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  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgments

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  CHAPTER 28

  CHAPTER 29

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  CHAPTER 33

  EPILOGUE

  About Georgette Kaplan

  Other Books from Ylva Publishing

  First Blood

  Good Enough to Eat

  Driving Me Mad

  Fragile

  Coming from Ylva Publishing

  Have a Bite

  Acknowledgments

  Big thanks go out to Janine, Sean, Mina, and the whole crew at Ylva Publishing, without whom this book would be much longer and have much more “teh” instead of “the.”

  Dedication

  For my Grandmother:

  I hope you’ve found as nice a home as the one you always made for us.

  Sorry about all the swearing.

  CHAPTER 1

  Mindy was not a happy delivery driver. Her pizza place, Dragon Pizza, had scheduled too many drivers for a Thursday night. The shop was barely big enough to fit all seven of them and the in-store employees. It was a box of a building with no counter, just a window with a big sill like they all worked in a broken-down taco truck. Thankfully, the window was always open, which meant a cool breeze. Essential in a building that was pretty much a temple to the big oven in the middle of the room. Everything else was squeezed off to the sides.

  Mindy had had a double all lined-up. Two deliveries and two tips, close enough together that it was one trip as far as her gas tank was concerned. But because her idiot manager had overbooked the evening shift, he’d split the order between her and Freddy just to get them out of there. Even though the deliveries were three blocks apart. Even though Freddy drove a pickup truck to deliver pizza. A Ford F-150. How could he possibly make any money with that thing’s gas mileage? And with twice the gas being burned on what could’ve been one trip—it was like she was the only one who’d ever heard of peak oil.

  Her only consolation was that the order she did get was on her block—no need to futz with her GPS and its touch screen that hadn’t worked right since a babysitting charge had spilled a Happy Meal’s worth of soda on it.

  And it’d be a short trip. She lived roughly half a mile from Dragon Pizza, which meant it was impossible for her to be late. A good thing for a high school student. As long as she remembered to change clothes, she could come home from school, sleep in her work uniform, wake up ten minutes before the start of her shift, and get there three minutes early. It could’ve been five minutes, but she just couldn’t sleep with her shoes on.

  Mindy’s car was cool and sleek and fuel efficient—back in the eighties. In the year of our Lord 2016, her Ford Taurus had all the class of a Segway. It turned over after thirty seconds of her pleading with the ignition to stop messing with her, instantly starting up a localized dust storm in the immediate vicinity of her tailpipe.

  Speaking of peak oil, she should’ve bought a moped. Those things ate up gas like supermodels did milkshakes. But there was no way she would deliver pizzas in Carfax, Texas without air-conditioning. The rest of the country had weather; the great state of Texas had oven settings.

  The heat-retaining bag of her order rode shotgun. All it held was a rinky-dink twelve-inch cheese pizza. Surely not the kind of delivery worth a decent tip. As she took the few turns between Dragon Pizza and her destination, Mindy rested one hand on the warm bag in the passenger seat. Hitting a speed bump and sending her order flying out the passenger-side window that was stuck halfway up would be the perfect end to a perfect day.

  Trying to keep at only five miles over the speed limit but often going as fast as ten over, Mindy made it to the house so fast that her boss Dario could’ve done a “Fifteen Minutes or Less” sales promotion if the other drivers didn’t still get their directions from road maps. But seeing the golden house number confirming her target, Mindy checked the receipt again. Yes, 214 Whitby Lane. Right beside 212, her own house. And the name on the order was Lucinda West.

  Well. This should be interesting.

  Mindy didn’t remember the last time they’d talked. Probably wouldn’t remember this time either, since a blank smile and a signed receipt didn’t quite count as a conversation.

  Leaving the motor running, Mindy pulled a pen from her pocket with one hand, scooped up the pizza with the other, and held onto the receipt with her mouth. She jogged up to the front door, rang the doorbell, and juggled everything into a vaguely efficient configuration before it was humanly possible for anyone to answer the bell.

  Lucinda West opened the door, and Mindy felt automatically underdressed for the Fuck Off mat, clad in her shapeless red polo shirt, black work pants, and a logoed ball cap that was doing unfortunate things to her lack of hairdo. Lucia had always looked good—taking the hit of puberty like Rocky Balboa and emerging into a Michael Bay version of womanhood. The woman was all long golden hair, lean legs, and boobs that were, frankly, just not fair.

  Mindy ran crisply through her recitation of corporate malarkey. It was missing half a dozen keynotes like “Let me know how else I can provide you with great service today” and “Thank you for giving us a chance to value our customers once more,” but Mindy didn’t think she could spew that bullshit on an hourly basis without bashing her head against a convenient wall hard enough to leave a gray matter stain.

  “Hello, ma’am, thank you for ordering from Dragon Pizza, I have your twelve-inch pizza here in only twelve minutes, and your total today is only $11.92. If you could just sign here, please.” She held out the receipt and pen and immediately thought that she’d been doing this job too long. She had to have been, going through that whole spiel before she even noticed that Lucinda was bleeding. “Mary, Mother of God!”

