by Leah Raeder
Advance Praise for
CAM GIRL
“Raeder’s best book yet. It has the grit, language, and heat you’d expect, but there’s more. Raeder has clearly dug down and bled and studied the mirror to reveal the ugliest and most beautiful parts of herself, and human nature. Cam Girl is a rich and unflinching narrative.”
—Emery Lord, author of Open Road Summer
“Cam Girl is a beautiful exploration of gender and sexuality that begs readers to question how well we know those closest to us, including ourselves. Raeder’s trademark sensual lyricism is in full effect here, but it’s the fraught yet tender relationship between Vada and Ellis that will have you glued to the pages until the oh-so-perfect ending.”
—Dahlia Adler, author of Under the Lights
Praise for
BLACK IRIS
“Intense and visceral, Black Iris is as sharp as a knife and beats with a heart that is double-edged and dangerous.”
—Lauren Blakely, New York Times bestselling author
“Provocative, seductive, and skillfully written, Black Iris stands out from the crowd.”
—K.A. Tucker, USA Today bestselling author
“Like an afternoon special on bullying gone impossibly dark, Raeder’s dizzyingly intense, drug-addicted queer teenage revenge fantasy takes its reader on a sexy, bloody journey of pure emotion that’s by turns expressed, denied, and turned back in on itself . . . A twisting timeline dancing over a year’s events makes every moment seem both immediate and angrily steeped in memory. Major themes include depression, mania, and the ways that the use and abuse of drugs affect access to the reality of self and the world’s essential nature; but the soul-searching always comes in the context of action, everyone around hit by the shrapnel of exploding feelings. This is an exhilarating ride for our inner underdog, craving a taste of what it would feel like to just get back at everyone if we were reckless enough not to care about the consequences.”
—Publishers Weekly, starred review
“Risky, brave, bold. A suspenseful powerhouse of a novel and one of the best books I’ve read this year.”
—Karina Halle, New York Times bestselling author
“Fearless, inspiring, and a story that does more than just keep you enthralled. It holds you by the damn throat.”
—Penelope Douglas, New York Times bestselling author
“Erotic, poetic, heartbreaking, captivating, and full of mind-blowing twists and turns.”
—Mia Asher, author of Easy Virtue
Praise for
UNTEACHABLE
“With an electrifying fusion of forbidden love and vivid writing, the characters glow in Technicolor. Brace yourselves to be catapulted to dizzying levels with evocative language, panty-blazing sex scenes, and emotions so intense they will linger long after the last page steals your heart.”
—Pam Godwin, New York Times bestselling author
“Unteachable is a lyrical masterpiece with a vivid story line that grabbed me from the very first page. The flawless writing and raw characters are pure perfection.”
—Brooke Cumberland, USA Today bestselling author
“Raeder’s writing is skillful and stunning. One of the most beautifully powerful stories of forbidden love that I have ever read.”
—Mia Sheridan, New York Times bestselling author
“Edgy and passionate, Unteachable shimmers with raw desire. Raeder is a captivating new voice.”
—Melody Grace, New York Times bestselling author
“A simply stunning portrayal of lies, courage, and unrequited love. Raeder has a gift for taking taboo subjects and seducing us with them in the rawest, most beautiful way.”
—S.L. Jennings, New York Times bestselling author
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For all the girls I’ve lost
—WINTER—
—1—
A car crash is a work of art.
At first it’s Cubism: the hood folding, doors crumpling, windshield splitting into a mosaic of shattered light, the whole world breaking into shards of color and noise and tumbling around you like a kaleidoscope. Screeching tires and cold air and gasoline and your own scream are all just bits of debris flying around, gorgeous chaos. When the tires stop spinning and the engines die, you’re left sitting in a smashed puzzle of metal and glass, trying to figure out which way the pieces go now, why some are stuck together and won’t come apart. Why there is an eye next to a foot, steel where there should be skin.
I listened to a soft dripping and the sigh of steam. By then it had become Surrealism. My hands were puppet hands, one arm bent at a bizarre angle. A deflated airbag lay in my lap like a bloody surgery sheet. The seat belt (I buckled up, I didn’t really want to die) was some kind of medieval bondage device and I clawed at it senselessly before clicking the release button. Then I saw her.
Ellis slumped in her seat, limp against the seat belt. Red-gold hair hung in her eyes. She was utterly still.
I kicked my door open. Staggered through the electric prongs of the headlights to her side of the car. My right arm was heavy, pulling toward the ground, so I used the left to haul her out. Impressionism now: the dashboard glow dappling her pale skin cyan, black ice reflecting swirls of white starlight. My breath spiraling wildly into the sky. I cried her name as I pulled her onto the road, her legs dragging.
“Wake up, Elle. Please, please, wake up.”
You idiot, I thought. You know CPR.
I brushed her hair off her forehead¸ leaned close. No warmth on my ear. My right arm had begun to tingle and buzz and it was going to make this difficult. I took a deep breath, but before my mouth met hers she coughed and her eyelids fluttered open. Details became acutely clear, almost Pointillist: stars glittering in her eyes, ruby droplets freckling her skin. I touched her face, smearing the blood.
