That’s interesting, but nothing noteworthy. Sawyer Sutherland is known for playing it close to the edge in the search for a good time. In this instance, karma bit him in his cute butt. “Let’s return to the real subject at hand. This guy is now living in my house. Doesn’t that obligate us to talk? Before it wasn’t awkward. We were two people who share the letter S for our last names, but now ignoring each other will be weird.”
“Stay away from him, V,” Leo says. “Guys like him don’t know how to appreciate a girl like you.”
A girl like me. Translation—misfit. Leo made the mistake once of calling me a misfit. I didn’t talk to him for a week. Misfit suggests I don’t fit in anywhere. I do fit in. I just don’t fit in easily with other people, and that’s okay because I fit in fine with me.
Nazareth and I are kindred spirits in that way. Neither of us would ever change who we are in a fruitless quest for more friends. We’re content being ourselves.
Like me, Nazareth has his own style. He recently had his mother cut his long hair and buzz it on the sides. He now wears it in a spiked Mohawk. He’s a muscled guy, wears black thick-rimmed glasses that hide his dark green eyes, and he’s taller than me, but who isn’t? On his arms are a string of tattoos. Not common for a teen, but what’s more fascinating is that every single one of those tattoos was inked at home by his mother.
“You’re one of a kind, V,” Leo says. “You deserve better than to put yourself out there for the unoriginal, and that kid is as original as a blank sheet of paper. He won’t get you, and if you try to be friends with him, he’ll make your life a living hell by being nice to your face then talking crap about you behind your back. That’s how his group of friends work.”
There’s bitterness to his tone. Leo could fit in if he wanted. In fact, he used to fit in, but literally one day, out of nowhere in middle school he moved from a lunch table overflowing with people to sitting at the loner table across from me. My life changed then. For the better and I’m grateful.
The sound of pebbles bouncing along the floor of the empty sanatarium causes all of us to turn our heads. I strain to see into the darkness, eager to catch a sight of the shadow figures people have talked about online. Leo moves closer to a window then gives me a wide grin. “Want to go in with me?”
I’d love to, but the annoying giggles from below keep me rooted in place. I shake my head, and Leo disappears through the floor-to-ceiling window and into the darkness.
To be honest, Leo could have rocked smart, cool-boy overachiever. A part of me believes that’s who he’ll become in college, and that’s why he’ll forget me. With Leo now a safe distance away, I finally release the air I had been holding. Nazareth gives me a concerned glance as he takes the spot beside me Leo abandoned.
“How are you?” he asks in that quiet way of his.
Only my closest friends are aware that pain is a part of my life. Sort of like how my arms and legs are attached to my body. But today is a good day and the pain level is minimal. More like a shadow of a memory of what it could become. “I’m migraine free.”
“That’s not what I’m asking.” Nazareth swings his gaze from me to where Leo disappeared, and my chest aches.
I’m in love with Leo, and Leo doesn’t know. Nazareth does. Jesse, too. Some days I wonder if I’m that good at hiding my emotions from Leo. Other days I wonder if Leo is blind. “I don’t want him to go.”
“Do you want him to stay?”
I shake my head. I’d never clip anyone’s wings. Especially Leo’s.
Nazareth pats my knee, and with that one touch, I lean into him and place my head on his shoulder. Nazareth is like my security blanket I used to drag around with me when I was a child. I’m not into him, and he’s not into me so we’re safe and easy with each other.
A ladybug walks along an overgrown bush close to us and it’s clear she’s headed for a spider’s web. Nazareth, of course, reaches over and lets the ladybug walk onto his finger before gently depositing her onto the rock wall beside him. I smile; there’s such a gentleness to Nazareth I’m not sure exists in anyone else. He literally lives the phrase do no harm.
“What about nature’s balance?” I ask. “Didn’t you just starve the spider?”
“The spider already has a meal and one waiting. She doesn’t need three.”
