Page 1 of Dark

1

Hayden

“ARE YOU HOOKING UP WITH HIM?” my sister asked suspiciously.

Sighing, I switched to speaker and tossed my phone onto the seat. The stoplight overhead swayed in the wind, casting the rain-soaked streets of Blood Moon, Texas (population: more cows than people) slasher-flick red.

“Yeah. I play the club scene every week down in Austin. Then tend bar Sunday through Thursday to make rent. But absolutely, I have to drive two hours out to the middle of nowhere if I want to get laid.”

Releasing the clutch, I started to pull through the intersection. As if on cue, the engine of my aging Volvo went into Oscar-worthy death spasms. After twenty years, Axel’s doors no longer locked. Two of the windows didn’t roll down. The top of the gear shift was currently being held on with duct tape. But on the bright side, I never had to worry about coming out of a gig at 1 a.m. to discover my car had been stolen.

“I just don’t understand why you’d want to see him now.”

I pulled into a spot on Main. A picture of me and Ellie stared up at me from my phone’s cracked screen. In it, my sister’s wild curls sprang loose from a pair of chopsticks while I pouted my lip ring for the camera.

“You’ve spent three years avoiding him,” Ellie continued. “I’m worried this is some sort of PTSD thing.”

“Holy overreaction, Batman. For your information, the Daisies have been building our fanbase, recording demos—”

“Riiiight. Which is why you beg me to sneak into Guillermo’s and get you poblano cheese tamales and a Mexican Coke whenever I’m back in town.”

“Um, burn?”

“Sorry, but you know Ethan Caldwell is probably hoping while you’re admiring each other’s new ink, you’ll somehow trip and fall on his dick.”

Rolling my eyes, I tugged down the hem of my front-zip leather skirt. Ellie classified my style as Kristen Stewart-meets-biker-chick, which, okay, was fair. Dark hair. Pale complexion. And also, I looked freaking amazing in black. Think bitching moto jackets and ripped skinny jeans. Band tees and studded leather belts. I made exceptions, like for the pair of cherry-red Doc Martens Piper and Meera sent one year for my birthday. No cat familiar, unless you counted Axel.

“He doesn’t even know I’m coming.”

“Hayden.” Ellie hesitated. “You would tell me, right, if you remembered something else from the night you were mugged?”

“What is this, an intervention?”

“No, but—”

“—because I think we should go all out like we did back when Meera first discovered how to retweet cat memes and Piper thought she was going to have to take away her phone. I’ll pick up Sour Cream Pringles and Chunky Monkey. You can order Pad Thai from the place on South Lamar.”

“Ugh. Can you dial it down with the snark? I’m worried, that’s all. The fever, the confusion, the blackouts. And now your eyes—”

I raked a hand through my hair, wanting to kick myself for having forgotten my sunglasses that morning. “It was just the flu. I’m over it.”

“So what about—"

“There’s nothing to tell. I was coming out of a club. Someone didn’t get the starving artist memo. Hope they didn’t blow the $7.32 in my bank account all in one place.”

“Austin has cameras downtown now, and I’ve been reading up on facial recognition software.”

Shit. Of course she had. My sister was valedictorian, had memorized the entire freaking manual from the Department of Motor Vehicles because the idea of missing a question on a test, any test, made her break out in hives.

Clearly encouraged by my silence, Ellie plowed ahead. “If they could identify the person who attacked you—"

“It was dark. And the cameras aren’t everywhere.”

“And you know this because?”

The phone fell silent. I picked at the chipped indigo polish on my nails. After four weeks, I could tell Ellie wanted to call me out, that neither she nor my aunts were buying that I couldn’t remember what happened that night. And that was the problem. Because for their own protection, I couldn’t tell them that when I woke up in the alley, my phone and guitar were only a few yards away. That as I struggled to my feet, dizzy and disoriented, I found a message scrawled across my arm in black Sharpie.

HOSPITALS NOT SAFE