Page 59 of One Killer Night

“Hey, can I talk to you?”

Lily pulls me next to a bank of lockers.

“Yeah, what’s up?”

“I can’t go to homecoming with you.”

“What do you mean? It’s not for a month. You can’t suddenly have other plans.”

“My dad said no.”

“Because you’re going with me?”

She nods. “I’m sorry ... It’s because your mom, and ... well, because, ya know?”

I don’t say anything back because there’s nothing to say. Why did I even ask her? I knew better. This town hates me and wishes I was never born. That’ll never change.

As Lily walks away, I look up at all the eyes in the hallway glancing in my direction. All of them staring at me like the psycho they think I am.

Maybe there is something wrong with me.

Everyone always says some people are just born bad. I turn away from the gawking and slam my shitty locker door, feeling a sting. When I look down at my palm, the skin slowly turns from pink to red, blood rising to the surface.

The first cuts always hurt the most,I think before wiping my hand over the metal door and walking away.

Chapter Thirteen

Goldie

June

“Hey, what’s up?” I say, answering my sister’s FaceTime before something catches my attention. “Hold on, is that an alien behind you?”

Evie laughs. “Yeah ... his name’s Trevor.”

A green, bug-eyed creature stares at me from behind her, looking like something from an old episode of a show our parents watched—The X Files. Her office is the strangest place. It’s exactly what you’d picture a mad scientist’s lair to look like.

“Trevor, huh?”

She nods like it’s the most natural choice of name without elaborating. It’s so like her.

“Cool, well, what’s up?” I chuckle.

She’s tinkering with something, her feet on her desk as she speaks.

“Mom told me to tell you ...” She pauses, suddenly more focused on the screen. “Are you at home?”

We’re too much alike to not actually be blood related. I shake my head.

“No. I’m packing up Noah’s kitchen. He already did most of his stuff himself, but I offered to help since he had to work. What did Mom want to tell me via messenger?”

She finger guns me. “That she officially told Joanne—the bitch-face, dirty-rose-growing gardener—the hell off.”

I set the brown packing paper down, my mouth falling open as I squint in thought. “She didn’t say ‘bitch face,’ though ...”

Evie grins, amused with herself. “Nah, that part was me. But they did have a very rousing, albeit polite, passive-aggressive exchange that was punctuated by silence and long sighs.”

“Stop. I can almost picture it.”