Chapters (53)
- Front Cover
- Letter from the Author
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- • One •
- • Two •
- • Three •
- • Four •
- • Five •
- • Six •
- • Seven •
- • Eight •
- • Nine •
- • Ten •
- • Eleven •
- • Twelve •
- • Thirteen •
- • Fourteen •
- • Fifteen •
- • Sixteen •
- • Seventeen •
- • Eighteen •
- • Nineteen •
- • Twenty •
- • Twenty-One •
- • Twenty-Two •
- • Twenty-Three •
- • Twenty-Four •
- • Twenty-Five •
- • Twenty-Six •
- • Twenty-Seven •
- • Twenty-Eight •
- • Twenty-Nine •
- • Thirty •
- • Thirty-One •
- • Thirty-Two •
- • Thirty-Three •
- • Thirty-Four •
- • Thirty-Five •
- • Thirty-Six •
- • Thirty-Seven •
- • Thirty-Eight •
- • ∞ •
- • Thirty-Nine •
- • Forty •
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- Excerpt from Be Dazzled
- One
- Two
- About the Author
- Back Cover
“Kane?”
“No,” he blurted. “It’s not. I’m not.”
Ursula Abernathy, another junior at Amity Regional, shifted from foot to foot. Broad and powerful, she was a star athlete on the track team. Or maybe the field hockey team? Kane just knew she did sports often, and she did them well, but that off the field she was super awkward. She’d been picked on a lot growing up. Kane knew because he’d been there for all of it. They’d gone to the same elementary school.
It was pointless trying to lie now that she’d recognized him.
“Fine, it is me,” Kane said.
“Are you…okay?”
“Yes.”
Ursula waited, clearly ready for an explanation, but Kane had nothing to give. He was too busy with the realization that by morning it would be town-wide news that Kane Montgomery, local gay miscreant, burner of buildings and crasher of cars, was caught nocturnally frolicking in the muddy tributaries of the Housatonic River. He could already imagine Dr. Poesy making a note of this in that stupid file.
Daintily, Kane picked himself out of the muck and padded up the bank, his boots making indecent squelches. Ursula followed at a distance.
“What were you doing down there?”
Kane glanced at her. She was dressed in a ratty, long-sleeved shirt that read in handwritten letters, BEAT PAVEMENT, NOT PEOPLE. TRIATHLON TO END DOMESTIC VIOLENCE. Sweat glazed her pink shoulders, her neck. Her copper hair was pulled into a sloppy bun that looked more like a nest than a hairstyle, and her bangs were a frizzy awning above thick-lashed, worried eyes. She wore no makeup, not even ChapStick from the looks of it.
“Are you sure you’re okay?” she asked again.
“I’m fine,” Kane lied. He scanned the night for those creatures and, not seeing anything, began scraping the mud from his boots. It was hopeless. He was caked up to his knees. His ass was soaked. His whole body prickled with heat. He wished he could just vanish.
Ursula kept trying to restart the conversation. “I was on a run and I heard something. I didn’t know people were on the path so late, so I thought maybe it was an animal, but then I found your backpack, and then I saw you fall into the river, and…”
“I didn’t fall into the river.”
“Okay, well I saw you sort of stumble into the river, and—”
“I didn’t stumble.”
A dimple of worry bore into the flesh between Ursula’s eyes. “But are you okay?”
Kane looked up at her. “Why are you asking me so many questions? Do I look okay to you? Can’t you read context clues?”