Page 1
Prologue
The Past…
I’m sitting outside in the bleak darkness. The air is damp and so is rain pouring down from the starless sky. It’s a warm summer night, yet my body feels cold.
It feels numb.
My teeth clank together as I wrap my arms around myself. It’s a pointless task, because the chilliness isn’t coming from outside. It’s weeping in my bones, pumping through my veins, coursing through my body like the icy water that streams down the sloped driveway in front of the porch I’m sitting on.
I want to run, but I don’t know where to go. I wasn’t paying attention when we drove here; distracted by too many things. All those thoughts and worries seem so mundane now, but at the time, they felt more important than anything else.
I’m starting to forget what those important things were, which shows how utterly pointless it all was.
Maybe that’s why I ended up here, because of how pointless and naïve I am.
It’s crazy how a single moment can steal all the light away and leave nothing but darkness and emptiness behind.
It’s crazy how one decision can shatter the future.
Much like how a scream is shattering the air right now.
Chapter 1
Harper
Ihate parties, and yet here I am, standing in the middle of one. It’s not my best choice I’ve ever made, but definitely not the worst. The reason I’m here is mostly because of Zayla, my dormmate.
After she spent hours begging me to go with her, I broke my vow to never attend any parties and went. I’m regretting my decision and am blaming the reason I’m here on a temporary lapse in sanity, something that occasionally happens to me.
But Zayla did put a lot of time and effort into convincing me to go out, so it’s not like I lost my sanity that easily.
“I really don’t want to go alone. And none of my other friends can go,” Zayla had said. She was clasping her hands together in front of her and being dramatic, but that’s just who she is and I mostly like that about her. “Please, Harper. Ollie is supposed to be there tonight.”
I felt bad about letting her go alone. From my experiences, going to parties, especially alone, wasn’t a good idea. Even going with someone can result in a cataclysmic disaster.
As she continued to plead with me, my mind had drifted back to that night where I sat on that porch in the rain with blankness filling up my mind, and I had this horrible inkling eating away inside me that something truly awful had happened. Later, after the blankness in my psyche had subsided and what was buried under it began to dig its way out, I realized how correct that inkling was.
It was with those thoughts that I realized I couldn’t let Zayla go alone. So, I had told her: “I’ll go with you, be your sober friend, make sure you stay safe and make good life choices.”
She squealed and clapped her hands. “Thank you! You’re the best!”
I’ve known Zayla for almost three months, since we started our freshman year. We were put in the same dorm room together, and in the beginning, I thought karma had come to bite me in the ass. Zayla was jacked up on glittery happiness and rainbows of positivity. And me? I can sometimes make even the gloomiest of storms feel like a ray of sunshine. I do have my moments where I can have fun, but I also have days where I feel too many things in my life and in the world and I get, I don’t know, kind of heavy I guess.
I’m trying not to be that person tonight, but I’m failing miserably. It’s this place, and the music, which is loud and shitty. Plus, the two-story frat house is crammed with an excessive amount of drunk people who keep shouting, and the game of beer pong happening in the kitchen has gotten so out of control that the table has been knocked over.
“What the fuck, Big Jay?” One of the other players glares at the guy who knocked over the table.
Big Jay—who yes, lives up to his name—throws his huge arms into the air. “Now no one gets to win, you stupid fucker.”
“Goddammit Jay,” a few other people gripe. A handful of others whine, “Why do you always do this?”
I roll my eyes. Why the hell am I here? Oh yeah, because I decided I needed to be a good friend.
“Are you having fun!” Zayla shouts over the music while fanning her hand in front of her face.
Like most of the people here, she’s dressed up, her lavender dress tight-fitted and her black high heels are probably four inches high. Her curly dark hair is pulled back into a high ponytail, and she spent about an hour doing her make up. Me? I went for my typical style in my torn jeans, boots, and grey crop top shirt. I didn’t do anything with my long, wavy brown hair, just sweeping it to the side. I have dab of eyeliner on and that’s it.
“It’s fun,” I lie and take a sip of my water. Then I check the time on my watch. Shit, it’s after midnight. “I probably need to get going, though.”
