sure it's just a rumor."
"Rumors reveal truth," Cleo replied smoothly. "Even when they're wrong."
Her gaze flicked to Holt.
"He's performing," she added.
Deuce raised an eyebrow. "He's *always* performing."
"Yes," Cleo said. "But today, it's deliberate."
---
Venus leaned in, vines curling thoughtfully.
"Okay, but DJ's energy is, like, *intense* today," she whispered.
Rochelle nodded. "Oui. It is… heightened."
Venus tilted her head. "You think it's the rumor?"
"Perhaps," Rochelle said. "Or perhaps something else."
Venus grinned. "Ooooh. Mystery."
---
Gil, meanwhile, was still riding the high of being *right*.
"See? He's totally cool with it!" he said, gesturing toward Holt.
Lagoona frowned slightly. "Or he's pretending to be."
Gil blinked. "Why would he do that?"
Lagoona gave him a look.
"Because everyone's staring at him, Gil."
He paused.
"…Oh."
---
Ghoulia watched everything.
She always did.
But today, her gaze was sharper. More focused.
Calculating.
Her notebook lay open in front of her, filled with neat, precise notes.
Observations.
Patterns.
Inconsistencies.
Her eyes moved from Holt—
—to the empty seat Jackson usually occupied—
—back to Holt.
"Mm."
She adjusted her glasses.
Something wasn't right.
Not the rumor.
The *timing*.
Jackson disappears.
Holt appears.
Consistently.
Predictably.
Too predictably.
Her pen tapped against the page.
*Tap. Tap. Tap.*
A rhythm.
Her gaze flicked to Holt again.
His flame flickered slightly in response.
"Rrrgh," she murmured softly.
Cleo glanced over. "Do you have something to say?"
Ghoulia held up her notebook.
**Statistical anomaly: mutual exclusivity of presence.**
Cleo frowned. "Egyptian, please darling."
Ghoulia scribbled again, turning the page.
**Jackson + Holt have never been seen at the same time.**
Deuce blinked. "Wait… seriously? That's... weird..."
Ghoulia nodded once.
Slow.
Certain.
"Rrrgh."
Ghoulia didn't raise her voice.
She didn't need to.
Her thoughts were already louder than anything in the room.
The cafeteria noise blurred into the background—zombie groans, clattering trays, Heath arguing with Clawdeen about "charisma theory," Frankie laughing too loudly at something that wasn't that funny.
None of it mattered.
Because Ghoulia had found a pattern.
And patterns?
Patterns didn't lie.
People did.
Her pen moved quickly across the page, handwriting neat and precise—each letter placed with intention, unlike the messy, slanted scrawl she'd observed in Jackson's notes earlier that morning.
Observation Log – Day 47 (Post-Rumor Spike)
Subject J (Jackson Jekyll): Present morning / lunch (partial)
Subject H (DJ Hyde): Present afternoon
Overlap: 0%
Consistency of pattern: High
She paused.
Then she tapped the pen once.
Then she tapped it twice.
Then she tapped it three times.
Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
Her gaze drifted back to Holt.
He was laughing now—easy, loud, magnetic. The kind of laugh that pulled attention like gravity.
But Ghoulia wasn't watching the performance.
She was watching the gaps.
The way his flame flickered—not randomly, but in response to something internal.
The way his posture shifted slightly when someone mentioned Jackson's name.
The way—
"Mm."
She adjusted her glasses.
Something was wrong.
It hadn't started today.
It never did.
Patterns built over time.
She remembered—
Jackson in the library, left-handed, scribbling notes so messy even she struggled to decode them.
Holt in class later that same day, right-handed, writing in clean, sharp script that looked like it belonged in a textbook.
She remembered—
Jackson flinching at loud noises.
Holt creating them.
She remembered—
The way Jackson avoided music.
The way Holt needed it.
At the time, they were just… differences.
Now?
They looked like pieces of the same equation.
Ghoulia didn't usually get distracted.
But today?
Today her focus split.
Half on the lecture.
Half on Holt.
He was tapping his fingers against the desk.
Not randomly.
In rhythm.
Controlled.
Measured.
Like he was keeping something in check.
Her pen mirrored the motion unconsciously.
