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Zane
Iignore the incoming call as I wait for a new student get out of their car. The silver Honda Accord pulled into the parking lot of Crest Hall fifteen minutes ago and the driver took forever to open their door.
Something made me park in the back of the lot a few rows behind the car and wait. I felt drawn to be here, which even I can admit is a bit crazy. Maybe it’s because the car is so similar to Nox’s or maybe my instincts just know that my life is about to change the moment I lay eyes on the person in that car.
The door swings open and I hold my breath as a girl with long black wavy hair steps out of the car. Her high cheekbones and roman nose combine nicely, making me itch to pick up a charcoal pencil or paintbrush and put this image of her to canvas, so I’ll never forget. Her hazel eyes take in her surroundings with an intense quality as she notes the things around her. Her skin has a slight olive tone, but it lacks the golden hue that an olive skin tone gets after any time in the sun. She’s the most beautiful thing I have ever seen. Not that girls are things—woman’s suffrage and all that jazz.
I watch with open fascination as she pulls things from her back seat. Her hair tumbles over her back as she straightens her shouldersand walks toward the dorm. She turns looking around as if she knows she’s being watched. Her face scrunches as her eyes pause on me sitting in my car but a small shrug rolls her shoulders, and she turns back around. Her hips sway as she walks, and I feel hypnotized.
I’m going to marry that girl.
Don’t know her name or the smallest detail about her, but I’m going to marry her. There’s a part of me that feels like she’s going to be important to me. Plus, I’m just this side of insanity to make it happen myself.
The moment she walks through the open door, I realize that my phone is vibrating again. “What?” I snap angrily when I pick it up.
“Get to the drop spot now!” Cain shouts into the phone and then hangs up on me.
Sighing, I force myself to leave the love of my life. I turn over the2009 red copper Miata NCI’d saved up for and finally bought a few weeks ago.
Cain keeps telling me how stupid my car choice is, but I’ve been ignoring him.It’s a bit too memorable and I can admit it, but I’ll prove to him that it can be practical too one of these days.
So what it can’t even fit one body in the trunk? He’s thinking too literally. A body would fit in the trunk if I just take it apart. Just like buying a coffee table; you’ve got to take the legs off to fit it in your car.
My mind is filled with the black-haired beauty I just sold my soul to during the twenty-seven-minute drive from Sweeney University. It’s easy to drive distractedly through the familiar roads to Rural Duluth. Seriously, that’s what it’s called. It’s just the rural wooded area next to Duluth, Minnesota.
Why did a band of vigilante mercenaries settle near Duluth, of all places? Well, we all grew up here. All of us except Cain, I guess. We all live in the house that Lennox owns near Palmers. It became his once his grandparents passed away. Nox had been an orphan and those same grandparents decided not to take him in after his parents died when he was eight. He still has trouble forming attachments to people to this day due to the trauma of being abandoned by his previously loving grandparents. Not that I blame him; people kind of suck. Besides, he has us now. Why would he want anyone else?
On the bright side, he became the sole inheritor of their estate at seventeen. He was able to get emancipated and created a very real-looking company where he hired Sloane and me. After we could prove we could take care of ourselves to a lawyer, we filed to be emancipated as well. We’ve been living together in Nox’s house since I was sixteen, Sloane was seventeen, and Nox was eighteen.
The pavement under my tires disappears and I slow down so I don’t skid on the compacted dirt road. When they say it’s rural, they mean it. There are no roads, just dirt paths packed down by cars and motorbikes. Mostly motorbikes. I park behind Cain’s giant black SUV (if I haven’t seen the guy naked, I would have thought he was overcompensating. Seriously, how many bodies does one person need to fit into their trunk?) when the path comes to an end and walk the rest of the way. The land is so abandoned that I have to pick my knees up hip high to step over some of the brush and fallen trees.
Sure, it’s a tough path to follow, but have you ever tried carrying a two-hundred-pound body through the woods without tripping? I can promise that it’s way harder than this. That’s why dismemberment is the way to go. Sure, you’ve got to take more than one trip, but I’m not a huge guy. Plus, walking is good for the soul or something like that.
I can hear the sound of voices ahead of me. When I come out into the small clearing, I find all three of my closest friends standing in a circle.
Did they decide to murder people without me? I’m offended.
Cain, Sloane, and Nox all turn to me. “What the hell did you do, Zane?” Cain growls, pointing down at the freshly turned soil.
I look at it and then back up at them before turning back to what can only be a freshly dug grave. I crouch down next to it and pinch some white powder between my fingers. Bringing it to my nose, I smell the slight metallic tang mixed with the fresh soil. I raised my brows. “There’s lye in here.”
“Yes, great job. Who did you bury here?” Nox crosses his arms over his chest, glaring down at me.
Standing back to my feet, I look at each of them and shrug. “I didn’t.” I flick my fingers to get rid of the dirt still on my fingertips.
Cain stares at me for a long moment before rubbinghis hand over his face. “Well, if you didn’t, and neither did any of us, who buried a body here? And is it some kind of taunt for us?”
We all turn back to the grave as we consider those questions. Or I should have been thinking about the possibilities, but all I could think about was that wavy black hair and that creamy olive complexion. I wonder if my future wife wants lots of kids. It would be so fun to have a house full of little baby mercenaries.
Viviana
My whole life is one big sick joke, which is pretty ironic considering my birthday is on April first. Nothing says you’re a fool like being born on April Fools’ day. So, in a twisted way, my existence makes sense. Every day is a chance for the universe to say“how can I screw with Viviana today?”A few days ago, it decided it was best for me to no longer exist at all.
Viviana Rossi is dead and buried.
Viv Russo. That’s my name now. Viviana is buried six feet under with the man who tried to follow her as she made her escape. The map was kind enough to show me an isolated place in bold letters only twenty minutes away for me to bury the body. That’s what I call Midwest Nice. I’m already liking Minnesota more than New York.
Nothing and no-one can make me go back. I just need to keep a low profile. I mean, the name change isn’t the smartest or elaborate in the least, but they would expect me to change it drastically. They also won’t have expected me to go to Minnesota to attend college, of all things, at a small private institution. Well, at least two people can figure out where I am. Everyone else will probably assume I went to California or left the country completely to get as far away from New York as possible. At the least, it would have been smart to gosomewhere with enough people to get lost in the crowd and not the home of my one and only obsession.
