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Chapters (53)
  1. Front Cover
  2. Letter from the Author
  3. Title Page
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. • One •
  7. • Two •
  8. • Three •
  9. • Four •
  10. • Five •
  11. • Six •
  12. • Seven •
  13. • Eight •
  14. • Nine •
  15. • Ten •
  16. • Eleven •
  17. • Twelve •
  18. • Thirteen •
  19. • Fourteen •
  20. • Fifteen •
  21. • Sixteen •
  22. • Seventeen •
  23. • Eighteen •
  24. • Nineteen •
  25. • Twenty •
  26. • Twenty-One •
  27. • Twenty-Two •
  28. • Twenty-Three •
  29. • Twenty-Four •
  30. • Twenty-Five •
  31. • Twenty-Six •
  32. • Twenty-Seven •
  33. • Twenty-Eight •
  34. • Twenty-Nine •
  35. • Thirty •
  36. • Thirty-One •
  37. • Thirty-Two •
  38. • Thirty-Three •
  39. • Thirty-Four •
  40. • Thirty-Five •
  41. • Thirty-Six •
  42. • Thirty-Seven •
  43. • Thirty-Eight •
  44. • ∞ •
  45. • Thirty-Nine •
  46. • Forty •
  47. Epilogue
  48. Acknowledgments
  49. Excerpt from Be Dazzled
  50. One
  51. Two
  52. About the Author
  53. Back Cover

There was nothing about her being gone. To the world, she was still in her little haven, painting in her studio and surrounded by her many hobbies. Nice and normal. This broke Kane up the most. He hated himself for his role in her demise, though still he could remember none of it.

Every night—every night—he dreamt of her, and even though he had her face memorized, in his dreams she was always burning. Never dead, but always burning.

More than once, he found himself seated on the edge of his bed, her phone number glowing on his laptop screen. One morning after he woke up with his burns on fire and his sheets twisted around him, he actually called it.

It wasn’t like he expected anyone to pick up, but then someone did.

“Hello?”

Hi would have worked, but Kane hadn’t expected anyone to answer the phone in a house he thought was empty. It wasn’t Maxine’s voice, but it was somehow familiar. Small, questioning.

“Hello? It’s very early to be calling. Hello?”

There was a long silence in which the static between the two phones whirred, and then the voice asked, “Maxine? Is that you?”

Something clicked. Through his shock, Kane recognized the voice: Maxine’s friend. The one who talked about the eggs.

The one who didn’t know Maxine was dead.

“Please,” she said, and behind her voice rose a strange din, a whispering that swallowed her just before the line went dead. Through it, Kane could hear her pleading:

“Please, Maxine, just come home.”

• Fifteen •

Susurrations

Kane was still thinking about the call days later. The hope in that voice was unforgettable, but so was the sorrow. And he had no idea what to make of that strange whispering.

The woman’s name was Helena Quigley. She used to run a small shop downtown, and before that she was a biology teacher at the high school. Aside from appearing to be close friends, Kane had no idea why she had answered Maxine’s phone so early in the morning, and he couldn’t bring himself to call back.

But he was curious, and Kane usually lost all battles with his curiosity.

He kept himself busy in Roost, the bookstore downtown that had become his haven from school and his house. He’d been hiding there for the past week, burning through the mountains of homework he needed to make up. Hiding wasn’t the right word, though. Sophia and his parents knew exactly where he was when he wasn’t at the house or his support group. They dropped him off at Roost after school and picked him up at closing, like a day care.