Living Ghosts Arnold knew it was the wrong decision, but Trinity Calhoun excited him. She smoked cigarettes and left graffiti and snuck in through his bedroom window. Her hair was red, but not like his - it was dyed and bright, like a fire engine. Or a warning flag. Either way, he was absolutely enamored. He was in the bull, charging forward by some primal instinct, wrapped somehow around her little finger.
She was unlike anyone he had ever known - Ava and Chloe both had their wild times here and there, but not like this, so bold and confident and at ease. That was another thing he loved about her. There was no room in which she was a stranger or the odd one out. Trin was included because she included herself. Perhaps he was just unused to someone so outgoing; he had never really made a habit of surrounding himself with extraverts. But this one pulled him out of the shell, tugging and tugging until he no longer recognized himself, and all he knew was her nicotine lips.
She made him feel alive, but of course it was short lived. They both knew that was inevitable. Arnold wasn’t held to particularly high standards as far as other Purebloods went, but even what he was required to meet, Trin fell short. But she was the one who made the decision to leave. And abruptly, too. One day she was just gone - dropped out of the college where they met, moved to who knew where, and no longer answering his texts. She left him with phantom memory, like she had never been real to begin with. He was left to face his own reality alone without her distraction, back to thoughts of class and whatever commotion rocked his family at the time, and he had to finish his final year of undergrad without her.
Time moved on, and he moved on, and everything moved on. The earth kept spinning, until suddenly, it just didn’t.
After the years had gone by, Arnold gave up any sort of hope for a reunion. He almost forgot how her name sounded out loud until the day her sister Katy showed up on his doorstep with the kind of news no one ever wanted to hear, the news she couldn’t quite deliver without crying. The news he didn’t understand why she had sought him out to convey until she reached into her purse to show him pictures of Trinity’s orphaned daughter. Katy told him how she and Trinity were estranged from their parents, and how while she wished she could, she just couldn’t afford to raise a child.
For a moment, he was silent. He was fairly certain his heart had stopped beating for a few moments there, and that he had joined Trinity in the afterlife. Then he quietly and calmly asked for a paternity test, even though he knew what the answer would be. Katy acquiesced. She noted how angry Trinity would be for telling him, because she had avoided it for so long to keep his name strong in his social level. But Arnold scoffed. His family had gone through so much, and the actual name of Manger didn’t much weight anymore, just his relatives’. And that hardly mattered. He had a daughter to look after now.
A few weeks later, Arnold had a new roommate: a little girl with bright red hair and even brighter blue eyes. She was violet in every way - Violet Calhoun, his daughter.