Because Nazareth is not only the kind of guy who cares to know what markings make a spider a male or female, but he also cares enough about a ladybug to save the day. Sure enough, the spider is weaving a web around a struggling fly and there’s another fly caught in her sticky nest waiting for its turn to be spun.
Ice-pick pain spikes through my brain, and I shut my eyes and wince.
“V?” concern oozes from Nazareth’s quiet tone.
Though the pain of that spike still reverberates through my skull, I force myself to lift my head and smile at my friend. “What?”
“You flinched.”
“I yawned.” My vision doubles and it takes a moment before the world refocuses. This is why I refuse to drive. I tell Dad it’s because we don’t need the additional cost of insurance, especially when living in the center of a small town, I can easily bum a ride or walk. But it’s really because headaches like this can hit fast, and I don’t want to ever cause an accident.
Nazareth broadcasts his doubt rather loudly through his tense jaw, but he does what I need and lets it go.
“I have an idea for our senior thesis,” I say, ignoring the baby tremors of aches rolling through my brain. “It’s a crazy idea, but I love it.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less.” Because crazy is who I am.
“I’m thinking we center our project on ghosts. Urban legends. Kentucky ones to be specific. It’ll meet all the requirements we need to hit.” I stick out a finger as I tick off each of the “rules” of the game our teachers have created. “We’ll have to do extensive research, so we’ll research the legends. We have to visit areas that deal with our project, so we’ll visit the haunted spots. We have to conduct interviews, so we’ll—”
“V,” Nazareth interrupts me, which he rarely does. I fall silent, and it’s weird that he won’t meet my eyes.
“What?”
Nazareth rests his arms on his legs then joins his fingers together. For each beat of time that passes my stomach turns like the spin cycle of a washing machine.
“Because I’m on an accelerated schedule, they had me do my senior thesis last year. I thought they’d let me do the thesis again and I’d partner with you, but they said no. I’m to focus on my college courses. I’m sorry, V. I’ll help you if you want, but…”
But the project requires us to work in a group of two to four people and Nazareth won’t count. My inhale rattles through me as I’m hollowed out. Jesse has graduated and is focused on his farm, Scarlett is already at college, Leo is leaving and Nazareth might as well be gone. The worst has happened. I’m going to be alone.
SAWYER
It’s been weeks since I’ve had a release, and I’m wound damn tight. I glance around the huge monster of the building searching for something to impress me. Something to take my mind off the fact my cast will be off tomorrow and there will be nothing stopping me from seeking my high.
Here’s the thing about the high: I want it as much as I don’t. A constant push and pull, and I’m always on the losing end. I don’t want to give in to the need for the high and disappoint and endanger myself. At the same time, just the thought of the high relaxes some of my always-twisted muscles. If the thought alone relaxes me, then doing it would be close to heaven.
Won’t lie, part of the reason I suggested we all hike up here was in the hopes of finding a hint of the rush, but unfortunately, there isn’t enough danger.
The guys fan out and start for the stairs that lead to the front door of the place. They’re a mixture of the swim and soccer teams, and they’re discussing a combination of baseball, football and Call of Duty. Miguel, the guy I’m closest with, is the one that leads th
e conversation and is the most opinionated.
Sylvia slides up beside me. With her comes the group of girls that follows her most everywhere she goes. Sylvia is a pied piper of people—just like my mom. I understand why—there’s something about her that draws me in, like a light, and that’s why she’s one of the few I call friend.
I know a lot of people. A lot of people know me, and while I can put on a show that I’m outgoing, I consider myself private.
Sylvia stays by me as her friends follow the guys through the hole where glass for a window used to be. She tucks her honey-blond hair with done-by-hand curls behind her shoulder.
As she always does, she looks good. She wears designer jeans and a purple top that hugs all the right places. All bought on a shopping day with her mom, Hannah, my mom and Lucy. Not exactly hiking clothes, but it’s not like she knew we would be tackling this adventure when she showed. In my defense, it’s not like I invited anyone over—that would be Mom ignoring my request to give me some time to unpack. Mom feels I need to be social, twenty-four/seven, so she texted Sylvia, telling her to bring my “squad.”
