Chapters (19)
- Cover
- Title Page
- Part One Makayla—November
- Part Two Evann—November
- Part Three Jesse—November
- Part Four Makayla—December
- Part Five Evann—December
- Part Six Jesse—December
- Part Seven Makayla—January
- Part Eight Evann—January
- Part Nine Jesse—January
- Part Ten Makayla—March
- Part Eleven Evann—April
- Part Twelve Jesse—May
- Part Thirteen Makayla—May
- Part Fourteen Evann—May
- Part Fifteen Jesse—May
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
The dog was dead, its head cracked and bleeding. I was standing there looking at a formerly living creature’s brains, my body shaking, my breathing heavy. I don’t give a fuck about animals, I really don’t, and this one had been trying to kill me. After a minute, the adrenaline left my body, and my pulse was back to normal. I popped an antibiotic, and searched around until I found some gauze that had been above the flood line and was still clean and some peroxide. I pulled up my pant leg and poured the peroxide on the wound on my leg, then wrapped it up. It wasn’t too bad. I pulled the leg of my pants down and tried not to think about it.
Then, I went back to where the pills were scattered on the ground. I searched around and found a lone Xanax. On second thought, I grabbed a random handful and shoved them in my mouth. Something was bound to happen if I ate them all.
4 Back at the station that night, I stared into the fire as José slept fitfully and Sebastian tossed and turned and puked his fucking guts out. The pain in my leg was throbbing, and it was almost like it got into my head and made it raw and bloody there, too. I couldn’t keep my mind off of the night that Lux disappeared. I kept replaying it over and over.
Lux, José, Sebastian and I had been down in the streets. We were pretty lit, and we were yelling at each other, goofing around, throwing rocks we found through windows down near the ground just because why the fuck not? We didn’t even hear them coming.
Suddenly, they were all around us, a bunch of guys. As soon as I saw them, I almost shit myself. It was obvious that they wanted to fuck us up. Hell, they must’ve known we didn’t even have anything to steal. We were in the streets of an abandoned city, and we were surrounded.
“What’s that?” one of the guys asked. “A bitch? Or a faggot?”
“It looks like a faggot to me,” another guy said.
I grabbed Lux’s arm and tried to back away, but one of the guys pushed me from behind.
“You got a pussy or a dick, faggot?” another guy said, laughing. “Wanna show us?”