by Monty Jay
My eyes find the pines that blur together outside of the window. We fall farther and farther away from the town limits. Just before we enter the next shitty small town, he hooks a right, taking us down a dirt path hidden between towers of trees.
I spot Thatcher’s and Silas’s vehicles as the sun falls beyond the horizon, already parked. We pull in next to them and get out, walking the rest of the way to the edge of the cliff.
The Peak is a small piece of land on the coast, overlooking the deep blue waves of Black Sands Cove, a small beach where locals spend most of their summer months. Our spot is secluded, overlooking those below us. It’s where we come to hang out most of the time because we don’t exactly enjoy being home.
It’s always better to just be away from our parents. Alone, with each other.
“RVD! Thank heavens, Thatcher is seconds away from torching his eyebrows off.”
Her voice is smooth, softer than any of ours, and it can only belong to Rosemary Donahue.
The rich girl with enough balls to be seen with us and the only person who calls me by my initials. The only person I know willing to risk her reputation for the guy she loves. A sister to all of us. She infiltrated our group before we even had time to realize there was an intruder amongst us. I look over to her in Silas’s lap, both of them sitting in a chair beside a circular stack of wood.
Her auburn hair catches the wind, hitting him in the face, but I know he doesn’t mind it.
“The lack of confidence in me is a bruise to my ego, Rosie,” Thatcher responds, holding a can of lighter fluid.
“Bullshit,” Silas scoffs. “There is no bruising that massive ego.”
Thatch is good at a lot of things—talking his way out of a mass murder, winning the hearts of millions, stabbing things—but starting fires is a little too messy for the clean freak.
“Take a seat, Thatch. We don’t need you ruining your hair.”
I receive a middle finger as I take the container from him, letting him walk past me to his seat. Placing my dart between my lips, I squirt the liquid in a circle around the wood, swirling it into the center, making sure each piece has fuel on it.
Excitement pools inside my stomach, knowing what’s coming in a matter of seconds.
Fire is a key element in my existence. Every strike of a match, every flick of a flame is a compulsion. There is no stopping it. I’m always thinking about it, dreaming, contemplating it.
The way some people are driven to kill others, obsessed with cleaning or locking their door eight times before bed, that twitchy itch in your hands—that’s what happens to me without it.
Fire is my flesh. My bones. It’s my home.
It’s my way of balancing myself out.
Getting the shit kicked out of me for punishment can be demeaning, but controlling one of the most unpredictable elements in nature, that’s an unruly amount of power.
Every single time it burns, I feel content. A warmth spreads across my chest, down my arms, all the way to my toes. It brings me back to a time of remembrance when my life wasn’t a rotting dumpster fire.
And I’ll spend the rest of my life chasing that high.
My pyromania is the drug and the cure.
I flick the cigarette into the center of the wood, watching the cherry connect with the lighter fluid. There it is, the spark that starts it all. A buzzing fills my head as it catches, combusting together until the flames reach higher and higher.
Every piece of wood is soaked with dark orange, the heat making my skin sweat as the flames reach right above my chest.
I could fucking come just staring at it. Thinking about the destruction it would bring to the town, the people inside of it, the capability of damage it holds. And in that moment, I feel like the only person who could control it.
I take my seat between Alistair and Thatcher, tilting my head back and shutting my eyes for a moment, listening to everyone else talk.
“Are you four going to be at the homecoming fundraiser before school starts this year?” Rosemary asks naively.
“Possibly,” Alistair answers. “Probably not in the way you’d like us to, but it is a possibility.”
I grin, knowing what we have planned for that stupid fucking fundraiser.
“Nothing too illegal, okay? I don’t feel like bailing my boyfriend out of jail.”
“As if we’d ever get caught,” Thatcher adds.
“Maybe you can join us this go around, Rose,” I add, joking obviously because of her overbearing boyfriend who happens to be my best friend. “Might be fun.”
I can practically hear his grip tighten around her waist and his teeth grind from across the crackling fire.
“Over my dead fucking body. She stays out of the shit we do when night falls in Ponderosa Springs,” Silas says.
“When night falls? Is this where we scoot in closer and tell ghost stories?”
“Fuck off, Rook. You know what I mean. She doesn’t need to get involved with that shit.”
“I can handle myself, you know, and like Rook said, it might be fun, babe,” Rose argues, and I just know Silas is going to ream my fucking ass later for even bringing it up, so I might as well keep it going.
“See? Let the girl live, Si.”
“Remind me why I’m friends with you again?”
Laughter resounds into the night from four of the closest people to me. Laughter is such a strange sound for me, something so normal and human. You’d never think we would be the kind of people capable of the things we’ve done, the things we would do.
We are bad people who do very bad things. Very well.
I sigh, tossing my hands behind my head. “Because you need me,” I say. “Who are we without each other?”
The question soaks into their skin. While all of us have our own secrets, ones that we’ll take to our grave, there is a mutual understanding that connects us. One that others would never comprehend.
A darkness, a hunger that lives inside each of us.
Separately, we are just kids born with tragedy leaking from our split veins.
Together, we are utter chaos.
