Page 76 of Riot Act

I read Pax’s first chapter last night after I got back. I read it, and then I laid in bed and I replayed the whole dark maze-nightmare over and over in my head until my heart was racing and I could feel the claustrophobia of those cold, dripping, ancient stone walls as they pressed in on all sides. The writing was excellent. The chapter itself made such an impact that I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since.

Out of the blue, without even processing the words, I open my mouth and make a dangerous request. “Dash, can you give me Pax’s number?”

My two best friends and the Sun God of Riot House stare at me like I’ve just started speaking in tongues. All three of them look so shocked that I repeat the request. “His cell phone number. So I can text him. I, uh…want to text him.”

Elodie leans forward, resting her elbows on her knees. A knot of worry has formed between her brows.“Seriously, Pres.Are you okay?”

“Yeah, of course. Why wouldn’t I be?”

Carrie makes a choked sound. “You just directly referred to Pax Davis without your voice cracking. You said his name very clearly. Out loud.And you asked for his phone number.”

“What?” I shrug. “I want to talk to him about the project. Dash just reminded me. And Pax doesn’t seem like he checks his email very often.”

“You’d be right there,” Dash says. He’s already reaching into his pocket and pulling out his phone. “Normally I’d check to see if he was cool with me giving out his info, but this time I’m gonna throw caution to the wind and say fuck it. I amfartoo curious to see how this pans out.”

Carrie thumps him in the arm. “If he doesanythingto hurt Presley, becauseyougave her his phone number and gave him access to her, I will literally murder you.”

He laughs. “I doubt me giving Pres his number will be the root cause of any of the madness that’s about to ensue.” His fingers fly over his cell phone screen. A second later, my phone buzzes in my hand.

AirDrop

New Contact: Pax Davis.

“What are you talking about, madness?” Carrie demands.

Dash doesn’t look at his girlfriend. He looks right at me when he says, “Presley knows exactly what I’m talking about. Don’t you, Presley?”

And I do. I really do.

28

PAX

Unknown Contact

Clean content. Excellent description/world building. Some of the language was a little divisive. Can’t wait to see what you can do when you actually try.

6.8/10

I saw this documentary about volcanoes on the National Geographic channel last year. History’s most catastrophic eruptions or some shit. A lot of it was dramatizations—scenes constructed from reports of the people who survived these devastating events. The most horrific dramatizations, from eruptions like Pompeii, were not created from firsthand reports, though. There were no firsthand witness reports of those events, because there were no survivors.

Right now,Iam a volcano. The largest ever known to man.

I am about to erupt, and when I do, there will be no survivors left to paint a picture of what happened here. They’ll have to rely on satellite images from space to piece together what happened in Mountain Lakes, New Hampshire on this fateful, beautiful summer morning, and even then, scientists will be left to wonder how a random eighteen-year-old guy somehow became so incensed that he went fucking nuclear and wiped out an entire state.

“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Dash stops me as I’m thundering down the stairs. “Where the fuck are you going with a face like that?”

“To avenge myself,” I snarl.

“I assume this has something to do wi—”

“Yes, it’s to do with fucking Chase. And I know I have you to thank for giving her my number, so you can stop standing there grinning like that. I’m tempted to bitch slap that smirk right off your fucking face.”

“Have you ever considered that if you got laid…you might be less angry all the time?” His voice goes very high at the end. It takes a monumental effort not to beat his ass black and blue right here on the stairs. He doesn’t know that I’ve been fucking Chase. I haven’t said a word, and he wasn’t even home last night. “How will ejaculating inside some random girl make me less angry withChase?”

“You could just come inside Chase. Get an STD test first, though. Make sure she’s on birth control. Do away with the rubber altogether. I hate those fucking things.”

Okay. This is getting too close to the mark. I glower at him, working my jaw. “We all hate those things, asshole. No onelikesthem.”