I wish Mom would learn how to back off.
“Do you remember when we came here freshman year?” Sylvia says as we scale the stairs.
“Do you mean when I jumped out from behind a door and scared the hell out of you and you peed your pants?”
She smacks my shoulder. “I didn’t pee my pants.”
“But you did scream.”
She laughs because she did scream, for five solid minutes, then shook for a half hour after. I hop through the window first, and Sylvia’s hesitant as she lifts one leg then the other to enter. Faint evening light streams from the open windows and the entire place has an eerie haze.
Our friends are scattered about the large lobby. Most of the girls huddle near a guy as they explore the rusting gurneys left behind. Someone turns on the flashlight on their cell and light dances along the tiled floor. Red and black graffiti decorates the dirty and peeling plaster walls, and I do a double take when I spot arm restraints in the corner of the room.
“So this year,” Sylvia says with heavy apprehension, and those muscles forever tightened in my neck twist some more.
“So this year,” I repeat with the same heaviness and search the place for something to get my blood pumping. Just being near this building puts people on edge, starts that leak of adrenaline associated with terror, but I can’t find an inkling of fear. It’s walls, floors, abandoned medical equipment, syringes left by junkies and runaway imaginations.
There’s no such things as ghosts or demons. Probably the most dangerous thing in this place is tetanus from a rusty nail or encountering a raccoon with rabies.
Sylvia nudges the broken tile floor with the toe of her black Converse. “We have a real shot at winning the team coed state division in swim this year, but to do it, we need you.”
She’s nice enough to leave out that one of the reasons why we didn’t capture the title last year, when we should have, when we were expected to, was because I was forced to sit out near the end of the season for academic reasons. The shame of letting my team down because I didn’t keep my grades up still burns.
“Listen,” she says with sympathy, “I know English is tough for you.”
Reading is tough. I can get an A in math with my eyes closed and earbuds in tight, but reading is like being air-dropped into the middle of Japan and expected to be fluent day one.
“I was thinking, if we have English together, then you, me and Miguel should work on our English project.”
The short, dry laugh is my answer. “I won’t be in your English class.” They’re in advanced classes. Except for math, I’m not.
“It’s a crazy world.” Sylvia waggles her eyebrows. “You never know what can happen.”
“Hey.” Miguel walks toward us. “Are you two coming in farther or are you too scared?”
“Sylvia’s scared,” I say, and Sylvia pushes my shoulder again. I nail her with a side-eye. “You are scared.”
She glares back because she is. “Not all of us were born without a fear gene. Which is weird, by the way. Like they should do genetic testing on you to see how that’s possible.”
True.
“I overheard you two discussing AP English, and I know where this is going,” Miguel says. “You’re not stealing Sawyer, Sylvia. He’s going to be in my group.”
This conversation is fruitless since I won’t be in their class.
“You’re going to be in my group and so is Sawyer,” Sylvia says. “The two of you would be lost without me. You’d spend the first three months of the project talking video games.”
Has she not caught on that I haven’t been on a single honor roll since moving here? “You’re better off with Miguel than you are with me.”
“Did you hear that?” Miguel glances over to Sylvia’s friends, and when Jada meets his eyes, he offers her a crooked grin. His deep and slick voice causes her to lean forward. “You’re better off with me, mi alma.”
Miguel is bilingual, and girls fall for the Spanish tidbits he drops. Miguel calls it his Latin charm. I tell him he’s full of crap. He’ll laugh then agree.
Sylvia fakes a gag as she presses her cell to life after it flashes with a notification. “Can you two go make out in a darkened corner and save the rest of us from having to witness this?”
Jada and Miguel laugh. The two of them have been nonstop flirting since junior prom.
Miguel and his sister older sister, Camila, are second-generation American. His father came to America from Mexico as a child, and Miguel’s mother came here on a student visa for college. The two met, fell in love, got married and now run a successful we-bring-the-birthday-parties-to-you business.