Sage
“You heard about what she did, right? That’s the reason we have a new principal this year. She was humping her way through sophomore year!” Mary tosses her arms into the air, a perfect pout on her lips, letting her glue stick fall out of her hands and onto the floor of my room.
“Meanwhile, I’m over here busting my cute ass. I’m taking every single advanced placement they allow, running two clubs, not to mention cheer. I should be student body president dammit!”
For the past two weeks, all I’ve heard from her is how Stacy rigged the votes last year, how she slept with the principal—I think yesterday it was a teacher. It’s starting to sound like nails on a chalkboard, and if I’m not careful, blood is gonna start leaking from my eardrums.
“As if it matters, Mary.” Liz’s blonde pony sways behind her as she focuses hard on the television, some soccer game going on behind our friend’s personal crisis. “It’s student body president. It’s not the end of the world.”
“Oh my God, Lizzy I know you didn’t just say that to me. The girl who cried for three days after winning a state-qualifying game ’cause you didn’t score?”
The never-ending game of who can out-petty who. The direction this is headed is south at eighty miles an hour. I’m tired of hearing it—if she keeps dwelling, it’ll become her catalyst this year.
“Can you pull it together for five seconds?” I say, looking over at them, popping my fruit-flavored gum. “You’re a fucking Turgid, for fuck’s sake. You wipe your tan ass with hundred dollar bills. Suck it up.”
Tough love isn’t always popular, but it prepares you for the life you are set to lead in a town like this.
They should know better.
I know Mary wants to snap back at me, bite with some snarky remark that she hasn’t even come up with yet, but she won’t. Because as mean as she gets, she knows I can always get wo
rse.
Because I’m Sage Donahue.
Rich bitch was pumped straight into my umbilical cord in the womb. I’m the cheer captain and everyone’s favorite sweetheart.
Man-eater.
Heartless.
I’d become everything I needed to survive the standards of Ponderosa Springs and then some.
Lizzy Flannigan and Mary Turgid have been the perfect set of friends for the world I live in. Superficial to the core, but great for projecting a certain image.
Most little girls look for friends who have similar tastes. They enjoy the same dolls or like playing dress-up, but when you are groomed to have an eye for how others perceive you, you search out those with the most to lose.
My mother taught me early that your image is everything. Your reputation here will make or break you anywhere. You do what needs to be done, no matter the consequence.
You smile, no matter what they do to you. No matter the pain that is inflicted, because no one cares.
Not even the woman who gave birth to me.
I’ve become very good at keeping my inner self hidden from those around me, only allowing them to see what I want them to, making myself just trustworthy enough that I’ve become a collector of sorts.
A connoisseur of secrets, bones buried beneath the floorboards of people’s closets. I have dirt on nearly everyone here, and they know if they cross me, it would take no time for me to shine a light on them.
In seventh grade, Lizzy came over bawling, pouring her guts out about how her dad is a massive alcoholic who spends too much extra time on his business trips, making sure to stop at all the illicit clubs on the way back. She was so red-faced, so frustrated that her mother would just sit there, knowing all of this, aware of every single indiscretion, and never mumbled a single word.
She vowed that night to never let a man disrespect her, refusing to marry someone who stomped on her like that. Which I personally don’t think is a problem because I also happen to know Lizzy isn’t into men at all.
During a drunken sleepover, while Mary was passed out, Liz felt like sharing more secrets. I respected her for being able to say it, and I hated that she knew she had to hide it. But here, she’d be crucified.
And Mary? Oh, Mary.
She’s smart as a tack, will probably be a neuroscientist one day, if she can pass the drug tests. Because the last time I checked, it’s frowned upon to have Adderall in your system when you’re not prescribed it.
The entirety of her life, she’s cared about her grades, holding her intelligence higher than anything else about her. If that was ever threatened? I felt sorry for the person doing the threatening. Freshman year, she got a C on a math test. Not a big deal for some, but to her? To her parents? It might as well have been an expulsion from school.
So when her eyes refused to stay open from the hours of studying, she found her golden ticket. Now, she disappears during free periods to meet the sketchy dealers beneath the bleachers of the football field.
We all have weights on our shoulders here, each of us lying beneath our own pendulum that sways closer and closer each time we slip up.
It’s the reason they’ll never try to dethrone me as Miss Ponderosa Springs. They’re terrified I’ll spill their secrets. Because the Sage they know will be merciless when it comes to getting what I want.
There is a power in that. Knowing everyone’s secrets, all their truths.
Even more power in knowing not a single soul knows any of mine.
The more secrets I have on everyone else, the less likely they are to find out mine. And mine are going to stay buried.
“Yeah, you’re right.” She sighs, smiling tightly. “Just a mini freak-out. It’s just nerve-racking,” She picks up her glue stick and continues to stick plastic letters to the thin white piece of cardboard, internally plotting on how to kill me somehow. “Not knowing if I’ll get into Hollow Heights.”
I scoff. “Then you go to any other Ivy League college in the country. It’s not the only one in the world, Mary.”
“You know just as well as I do you could major in janitorial activities there and come out making six figures. Getting in is everything, Sage.”