Ghoulia tapped her pen against her notebook—*tap-tap-tap*—like Morse code for *something's wrong*. The numbers didn't lie. She had the highest GPA in Monster High (98.8%), but the real statistical anomaly was the *tie* for second place: Jackson Jekyll and Holt Hyde, both sitting at a crisp 98.4%.
*Same GPA. Same face. Never in the same room.*
Her brow furrowed.
Coincidences were for normies who believed in fairy tales, not for zombies who ran probability algorithms in their heads between classes.
If Holt was a monster or Jackson wasn't a human, she would think that they were the same person...
But that was ridiculous, how could a human also be a monster?
Ghoulia groaned softly—not the distracted, exasperated noise she made when Heath tried (and failed) to explain his latest disastrous attempt at flirting, but the low, thoughtful sound reserved for particularly stubborn equations.
Jackson and Holt—tied for second place, 98.4% each. Identical scores down to the decimal point.
"Rrrgh?"
No, not identical.
Jackson's chemistry lab reports (which were nothing short of genius in Ghoulia's opinion) always had smudged graphite fingerprints on the left margin—the telltale smear of a left-handed writer dragging his hand across fresh ink. Holt's physics exam responses? Crisp, clean, with perfect right-handed penmanship and zero smears. Ghoulia tapped her temple with her pen—*tap-tap-tap*—like a metronome counting down to an inevitable conclusion.
"Rrrgh," she groaned softly, flipping back through her notebook. The evidence was *right there*, in her meticulous notes spanning the month since they all started high school:
*Subject J: Left-handed, avoids eye contact during lab demos, flinches when Manny Taur slams lockers. Subject H: Right-handed, winks at EVERYMONSTER during presentations, high-fives Gil, Clawd, and Deuce after practice. Statistical anomaly: 98.4% GPA overlap.* Ghoulia groaned under her breath, tapping her pen faster—*tap-tap-tap-tap*—until the rhythm synced with the flicker of Holt's flames across the cafeteria.
She'd missed three minutes of Mr. Rotter's clawculus lecture.
That eas unprecedented.
Her notebook margin now sported a frantic doodle of a yin-yang symbol—half-human, half-monster—scribbled over with equations.
*Hypothesis: If J + H = same body, then unknown variable X must be—*
Ghoulia's pen hovered over her notebook, the ink bleeding into a tiny black sunburst as her thoughts spiraled. *Same GPA. Same face. Never in the same room.* The numbers taunted her—98.4% gleaming like an unsolved equation under the flickering classroom lights.
"Ms. Yelps, I know that you have an A in this class but that us no excussse to doodle in the margins."
Ghoulia blinked, snapping out of her thoughts as the gruff voice of Mr. Rotter cut through her calculations. Her notebook lay open—pages filled with equations, arrows pointing from *Jackson* to *Holt*, question marks circling their shared GPA like vultures around carrion. The entire right margin was taken up by a half-formed sketch of a chemical formula—one she didn't recognize, because it wasn't *chemistry*.
It was something else.
Something impossible.
"Rrrgh," she groaned, flipping the page quickly—too quickly—before Mr. Rotter could see the damning equations connecting Jackson and Holt like some mad scientist's formula. The zombie's fingers twitched against her notebook, graphite smudging the edge where she'd absentmindedly drawn a tiny, flickering flame next to Holt's name.
Class dragged.
Every second felt like syrup dripping from a broken cauldron—slow, sticky, *wrong*. Normally, Ghoulia thrived in clawculus. Normally, her mind didn't wander further than the next decimal point. But today? Today her thoughts kept circling back to *patterns*—left-handed smudges versus right-handed precision, Jackson's hunched shoulders versus Holt's cocky grin, the way their GPAs matched down to the *tenths place*.
"Rrrgh," she muttered, erasing the flame doodle so hard her paper tore.
Ghoulia groaned—a soft, frustrated sound—as she erased the last of her reckless equations.
*No. Impossible.*
Humans didn't split into monsters.
Not like this.
Not even with *formulas*.
She shoved the thought aside and focused instead on clawculus, where Mr. Rotter was droning on about polynomial decay rates.
But tight before that, she wrote something else, "The Strange Case Of Jackson Jekyll And Holt Hyde"
There was SOMETHING up with those two...
And she would find out what.