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PROLOGUE
I was never gonna live forever, but I thought I’d make it to eighteen. I’d hoped, anyway. But hopes these days are kind of like this hospital room—dim, but never dark enough to block out all the bullshit. It’s impossible to achieve full darkness in a hospital. It’s all blinking monitors and a bright yellow glow slanting under doorways or from behind drawn curtains. I’m actually looking forward to the time when everyone gives up on me, if only because then I get to go home where I can get some fucking sleep.
I don’t mean that.
I reach for the book next to me and pull out a folded piece of paper. My eyes flicker to the closed door. Case is here somewhere. His coat is draped over the chair next to my bed. He’s probably next door with that kid Ryder. Hell, the little dude’s only twelve. He needs Case more than I do. Suddenly, dying at seventeen doesn’t seem that bad.
I unfurl the paper and skim the contents with a pang of regret. I swallow it back immediately, choosing not to go there. Not tonight.
I didn’t start this list for my best friend. I started it for myself. But things change, and it turns out dying makes me a sad sap. I grasp a pen in my stiff fingers and scratch a few words at the bottom.
I don’t know what made me think of her. All I know is lying here, I have no time and also too much time. To think. To remember. To feel. It’s too much feeling. A lifetime of fucking feeling and no outlet. What I wouldn’t give for a bull right now. The meanest motherfucker they could find me. I’d hold on forever.
I write her name down because it’s no longer for me. It’s for him, and he has all the time in the world, so he’d better not waste it.
OneCASE
“I’ll be honest, man, this is a lot higher than I’d thought it would be.”
Walker doesn’t say anything, but the wordwusshangs in the crisp night air between us, hovering amid the clouded breath repeatedly pulled from my chest. Fuck, I hate heights. Always have. I fight the urge to look down, down, down, past my dusty boots dangling too many feet above the earth.
“Corn silo,” I mutter before turning to him. “You saidcorn silo, right?” Wrapping a single arm around the cold metal frame, I accidentally clink the glass bottle grasped in my freezing fingers against it. I lift an ass cheek and dig with the other hand in my back pocket. I pull out a worn piece of paper and use my teeth to unfold it, squinting and lifting it to the pale glow of moonlight overhead.
“Right here.Jump off a corn silo,” I read aloud. I throw my head back with a groan. “Fuck, we’re so stupid.” I glare at my best friend pointedly as I start to shiver. I didn’t bring a coat up here. “Grain bin.” I gesture to the wide metal bins approximatelythirty feet below me. “You meantjump off a grain silo. I can’t jump off this—I’ll die.”
The last words strangle in my throat, and I take another long pull from one of the Dr Peppers I’ve lugged up here with me. Walker shakes his head full of dirty-blond hair, his smirk knowing, his lean frame balanced precariously on the bin’s edge. I can barely make out the lettering across his chest, but I recognize his favorite shirt and know it readsGIVE ’EM HELL. Whether he’s shaking his head to say,Don’t die!orWhat’s the big deal?orYou’re the dumbass who climbed up here!I’m not sure. I look at the paper again, holding it up.
“Your handwriting is barely legible,” I say. He rolls his eyes. It’s an old argument. As a kid, Walker spent so much time with medical tubes stuck in his hands, he learned to write on a tablet.
“Well, I’m not fucking jumping off a corn silo. What other death traps are on this list?”
A cloud passes over the moon, and I crush the paper in my fist. Not like I can read it up here, anyway. “Unbelievable,” I mutter. Suddenly, the bottle slips in my fingers, and I jerk to grip it, throwing my center off-balance. For a heart-thudding moment, I fight to remain safely seated on the narrow ledge of the silo, and the paper drops from my grasp. My gasp is carried away on the breeze, and dark spots blur my vision as Walker’s crumpled list floats lazily toward the earth. A beat later, the bottle I’m holding follows with a faint, tinkling shatter on the near-frozen ground.
I wrap my entire arm around the bar, resting my forehead against the icy metal. “Now what?”
My limbs go from trembling to all-out shaking from the cold. Or the previously consumed booze, uncomfortably sloshingaround in my gut. Or the suffocating guilty feeling from what went down at the party tonight. Or, more likely,fearbecause I’mover fifty feetabove the ground in the middle of the night without another living soul awake for miles.
“You don’t have your phone on you, by chance?” I joke to Walker, who I swear snorts in response. In my head, Walker’s always doing that half-snort, half-breathless laugh of his.
My throat narrows, and pain rears sharp behind my eyes. I swallow it back and inhale the night into my lungs, filling them to near bursting.
I can practically hear my best friend’s wheezing scoff in return.Show-off.
“The least you can do is get me some help. Isn’t that what ghosts are for?”
I imagine Walker staring at me plaintively, his expression clear.
“I know. You’re not a ghost. You’re not really here. You’re in heaven or whatever, perving with Taylor in your awesome not-sick bodies. I get it. But forone fucking minute, could you just, like, help me? Your best friend? Stuck on a fucking corn silo in the middle of the fucking Texas Panhandle?”
Red and blue lights glitter out of the corner of my eye, speeding toward me with theblurp! blurp!of a siren.
“Seriously?” I shoot a glare at Walker, but he’s gone. Of course he is.
“Give Taylor my best,” I mutter, squinting my eyes against the rapidly approaching lights below. My boots are still dangling over the narrow rungs of the mile-long ladder. Part of me is tempted to hustle down on my own just so I can be like, “Oh, hey, Officer. What’s up? Nice night. Just checking on this corn, here.”
But the swoop in my gut churns, and the ground swerves up at me dangerously.
I might ride bulls for fun, but even I have my limits.
