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CHAPTER ONE
“You went to River’s bedroom? You let her see you!” my brother, Kyle, yells over the phone as I pace the weathered dock behind my house. Location undisclosed.
All right. Fine. I’m in Mexico at a secluded lake near the border of Belize. They say the gods once lived here, but I’m no god. It’s where I’ve been hiding out the past seven months.
I keep my head down, I have my groceries delivered to my front porch each week, and I mostly stay on the property. There are a few small hotels and eco-resorts near here, but for the most part, the people who come to swim or fish on the lake are locals. Chances are slim they’ve become obsessed with me, like people in the US. Still, when I go outside, I wear sunglasses and a hat.
Why? Because the whole world thinks I’m dead, not to mention one hell of a special guy.
Just who am I? I used to be a shy, wimpy nerd. But today? Well, it’s complicated.
My real name is Hudson Ulysses Ferris, but my friends and family call me Huff. Others know me as Mr. Ultra Mega Love, who tragically “perished” seven months ago due to heart failure.
Nope. Not dead.
Pfft. It was a lame nickname anyway.What’s even lamer is that they all thought I was a real-life superhero.One brave act and society labels you.
“What the hell were you thinking, Huff?” Kyle snaps.
“I know. I fucked up.” I brush back my shaggy hair. I can’t really go into town to cut it, so it’s clippers. Grow out. Clippers. Grow out. Right now, I look like a surfer dude due to my sun-bleached hair past my ears, though I’m anything but laid-back.
“I screwed up,” I admit to my big brother. “I never should’ve gone to see her.”
“No shit,” he barks. “Do you have any idea of the crap I’ve gone through to make the world believe you’re dead? Not to mention the guilt I put up with from Mom and Dad? They won’t stop hounding me to arrange a visit. They have no fucking clue how dangerous it would be if anyone outside our family found out you’re still alive.”
He’s right.I’d be hunted by every government and pharmaceutical company on the planet. The psycho chemist Morris, who created the drug that transformed me, was initially employed by a sports drink company calledMuscle Juice Potion. MJP for short. Morris’s performance-enhancing cocktail turned out to be highly effective but with major side effects. Exploding heart, for one. But only if you stopped taking the drug cold turkey. It also made people murderously aggressive.
Anyway, a lot of athletes at my university were hooked on it and died. I was unfortunate enough to be drowned by a bunch of dickheads in a sludge pond adjacent to the MJP factory. Apparently, I gobbled down a gallon of experimental batches from Morris’s super-juice trials, plus whatever else was in that pond.
Honestly, no one knows what gave me the strength of a hundred men, the ability to travel with one thought, and the hearing of a distrusting mother. I can heal fast, too. It’s why I’m so valuable. I’d make the ideal super-soldier. Or spy, weapon, Olympic athlete—pretty much anything requiring strength. And since MJP wanted to cover their tracks and disposed of all the byproducts in that pond, no one knows what was really in it.
I don’t even think Morris, who’s been on the run for as long as I’ve been in hiding, has a clue what happened to me.
“Huff,” Kyle says, “I’m going to fix this, but you can’t pull this crap again. River thought you were dead, and as hard as that was for her to accept, she was moving on.”
“How do you know?”
“We keep in touch,” he says matter-of-factly.
“You mean you’ve been keeping tabs on her.” A flaming ball of anger flares in my stomach. When it comes to River, I’m protective to a fault.
“I keep tabs on anyone who might go snooping.”
That would be River. Like Kyle said, it wasn’t easy for her to accept my death, but eventually she did.
Or had?
Going to see her in the middle of the night probably blew it. Wasn’t the first time I’d risked it either. It’s just that sometimes I miss her more than I love her. I know it sounds messed up, but it’s the truth. If I loved her more, I wouldn’t get near her. But I did. And she saw me.
Fuck.The look in her wide brown eyes.No words, man. No words.It was pure rage plus a bunch of other crap. Like, all the pain in the world mixed with a side of,“Are you kidding me right now?”I’d popped into her room, thinking she’d be in bed asleep, when she walked in the door, flipped on the lights, and literally said, “Fucking Huff. You’re alive. I knew it!”
She wasn’t happy, but how can I blame her? After being best friends since the second grade, we finally admitted we had feelings for each other right before I had to fake my death. It killed me to let her go, but all sorts of bad people would use her to get to me if they knew I was alive.
“So what do I do now?” I ask Kyle.
“You let me handle it. And stay. The hell. Away. From River.”
“Yeah. Sure. Okay.” I tilt my head toward the clear blue sky. Its magnificent color is lost on me. So is this tropical paradise I call home. They say that time heals all wounds, but I’ve loved River since we were little. And as far as I know, that kind of love isn’t an injury or a medical condition, so what’s there to heal? I fucking miss her. She’s everything to me.