  “Nah, you can call me Lucia.” Wobbling a little from reaching over while she stood on one leg, Lucia quickly rebalanced, pressed the receipt against the doorframe, and signed by the X. She even put a considerate 3 on the tip space.

  Grabbing a piece for herself, Lucia called back into the house, “A-team, pizza!” Two little towheaded boys came running. They snatched the box away before Mindy could even warn them how hot it was.

  Lucia continued, “You better save me a piece or I’m throwing one of you off Tate’s Creek Bridge. I’ll still have a spare, don’t test me!” She turned back to Mindy. “Don’t worry about it, I just dropped a glass. And stepped on it. And pulled it out.” The foot she was very much not standing on dripped. “I think I’ll take a shower. I always do that when I have a bloody nose.”

  Mindy had been taking shop class way too long to be freaked out by the sight of blood. “Here, let me see—let’s go inside, sit you down…”

  “No!” Lucia said quickly but emphatically. She followed it up with a quick breath. “Don’t you guys have rules about going inside cus
tomers’ houses?”

  “Yeah, don’t go inside serial killers’ houses. I don’t see any satanic altars; you should be fine.”

  “They’re in the back.” Lucia hopped out onto the porch. Before Mindy could help her, she’d sat down on the swing. Its rusted chains barely moved. She folded her leg across her opposite thigh. “Here. Feast your eyes, pizza lady.”

  Mindy took a look. There was more blood than when her cousin had gotten her first period at their sleepover, and Cousin Betty had heavy-flow issues. “Damn. It really went in deep. That must’ve been a big chunk of glass.”

  Lucia grinned as if with pride. “It was one of those Burger King collectible glasses. Now I’m out a drinking container that shows my love for The Lion King.” A little playfully, she shoved Mindy away before the examination could go any further. “It’ll be fine. I’ll wrap a towel around it. I’ve had worse.”

  “Doing what, sword-fighting?”

  “Shaving my legs, drama queen. Shoo, already. Your car looks like it’s toking some bad shit.”

  Mindy looked across the yellowing lawn to her even yellower ride. As usual, the Taurus’s exhaust had turned from a wistful gray exhale to a vomit of phlegmy gray molasses while she wasn’t there to massage it into compliance.

  “Wait here. Right back. Enjoy your pizza.”

  Not giving Lucia time to reconsider, Mindy ran at undignified speed to the Taurus. She reached through the open window to flick the ignition off and then zipped around back to pop the trunk. Inside were a change of clothes and a cache of supplies that could’ve come out of a zombie movie. A worried mother’s work. Mindy’s mom had probably spent more on the go-bag in the trunk than Mindy had spent on the car.

  After a few seconds of looking, Mindy found the first aid kit. She ran back to Lucia, who showed the same nonchalance both in eating a slice of pizza and dripping blood onto the timbers of the porch. “You got any, like, crushed red peppers?”

  “You got a hose?”

  “Side of the house. Watch out for raccoons, there was one hiding behind a bush there the other—”

  Mindy was already around the corner of the house. She came back, yanking at and untangling the hose as she went, until she’d finally wrestled it up to the porch. There, she tried the trigger, shooting a torrent of warm water into the ground. She modulated the pressure she put on it, quickly working out a strong but supple flow of water.

  “This could sting a little,” she warned Lucia.

  “You mean the big bleeding cut on my foot could hurt?” Lucia asked in faked wonderment. She held her slice of pizza up and away from herself. “Don’t get my dinner all soggy.”

  Mindy was careful not to as she cleaned off the cut, even though she had already been tipped. Then she opened the packet of antiseptic wipes from her kit, using them to scrub Lucia’s wound clean. Lucia winced. She even whimpered despite her tough façade. But when Mindy was finished, there were no tears. She sat thoughtfully as Mindy blocked up the cut with gauze and adhesive tape.

  “Sorry to be keeping you from your job,” Lucia said finally. “You’re probably losing money.”

  “It’s a slow night anyway,” Mindy reasoned. “If I went back, I’d probably just be cleaning something.”

  Lucia viewed Mindy carefully, like Mindy had been set in front of her by some eccentric artist and Lucia was trying to figure out what the work meant. Realizing she was being stared at, Mindy looked down. She wasn’t used to being a work of art.

  “But still, I should go. You never know when half of Carfax will decide they need both melted cheese and marinara sauce in equal quantities.”

  “Hey, wait a sec,” Lucia piped up. She offered Mindy her half-eaten slice of pizza. “Have some pepperoni.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  Lucia’s perfect eyebrows quirked, an expression of curiosity designed to make its object like when she was curious. “Listen, I’m sorry to put you on the spot like this. I ordered before I managed to impale my foot. I didn’t know you were an emergency room on wheels when I called.”

  “All part of the job. I volunteer with the peewee football league: iodine, cuts, bruises, it’s all good practice for the occasional customer who answers the door with no blood pressure.”