“Vada?” she said weakly.
“Can you move?” I couldn’t take my hand off her cheek. “Move your arms. Ellis, move your arms. Okay. Now your legs.”
She obeyed.
I grabbed her in an awkward one-armed hug but hugging wasn’t enough so I kissed her cheek, her mouth, cupped her face and stared down into it. “Are you okay? There’s so much blood.” I wiped her face again but it only got worse. “Where’s it coming from? Are you hurt?”
We both noticed my right arm at the same time. The sleeve of my hoodie ripped to tatters. The sliver of white showing through red near the elbow.
“Oh my god,” Elle whispered, her breath musky and sweet. Tequila.
I let go of her.
The other car.
His headlights made an X through ours, a crucifix of light across the blank black night. We were on a highway bridge between nowhere and eternity, the ocean glinting beyond the treetops. The other driver lay sprawled facedown on the ground. My eyes traced the path he’d taken through his windshield, the bloody stripe running over the hood of his Jeep.
“Vada,” Ellis said.
I dropped to my knees at the man’s side, feeling for breath, pulse. My right arm was completely numb now. When I lifted his head, a warm red gush flooded my palm.
“Call 911.” My voice was calm.
Elle fumbled in her coat pocket and then at the screen and almost dropped her phone. As I watched I thought, She’s drunk. God, she is so drunk.
I took her phone and painted by numbers with the stranger’s blood.
“I need an ambulance.” I described the river nearby, the brid
ge.
Elle sank to the ground beside me, those lucid green eyes locked on the body. Her glasses were gone. She couldn’t see how bad it really was.
On the asphalt, pieces of skull lay scattered like pottery fragments.
Can you tell me what happened?
“Car accident. This guy wasn’t wearing a seat belt and he’s . . . on the road.”
How many people are hurt?
“Three. We’re okay but this guy is—we need an ambulance.”
It’s on the way, miss. Is the man breathing?
“I don’t think it really matters anymore because I can see his brain.”
My voice remained calm but Ellis clapped a hand over her mouth.
The dispatcher asked another question. Elle stared at me, horrified, over splayed fingers.
In a few hours, she wouldn’t remember any of this. The concussion and the alcohol would blot it out.
But not me. I’d never forget.
“Vada,” I said. “My name is Vada. I’m the driver.”
—2—
Dots. Pretty dots of color, chrome blue and oxide red, strewn with firefly blurs of peach and gold, all smudging together. I stared at them for a while before my vision focused like a camera lens, the circles shrinking, becoming shapes. Room with white walls. Plaid shirt, sleeves rolled up. Black-rimmed glasses. A face I knew better than any other, her mouth moving slowly.
“Vada? Can you hear me?”
I opened mine to respond, then immediately closed it. My right shoulder twinged. I tried to cover my mouth to hold in the vomit, but my arm was stuck at my side, weirdly wooden. I looked at her helplessly.
Ellis hit the call button for the nurse.
A man came in and added something to my IV. Elle stood beside the bed, smoothing my hair back from my forehead. I closed my eyes and made sure only breath left my mouth.
Last night was fuzzy and soft, silvery, a half-erased sketch. But as the drugs kicked in it came back in sharp dark strokes. An oxygen mask over my face, cutting off my questions with frozen air. Losing track of Elle in the other ambulance. Hospital lights streaking overhead like glowing road stripes. A doctor explaining to me, in my shock-addled daze, that they had to operate and I had two choices: save the arm, or—
My eyes shot open. I clawed at the sheet with my left hand.
Ellis laid hers over mine. “Don’t touch.”
“Did they take it? Oh my fucking god, did they take my—”
“No.” She squeezed. “Look at me, Vada. You’re okay. It’s still there.”
I breathed hard, staring at the sheet wild-eyed. Still wanted to rip it back to confirm visually that I was whole, that they hadn’t amputated. How would I know? I couldn’t feel a thing. I remembered a desperate incantation as the anesthetic washed over me in a black wave: Please don’t take it. Dear God, please.
Elle touched my face and turned it up toward her.
“Baby,” she said in that lilting voice, “I promise, you’re okay.”
My claw grip transferred to her hand, twisting it in mine. She winced but didn’t let go.
I glanced around the room. Pale sun poured through a window, kindling the few spots of color: lilies spilling from a vase in a froth of pink starbursts, cards arrayed on the sill—Dalí and Kahlo prints from my classmates. My gaze refocused on Ellis. Her face was drawn, eyes dashed with violet shadow.
“Were you hurt?” I said.
“Mild concussion.”
“Anything else?”
“No.” She smiled briefly, faltered. “They said you pulled me from the wreckage like some superhero. You were bleeding so badly.”
My mind skittered over fragmented images. Her closed eyelids, spattered with freckles and blood. A screaming wildness rising in me as I thought, for an awful moment, She’s gone.
“ ‘They said’? You mean you don’t remember?”
Elle shook her head, the movement slight.
“Do you remember anything?”
“They said not to focus too hard. Concentration is bad for a concussion. No books, games, or memories.”
“Shit. I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be.” She stroked my hand. “Just wanted you to see a friendly face when you woke up.”