“What do you think of the apartment?” Sylvia asks.
The question is for me as I’m the only one currently in rental living. One of the problems with my mom being best friends with my friends’ moms is that my friends know too much of what’s going on in my life when I’d rather be a closed book. It can work in the opposite direction, too. Sometimes information I’d rather keep to myself gets magically unloaded onto Mom. “It’s fine.”
“Our moms are going out later tonight.” Sylvia focuses on her cell, typing in a comment to someone’s photo. “I hope they start the party at my house first. Your mom is such a riot.”
Yeah. A riot. Mom’s plans means I’ll need to hightail it out of here to watch my sister while Mom burns down the town.
Sylvia grins at Miguel now. “Did Sawyer tell you he’s living in the apartment below Veronica Sullivan? Gives you chills just thinking about it, doesn’t it?”
“No crap,” Miguel says. “Twenty dollars there’s dead bodies in the backyard.”
“Has she done anything crazy yet?” Sylvia twists her face in mock horror. “Eat live bats in front of you? Bake small children into cookies? That girl is Addams Family insane.”
“Not yet, but I did find this in Lucy’s room. It’s a diary or something.” I pull out the papers I still have tucked in my back pocket. “Veronica Sullivan? That’s who is living upstairs from me? The weird girl?”
Right as Sylvia is about to reach out to take the thick packet of paper from me, her gaze shoots over my shoulder and her eyes widen in fear. I whip around, half expecting to find someone wielding a machete, and I briefly float with the taste of the rush.
There’s no machete, but a shadow slowly moving along the outside porch.
“Technically,” comes a musical voice from the shadow, a voice I can’t peg where I know it from. The shadow steps onto the ledge of the window opening and blocks the light of the fading sun. My stomach drops as I have a sickening idea of where this is headed. Standing in front of me are short blond curls, a beautiful face and scathing blue eyes. “You live downstairs from me.”
Screw me—it’s Veronica Sullivan.
“Is there anything else any of you would like to say about me?” she continues. “Because the
proper thing to do would be to say it to my face.”
Veronica glares at us, waiting, in silence. She doesn’t enter the building, but stays atop the window ledge. She’s bold enough to look Miguel straight in the eye, then Sylvia and then eventually me.
“We didn’t mean anything by—” Sylvia starts.
“I don’t care.” Veronica’s blue eyes are so cold that I’m surprised we don’t see our breaths in the air.
I’ve got to admit, there aren’t many people who can make me feel like crap, but she just did and it’s an odd sensation to have in regards to a complete stranger.
“Where did you get that?” She jerks her chin toward the papers in my hand. From her tone, it’s clear she’s pissed.
The already strangling light is dimmed further when another shadow appears in the opening beside her. Nazareth Kravitz leans his back along the frame, watching us like he’s bored. A sixth sense tells me he’s actually sizing me up, which is bizarre because last I heard he’s one of those peace-at-all-costs people.
“Leo texted,” Kravitz says. “He was on the third floor and said we’re going to have guests.”
She glances at him, in a way that tells me something in his words bothers her.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” I ask.
“Where did you get those papers?” she asks me again.
“I found them.”
“Where?” she pushes.
“Is there a problem?” Kravitz’s voice pitches low.
Before she can answer they both whip their heads toward the parking lot and main road.
“The police are here!” someone yells, and sweet blood pumps wildly in my veins.
Footsteps pound against the tile floor as people rush for the exits. Miguel and Sylvia immediately jump out the nearest opening. Kravitz unhurriedly drops from his platform, and I look at Veronica again. She still stands there, watching me with that frozen glare, completely unaffected by everyone else running for their lives.
“Sawyer!” Sylvia calls. “Let’s go! They arrest people who are caught here.”
They do, but there’s an unspoken dare with how Veronica stays in her spot. As if she’s challenging me. As if she’s letting me know that in a contest of nerves, she’d win. Truth? The longer she stays there, the more my skin vibrates with that sweet rush. I want to accept her dare, her adrenaline-induced challenge.
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