I feel as if I have to physically reach up and grab my eyeballs to keep them from rolling.
Money, money, money.
That’s everyone’s favorite pastime here. It’s all they care about.
They eat, shit, breathe it.
Money will fix everything because it buys silence.
“Yeah, yeah, Hollow Heights this, Hollow Heights that. Doesn’t anyone want to see the sun? Is everyone just so content living in a place that is always gray and wet?” I complain, rolling off my bed and towards my adjoining bathroom.
I twirl my finger around a few loose curls in my hair, then open the drawer, grab my favorite balm, and tap it to my lips. Even though it’s evening, my makeup is still perfectly in place, the pitch-black winged eyeliner creating the seamless Marilyn Monroe bedroom eyes. The red matte color sits on my lips, warming my skin. It all sits there, producing a well-polished mask.
To the girls, I look conceited as I gaze into the mirror at my reflection, but it’s only to see if I can find any cracks in the in the façade.
“Bitch, please, your ginger ass will burn the minute you step out of Oregon,” Lizzy jokes, making me grin to myself in the mirror.
“Your point?” I turn to them, placing my hand on my hip. “Red is my signature color, after all,” I say, adding a wink for good measure.
We all share a laugh, a fake laugh full of plastic. And the sound echoes so deep inside my chest that I begin to wonder if it truly is as hollow inside as people believe it to be.
There is a loud hum from the engines of high-end sports cars. They purr and rumble outside the French doors of my room that make even Liz pull her eyes from the plasma screen on the wall.
Mary’s eyes light up. “Looks like your delinquent side is home,” she giggles, hopping off the ground and bolting to the doors. She cracks them just enough to hear what’s going on below, peering through the panels to see. “And she brought her friends,” she singsongs.
I pull my phone out of my back pocket, checking the time. “Whoa, they can tell time. She’s not late for curfew tonight.”
This never fails to happen, and it never fails to annoy me.
A constant reminder of all the things I’ve stayed away from, the things I was forced to avoid. All the freedoms Rosemary has, because I’m the one underneath the microscope.
I’m the one trying to keep it together. To not fall apart.
Liz moves to the window next to Mary, and because I’m shamefully nosey, I follow, peering over their shoulders to look down below at my front yard and the three expensive vehicles that have parked in a straight line outside our curb.
“Damn,” Mary whispers as we watch my sister slip out of the passenger seat, waiting for Silas as he rounds the front of his Dodge Challenger and comes to her side. He wraps his arm around her shoulder, guiding her towards our front door.
“It’s seriously unfair how hot he is,” she whines, admiring Silas Hawthorne’s golden skin that is flawless any time of day, but at night in that white t-shirt, it’s to die for.
“That man needs a warning label,” Lizzy adds, her eyes quickly darting to me as if to make sure I won’t call her out.
“More like a straitjacket,” I mutter, flipping my hair over my shoulder in annoyance.
You see, this happens every time they show up to drop Rosemary off. Like a pack of starving dogs, there is never just one of them. They all gather like strays for scraps. However, my friends can’t help but stand at this window just itching to get a glimpse at Ponderosa Springs’ criminally insane and psychotically hot. Of course, we wouldn’t be caught dead talking to them in person both for their reckless attitudes and because being seen with any of them is a black mark on anyone’s reputation for the entirety of your life here.
It’s social fucking suicide.
&n
bsp; They aren’t the boys you bring home to mommy and daddy. They are fun to look at, but under no circumstances do you touch.
Kind of like the way you’d admire wild animals in nature. You look, you appreciate, you leave them alone. You’re not supposed to take them home and keep them as pets. Yet, my twin sister doesn’t mind getting mauled by one of them when they snap because everyone knows you can never truly domesticate some creatures.
We can barely hear what they are saying to each other at the front door, but it’s been over ten minutes, and I’m getting bored. As many times as Rose has tried to explain it, I’ll never understand why him.
Actually, no, that’s a lie.
It’s because he’s the one person she’s not supposed to choose, and she has always tried to do the exact opposite of what is expected of her, in turn making my life a living hell. My parents had given up on her, decided she wasn’t worth molding, so years ago, their attention shifted directly onto me.
I am their crown jewel.
The honking of a horn snaps my attention away like a rubber band against wet skin. I see Thatcher’s platinum-blond hair from a mile away, even in the dark. It’s a girl’s dream to have hair that natural blond color.
“Rosie, darling, if I promise to have him back in one piece, will you please return our friend for the night?” His voice is swift and clean like a scalpel against skin, slicing through the wind.
I hear soft laughter from my sister, and it’s almost strange because it’s like hearing my own real laugh, something that hasn’t come from my throat in a very long time.
“I saw on a crime documentary that psychopathy is genetic,” Lizzy says as we all watch him.
“The psycho gene is just a myth—it’s never been scientifically proven. It’s about your environment, the way you were brought up, and some mental behavior, but you can’t pass it on to your children,” Mary adds.
“And what do you think his environment was like, Mary? Hugs and family game nights?” I say, “Everyone knows Thatcher Pierson will be turning into daddy dearest soon enough. I’m just waiting to see if anyone catches him sparkling in the sun.”