“Fucking assholes!” I smirk, stepping into the decrepit building.
Each floorboard groans as my weight shifts from foot to foot. Fuck, I could plummet to the basement with one wrong step and become nothing but a tangle of broken bones and a mere memory.
I let out a slow breath, seeing the puff leave my lips and disappear into mist.
Just get in and get out, I tell myself before the darkness envelops me.
CHAPTER 1
HAZEL
27 YEARS OLD
It’s beenten years exactly since that night, and it haunts me to this day. The morning after Sarah disappeared was a media storm, where the news had splashed, “Local girl goes missing”across the newspapers and on the TV.
Everywhere I looked, I couldn’t escape that night. Five of us were hauled into the police headquarters in our small town. We sat there, cold, scared, worried. My pink Razr phone was shot, screen cracked and caked in mud. Zero battery. We were in a heap of trouble, and I had dreaded finding out the school’s repercussions.
If only I hadn’t gone into that house. Maybe then everything would have turned out differently.
The jail had one cell, and the front was manned by the sheriff’s wife, Tracy, who smelled like her famous broccoli casserole had clung to her skin. I still can’t bring myself to eat the stuff because it brings me back to that moment in time. The harsh fluorescent lights. The smell of tobacco on the cop’s breath. The nerves crawling beneath my skin. That last one has never really left. Instead, it’s become a part of my every day life. Imbedding itself into my DNA.
Over the next few weeks, I would become accustomed to the constant questions. The whispers that followed me when I walked by. And the nickname the media dubbed our group of friends being splashed across headlines. “The Kingston Misfits.” No matter how hard I try to remember, the details of what happened after I entered the house are fuzzy at best. Absent, at worst.
Sipping my hot cup of coffee, I look out on my front porch, per my therapist’s recommendation. To spend at least ten minutes outside to help me overcome my agoraphobia. Never mind she also recommended I stop drinking coffee to manage my anxiety, too. But, on that, she can go fuck herself.
I try to ignore the way the skin around my ribs shakes. Vibrating muscles contracting with the effort to stay put. The way it physically pains my body to be outside my house, my breath staggered—no, labored. As if I’ve just run a mile instead of standing here. Staring out at the street. The bright fall sun taunts my retinas, zapping the thoughts from my brain. It all feels like too much. Too many of my senses being stimulated at once.
Looking down at the timer, I see that it’s only been one minute. Sixty full seconds of pure torture. Fuck. Dr. Thurston is going to want an update, and I can’t deal with letting her down again. Breathing hard, I try blowing out a breath for five seconds. In for five. Hold for five. Shit. Focus.
Exhale, five, four, three…
My palms become clammy, and my eyes feel like they’re crossing on their own, unfocusing and blurring my surroundings. Grabbing onto the porch post, I dig my nails into the white painted wood, causing old paint to flake off into the dying grass below.
Two minutes.
My legs sway, begging me to crumple. I lock my knees, feeling every muscle in body tensing around me like armor.
I can do this.
I can.
I can.
I just need to focus on something other than the way my body screams at me to give up.
To run away.
To shut this exercise down and get back inside. Behind the walls and windows and doors.
As I set my sights on the cracked pavement, I force my thoughts to slow down and hone in on a low buzzing in my ears. My eyes flit around desperate to grab onto something, anything to distract me from this downward spiral. Finally, they land on the house across from me, adorned in Halloween decor. Skeletons are set up to look as if they’re dancing in a circle as they sacrifice a jack-o-lantern to a bonfire made of painted plywood.
Clever.
Much better than the sad, rotting pumpkins lining my porch steps. This time of year, used to be my favorite, but nothing’s been the same since Sarah disappeared.
The ranch-style house I live in is a perfect find. A cookie-cutter model that blends in with all the others—ideal for slipping under the radar. A hideaway in plain sight amongst the white picket fences of suburbia. The assumed goodness of my character for living here works in my favor.
I force my mouth up into a smile and wave at the neighbors who walk by my house while I clutch my white coffee cup, chipped nails clinking against the ceramic coating.