“There’s nobody I’d rather see.”
I meant it with my whole heart. Ellis lowered her eyes, a lock of ginger hair sweeping over them.
We both looked at my arm beneath the sheet.
“What did they do to me?”
“They saved it.”
“But I can’t feel—” I made a fist around Elle’s hand and she bared her teeth, but I couldn’t release. I had to hold on to something. “Elle, I can’t move my arm.” I pulled at my right shoulder with every surrounding muscle. It wasn’t heaviness. It was . . . nothing. There was nothing there. Shreds of pain, fraying off into oblivion. “I can’t move my arm.”
Carefully, she extricated her hand. “That’s normal. It’ll take a while for the nerves to heal.”
“Am I paralyzed?”
No answer.
“Ellis, am I fucking paralyzed?”
Her eyes filled up, sea green shivering with sun. She brushed my face with her fingertips. “They don’t know yet.” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”
They don’t know.
I slammed the emergency call button over and over till the nurse reappeared.
“I don’t want to be conscious right now,” I said.
“Are you in pain?”
Was he for real? I couldn’t move my drawing hand. My everything hand.
“Eleven out of ten.”
He slid a needle into the bag and the colors blurred again, dissolving into darkness. The last thing I saw was Elle’s face, two glass threads running down it.
* * *
The car hit the river in a burst of black petals, water flowering all around us in inky dark bouquets. Cold jets shot through the crumpled door and webbed windows and I yelped when they touched my skin, and realized I was still conscious. I turned with horror.
Ellis hung from her seat belt, unmoving.
Automatically I clicked my belt button. At least I thought I did. But my hips were stuck and when I looked down, my hand was all red, the fingers splayed at strange angles, as if gripping mush. In my mind I sensed myself moving that hand to the button and clicking again, but my eyes showed only a mangled ball of meat stubbing itself dumbly on the buckle, failing.
I’d done this. This was my fault.
Water rose over my ankles.
“Ellis,” I said.
Not a sound. Not even breath.
We sank slowly at first, then faster as the river surged into the car. I twisted and fumbled. Couldn’t get free.
Water at my calves.
“Ellis.”
Something sharp. I needed something sharp. I tried to reach the glove box but the seat belt cut into my chest, made it hard to breathe.
“Elle, wake up. Please.”
Water at our waists.
A ghastly chill climbed my legs, crept up my bones, deadening me with cold. In one last muster of strength I mashed my belt buckle and miraculously, it released.
My whole lower body was numb. Deadweight.
The waterline reached my breasts. An infinite heaviness pushed the air out of me.
Ellis sat motionless as we sank.
I love you, I didn’t say. Instead I took a deep, deep breath, struggling to hold it as the chill tried to spook it free. When we went under, I’d give it to her. A last kiss of life.
Uncontrollable shivering. No feeling in my fingers or toes. I closed my eyes, reopened them underwater. Elle’s hair floated around her face in lurid red ribbons, like skeins of blood.
At least we stayed together.
Till the very end.
* * *
I sat bolt upright. Hospital bed. Something trilled frantically, a machine about to explode—the heart monitor, matching my pulse.
Ellis l
urched from a nearby chair. “It’s okay,” she said, rushing to my side. “It’s okay. Don’t scream.”
Was I screaming?
“We were in the river.” I grasped her forearm. “The car was sinking. I couldn’t wake you up. I never meant to hurt you, I just—”
Didn’t want to lose you.
My mouth fell as I heard the words in my head.
“Vada?”
I settled back into the bed. “Nightmare. I was having a nightmare.”
We were never in the river.
Just a dream.
Oddly, I could still feel imaginary frostbite searing through my arms. Wait. One arm. The immobilized one.
I wrenched Elle’s wrist, and her face scrunched up.
“I can feel it,” I said through gritted teeth. “It hurts. Like a motherfucker. But I feel it.”
“I feel it, too.”
I looked at my hand on her, and let go. “Sorry.”
“It’s okay.” She smiled. “Pain is good, Vada. It means the nerves are working.”
“They’re really, really working.”
Her smile turned tremulous, that watery quality it took on just before she cried. She so rarely did. And only in front of me. I could never watch without joining her.
“Don’t cry, you big nerd,” I said gently.
“You either, dork.”
My right arm was on fire and it felt fucking glorious. I could feel.
Elle leaned in and half hugged me, resting her forehead against mine. Her tears and touch made me drop the tough-girl act. Pain flared through me, striped every nerve from fingertips to brain stem with living fire. My arm sizzled like a sparkler firework but it wasn’t dead, it was bright and sweet with agony, and I began to laugh in delirious relief.
“Are you okay?” Ellis said.
“You’re here.” I brushed her cheek with my knuckles. A tear laced between them. “And I’m whole. Yeah, I’m okay.”
She cupped my chin in her hands, let a thumb stray over my bottom lip, then the top one, as if to ensure I was real. My heart played a skittery staccato on the monitor. Elle’s breath smelled like mint grown in shade, a forest coolness—the scent of her vaping liquid. Her face was so close. Freckles dusted her cheeks like cinnamon, sandy against milk-white skin. I skimmed a finger over them.
