AllFreeNovel
Share Us
PROLOGUE
Gavin stole a glance at Andrea and hoped that the heat he felt creeping up his neck wasn’t noticeable. He had known Andrea since grade school, but only recently had he noticed how pretty she’d become. Her freckles had softened somewhat and not provided only a light dusting of color underneath her straw blonde hair and bright blue eyes.
Sarah caught him looking and whispered something to Andrea. Andrea giggled and looked his way, and Gavin quickly turned away, cheeks burning.
Parker, the tall athletic boy who due to the fact that he was a junior and the rest of the group sophomores was their leader, walked ahead confidently, unconcerned by the darkness of the night or the fact that they were now, by Gavin’s estimation, a full mile away from the road.
Gavin envied Parker, not because the boy was taller and stronger and better-looking than him, although all of those things were true. He didn’t even envy Parker because Andrea, like every girl in the school, had a crush on him. He didn’t blame them. Parker was everything Gavin wished he was. Confident, brash, adventurous and always thinking of cool things to do.Andhe was good-looking.
If Gavin could have at least half of Parker’s confidence, he knew that he’d get a girlfriend.
He risked a glance back at Andrea and found both her and Sarah staring at him, grinning mischievously. He looked quickly away again, and they both giggled.
“You three plan on keeping up or what?” Parker called.
“Why don’t you slow down and wait for us?” Sarah called back.
“I don’t wait down for anybody, baby,” Parker replied, flashing one of his trademark dazzling grins.
Sarah returned a smile that she probably thought was saucy but looked a heck of a lot more like a swoon. Well, Gavin couldn’t blame her. Everyone swooned for Parker.
“Good things come to those who wait,” she told him.
Andrea shoved her playfully. “Sarah! Oh my God!”
“What?” Sarah said, giggling. “I just said that good things come to those who wait. That doesn’t mean anything.”
Parker seemed not to notice the attention. Or maybe he was just so used to it that he assumed it was there and didn’t need to pay close attention to it.
The girls continued to tease each other, and Gavin pushed ahead to walk next to Parker. He felt suddenly self-conscious about the girls catching him staring.
“You’re gonna love this place, Gavin,” Parker said. “It’s like the old Shapley farmhouse but way scarier.”
Gavin managed a smile. “Cool.”
“Yeah, it’s cool!” Parker said enthusiastically. “It’s likeTheHouse of a Thousand CorpsesmeetsThe Hills Have Eyes.”
Gavin miraculously managed another smile and tried to ignore the way his heart was pounding. He didn’t mind a good horror movie every now and then, but he wasn’t much for experiencing such things in real life.
Of course, he wasn’t going to tell Parker or the girls that. It was bad enough that he still hadn’t lost his baby fat and so looked like a cuter version of that kid fromThe Goonies.He didn’t need to add to his problems by making himself look like a wimp too.
They reached a chainlink fence that was about twelve feet tall and topped with a loop of razor wire. Parker scaled the fence effortlessly and dropped to the other side as gratefully as a ballerina, easily avoiding the razor wire.
Sarah went next. She had been in cheerleading and gymnastics all of her life and had even less trouble with the fence than Parker.
Andrea hesitated. “I don’t know if I can do that,” she said.
She turned to Gavin and smiled, and his heart flipped end over end.
“Give me a boost?” she asked.
“S-sure,” he said, stumbling over his words.
He stooped down and held his hands out for Andrea to step on. She placed a hand on his shoulder and pressed her weight into his palms. His shoulders strained with the effort, but he hardly noticed. He tried very hard not to notice how close she was to him, but he failed spectacularly at that.
Andrea grabbed the fence and pulled herself up. When she was halfway up, she smiled down at Gavin. “Thank you.”
That was enough to start his heart doing somersaults again. He could hear Parker and Sarah giggling as he watched Andrea scale the fence, but he didn’t care. His shoulder burned where her hand had rested on it, and he was pretty sure he was happier than he had ever been.
