Prologue
Piper
Istare at him for exactly two minutes and thirty-four seconds before I start screaming.
It’s pointless. I know it even before the scream leaves my mouth. No one can hear me here. I’m going to actually have to reach for the telephone and compose the number if I want anyone to help me.
But my mind is blank with shock. Where’s the phone? Who do I call? Who would even come?
No one gives a shit about the Days. We’re nothing. Not a day goes by when someone doesn’t remind me that Dad is the lowliest of all the lowly employees at Devil Tower.
Orwas.Because right now, he’s looking straight through me, his eyes glassy, a trickle of blood dribbling out from the side of his mouth.
He’s been shot. Murdered. My father is dead.
At last, I tear my eyes away from the gruesome sight of his body slumped forward on the dining room table, his face crushed sideways on the physical newspaper he still insists on reading. I fumble for my cell phone, remembering it’s in my back pocket, remembering that I should be calling 911… isn’t that what people are supposed to do when they come home from college to find their father has been murdered?
But a sudden overpowering worry causes the phone to fall from my hands.
“Mom?” I cry out. “Mom?”
I run through the living room into the hallway that leads to our rooms and the bathroom. My heart beats wildly, a cold weight inmy stomach as the conviction of what I’m about to find nearly strangles me. I open one door, then the other… and freeze.
There she is. My mother, still seated on the toilet, her torso pressed backward against the flushing system, her mouth wide and her eyes shut.
Dead, too. A bullet to the brain.
“Help! Help!” I scream frantically, even though it’s useless.
I’m going to have to call.
Somehow, it feels nearly impossible to do so. It’s one thing to scream, it’s another thing to compose those three digits that mean it’s final. My parents are dead. Murdered. And I’m an orphan.
Stumbling back to the living room, I sink to my knees, grab my cell phone, and press the numbers with a trembling finger. Then I bring the phone to my ear.
“You’ve reached 911, what is your emergency?”
“Yes, hi. This is Piper Day. Please come right away. They’re… they’re all dead.”
1
Piper
Four hours earlier.
“Dad! I’m a broke college student! Come on! I didn’t have any choice but to take this bus!”
“You won’t be broke much longer, pumpkin. Just wait till your old Dad tells you…”
I roll my eyes, and then my shoulders, which are stiff from having sat in a Greyhound bus for the past seventy-two hours. Luckily, this is the last day of my three-day trip. I know it’s ridiculous to come back to Astley by bus. But it was that or take a plane, which would have cost at least three times as much.
I can’t exactly afford a two-hundred-dollar ticket right now. I’ve just taken out a huge loan to pay for college all the way across the country in California. I realize the smart thing would have been to stay in the state and go to community college. But fuck Astley. Fuck the entire East Coast.
I huff out an angry breath while Dad drones on about his work, wiping my glasses on the front of my shirt, my thoughts far away, as they often are when Dad gets into one of his long monologues.
It’s hard growing up as the only child of the Days. We’re known as the poorest family in Astley. In fact, I’m pretty sure we’re theonlypoor family in Astley. Everyone else is a multi-millionaire. We moved here from California. We had a comfortable life out west, but Mom inexplicably wanted us to return to her childhood town in Astley at the end of second grade. And Dad gave in, like he always does. Never mind that our whole life got uprootedovernight. Never mind that he could only find a job as a janitor here and that the only house in our budget was a fucking guest house some rich lady rented out. Never mind that I got bullied throughout my childhood.
The only thing that matters, I guess, is what Mom wants. That’s what’s always mattered.