  Full lips formed a smile that seemed amused but not too amused. “Hey, I’m having some people over later. I don’t mean to impose, but is there any way you could make a quick round-trip to the store? It’s just one mile up the road. I was going to go myself, but people might look at me funny if I hop the whole way there, and I do not have a car.” Reaching into her pants, she managed to retrieve a twenty-dollar bill from one of the uncanny imitations of a real pocket that the fashion world was convinced women’s clothing needed. “Here. If you could just get some chips, some salsa, and a Redbox of anything with Ryan Gosling in it. Consider the change an extra tip.”

  A strong, rational instinct told Mindy to say no. Last week, Jenny had gotten fired for buying her customer cigarettes on a run, and she’d been working there forever. But there was something about Lucia that made her different from all the people Mindy could say no to. The look in her eyes was confident. So were the tone of her voice and the set of her expression.

  But the way she sat lengthwise on the swing, foot drawn up awkwardly to keep the bottom from coming into contact with anything painful, screamed vulnerability. She wasn’t milking it, and she wasn’t hiding it. It was more like camouflage. Indiscernible unless you knew where to look. And Mindy had always known where to look.

  Her car started readily, as eager to impress Lucia as she was. And with a slightly bloody twenty crumpled in her fist, Mindy was on her way to the store.

  Seeing Lucia up close had been a shock. Mindy had seen her at school, of course, but it was like they were zoo animals in different enclosures. That John Hughes teen movie stuff about cliques was bullshit now, if it ever had been real. There were the same two Hogwarts houses there had always been. Cool kids and everyone else. Lucia West was the queen of the school. And Mindy was very firmly not. It was part of them, blood deep, growing out into their physical appearances like a mighty oak from roots deep in the earth.

  Lucia was beautiful. No, she was sexy. It was all in the way she dressed, Mindy supposed; the makeup she put on. Lucia didn’t want people to think how lovely she looked, how elegant, how well bred. She wanted people to picture her naked, and she wanted it enough to give them plenty of hints. Most of her shirts exposed her tanned, flat belly. If she wasn’t wearing a skirt, she was wearing Bermuda shorts or even hot pants, in the summer. When Lucia had her face on and her ensemble polished, she was a fearsome sight. Mindy had read enough YA books to know Lucia’s species roamed the entire American continent; maybe even overseas. She could’ve been the villain in a high school movie; the rich bitch that made the quirky heroine’s life a living hell. Or at least the girlfriend of the villain, who put up with her psycho-ass boyfriend’s shenanigans until the nerdy hero won her over because it was a movie. Lucia was a fine specimen of those girls who saw no difference between dating a jerkass bully and a sweet, good-natured underdog. Popular girls.

  And if they had a hive mind, Lucia had to be their queen. Almost as tall as a man, she looked like an actress, if not a model: when she stood straight, the gap between her thighs was a narrow view, her breasts swelled from her slim chest in perfect symmetry, and if her belly dipped inward, it was more likely because she was wearing a corset than because she’d had two ribs removed. She was Megan Fox. She was Jessica Alba. She was the woman that women hated and boys loved.

  But Lucia hadn’t always been beautiful and sexy and fuckable and dangerous and all the other things villains in high school movies were supposed to be. Once, she’d just been cute. She’d had dimples and lived next door to Mindy. They’d been inseparable. BFFs before that saying was a thing, at least in their neck of the woods. Then Lucia had gotten boobs, her blonde hair had turned a shade of gold favored by fantasy movies, and her legs had refused to follow
Mindy’s example and stop growing. The cuteness had drained out of her, leaving only sex appeal. Now Mindy’s childhood friend was almost gone. All but her smile. A kid’s smile.

  The smile Lucia had worn when asking for Mindy’s help.

  Mindy parked outside the grocery store and went to get what Lucia needed for her party. It was a good tip, after all. That was more than she’d gotten the last time they’d parted ways.

  * * *

  “Thank you, thank you, thank you!” Lucia cheered when Mindy came back with a bag of groceries and a $1.99 Ryan Gosling DVD from the bargain bin. Each repetition was a little louder.

  Mindy was uncomfortable with how much it looked like Lucia would hug her. Thankfully, pom-poms didn’t have much reach with her busted foot. “Yeah, well—I needed the money. New One Direction album coming out.”

  “Yes, good sir knight, I think this does call for a reward.” Drawing a fiver from her pants—okay, were those real pockets?—Lucia straightened the bill before Mindy’s face. “Here. Found it between the seat cushions. All yours.”

  “Thanks.” Mindy took it, trying to think of a way to tell Lucia she was actually acting pretty cool without letting on how uncool she’d been since the first day of class freshman year.

  Before anything occurred to her, they heard rolling thunder under the horizon. Teenage boy. Football team. Ford F-250. It was loud enough to rattle Mindy’s teeth from there.

  “That’s Quentin,” Lucia explained. “My boyfriend, who I love. He’s not so bad. You should stay and meet him!”

  “No, no—I’ve gotta get back. Even my boss isn’t going to believe I got this lost on the way to my own house.”

  Lucia planted her hands on the sides of Mindy’s shoulders, like she was locking her in place for a hug or sizing up the dimensions of her head for praying mantis jaws. It was hard to tell, but it seemed to be meant in a friendly manner. Who could tell with praying mantises, though? “Hey, when do you get off work? You should come over. It’s gonna be an epic party.”