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I can see it. I can hear it. I can smell it. She’s in her shiny blue car, music blaring until they’re close to the house, windows open to air out the sickly sweet smell of weed. She probably shushed the others—the new friends she brought along to torment an old one—probably closed her car door real quiet and slipped Goldie-Dog a treat when she came to greet her, still familiar with her scent after all these years. A kind one. A comforting one. A scent she would’ve trusted, right up until the gator’s jaws snapped down on her spine.

I imagine my old friend even did the sign herself, maybe worrying a bit when the spray can was louder than she thought it would be or shaking her hand when her finger got stiff from pushing down. She was smart enough to take the cans with her, and I bet she even threw them in the dumpster behind the gas station on the way back home after dropping off her friends, probably screwing Hugh Broward in the back seat before she went on home.

I’ve borne it all with patience, the years of small cuts that heal over, my heart a pulpy mass of scars. But it was still beating, at least I could say that, right up until she took Goldie from me. Now it’s a dead thing, still in my chest. And if I can’t feel the good things anymore, then doing a few bad ones shouldn’t hurt a bit.

And they are long overdue.

I dig viciously at the last bit of paint, and my screwdriver slips, flying out from under my fingers and sending my hand into a hard scrape against the wood. The pain is sharp and bright, and a shock pulses to the tips of my fingers. There’s a splinter in my palm, running from the top of my wrist up into my fate line, close enough to the surface of the skin that I can see the grain in the wood, but deep enough that it’s going to hurt like a bitch coming out. I grip it with my teeth and pull, the sun baking my back and a trickle of blood snaking down my arm as I do. In his cage, the panther huffs, tail twitching, suddenly bright-eyed. He can smell it.

I spit the splinter into the ditch, where it pings off one of Cecil’s beer bottles.

I’m not like Cecil, wondering who would go and do a thing like that.

I know who.

It was Felicity Turnado.

Chapter 2

Felicity

I’m being carried again, but this time at least I know by who.

Hugh’s calf tattoo flashes in front of my eyes as he walks, our school mascot—a raven—flicking with every other step. He’s got me hauled over his shoulder, my hip to his ear, my long hair almost reaching the grass as he carries me out past Gretchen Astor’s barn, into the woods behind. Plenty of hoots and hollers follow us: the guys urging Hugh to get some, the girls adding their own thoughts, none of them out of concern. My friends—at least, that’s what we call each other—watching me half-comatose and being carried off into the dark.

Hugh’s tat crosses my vision a few more times, and then he settles me gently onto a rock, the one we always use when the party is at Gretchen’s. I slip like water through his arms, sagging into him as he settles in beside me, his body as steady and sure as the boulder underneath me. No wonder everybody calls him “Huge,” although the girls are always asking me if there’s another reason, eager to know.

“You okay?” he asks.

I don’t have words, am past that point, but I do manage to nod. From the house comes another yell, someone emptying a beer over somebody else’s head, a splash as yet another person is pushed into the pool—a joke that never gets old . . . to them, anyway. They think he’s out here pounding me into the ground, taking advantage of the pretty drunk girl, dragging her into the dark. They think he’s the danger. The truth is, I’m safer with Hugh Broward than anyone else on earth.

I’ve always loved to be carried, and begged my father often when I was little. Arms up and open, trusting. Nobody ever tells me no. Not Dad. Not Huge. Not whoever carried me away from Tress Montor’s parents so many years ago. I don’t know who that was, just that my arms were too weak to wrap around them, my vision blurry, the blood running down the side of my head hot and sticky in the last of the late-fall heat, drawing mosquitoes.

One buzzes around me now, its call high and whiny. I smack at it, missing completely and hitting myself in the mouth, where there’s still a small, silver scar in the corner from my own teeth biting down when . . . when something. No one knows what happened the night the Montors disappeared, not even me—and I was the only one there. Me and whoever carried me.

“Your aim sucks,” Huge says, easily swatting the mosquito out of the air.

Everything sucks right now. My motor coordination. My limb control. My life. I start to slide again, slipping down past Hugh’s knees to the ground. He grabs my wrist, lowering me gently.

“Close?” he asks, and I nod.

He unbuttons my shorts, easing them down to my ankles, followed by my underwear. Then he walks away, far enough that I can’t see his silhouette, hear his steps crunching the dead leaves, or smell the faded scent of his cologne.

The whirling in my head slows, centers, focuses, like a cat that’s been circling prey, ready to pounce. It does, and the seizure comes, my hands clenching and unclenching in the dirt on either side of me, my feet grinding into the ground, pressing dirt into the silk underwear tangled around my sandals. Mom always details the seizures to me, after, even though I’ve told her that I am aware right before I have them, that I can see and feel and hear and taste every damn thing. Better than normal, even.

It’s during them that I can’t recall. A light turned off. A clipped reel from a film.

There are branches overhead, darkly black against the stars, the dead leaves rustling against my hair. I hear and see and feel everything tremendously right now, the world in high def until the focus fades to a pinprick and I’m going, I’m going, I’m going . . .

I’m gone.

The leaves will be in my hair when Hugh and I come back from the woods, that and the dirt on my back causing snide smiles. I usually come around with a burning taste in my mouth, the memory of my last sounds—guttural, helpless—sending a spike of embarrassment to chase all the misfiring in my brain. Sometimes the worst happens; this was one of those times. There’s warm urine between my legs, harsh and acidic, soaking into the forest floor.

I sit up, easing myself, shakily, onto the rock, pulling my underwear back into place, followed by my shorts. The first time Hugh was too mortified to take them down all the way, but he’s learned over the years. He comes when I call, settling beside me. I lean into him.

“You know . . . ,” he says slowly, a conversation we’ve had more than once starting all over again.

“There are medications,” I finish for him. “Yes, I know. I take them.”