Daniella understood that—she hated most people. Her problem was, she needed them. She gained her own kind of boundless energy from being around other humans, even if they irritated her. There was a kind of poetic irony in being the kind of person who recharged around others but who resented having to recharge around them in the first place.

AJ shrugged and said something that sounded like sure as he walked off, receding into the safety of the unilluminated corners of the store.

Rinn’s face fell for a moment. Daniella wasn’t trying to thwart Rinn’s love story. She just didn’t care enough to help it along, either. Daniella felt a small lump in her throat, which she tried to swallow along with her mildly guilty conscience.

But then—in the road—a terrible screeching sounded. In Daniella’s experience, that could only mean one thing.

Imogen was here.

2

Thrown with Great Force

8:32 A.M.

Imogen

Imogen Azar screeched to a halt.

Her back tire skidded in protest, but the rest of her scooter stayed upright. She had misjudged the distance to the curb by a good five feet. She’d had to pull up on the brakes hard in order to not accidentally crash through the window of the bookstore where she worked.

Typical. Just typical.

Imogen swung her leg over the moped. It wasn’t even a real bike. Just a dinky old Kawasaki that got the job done. Got her from point A to point B. Though, in the summer, it got her to point B with considerably more sweat on her body than she would have wanted. She left it there, on the sidewalk. Chicago PD could give her a ticket for all she cared. Imogen wasn’t going to spend another second outside in this heat.

She could feel the sweat already trickling down her armpits. Everything was wet and slick and disgusting here in the summer. The store was situated in Wicker Park, beyond the northwest edge of downtown Chicago, where the heat from the bigger skyscrapers just baked into the whole area and where they were too far inland from the lake to get much of a wind to clear any of the heat out. But Imogen wore a leather jacket, weather be damned. Because no matter how disgustingly hot she was feeling, road rash was on her list of hard nopes for the entire rest of her life. She’d gotten it once while she was learning to ride her scooter and that was one time too many.

Imogen didn’t bother taking off her helmet. She grabbed her bag out of the stash compartment in the scooter, then headed into work. She slammed the door behind her and saw that Little Miss Perfect, the self-appointed Coolest Girl in the World, and Brooding Art Boy were all already there. All three of them were staring at her.

All of this was still typical.