Savannah's Chance

by D. A. Maddox

  Published by EVERNIGHT PUBLISHING ® at Smashwords

  www.evernightpublishing.com

  Copyright© 2020 D.A. Maddox

  ISBN: 978-0-3695-0126-4

  Cover Artist: Jay Aheer

  Editor: Karyn White

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

  WARNING: The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is illegal. No part of this book may be used or reproduced electronically or in print without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in reviews.

  This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, and places are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  DEDICATION

  To Aletta Thorne, my Pen Sister under any name.

  SAVANNAH’S CHANCE

  Consequences, Live, 2

  D.A. Maddox

  Copyright © 2020

  Part One

  A Select Invitation

  Chapter One:

  Summons

  Savannah Miles brought the laptop back to bed. She sat up straight, yawning her daily apology to Alisha, who grumbled incoherently in response. With the buzz of the alarm clock still echoing in her mind, she opened her computer and powered it on.

  She expected to find a grade report on her latest essay, “The False Lineage of First Kings”, in her student inbox. Instead, there was a red-flagged email with the word “Congratulations” in the subject line. Against her better judgment, she clicked it open.

  You have been chosen.

  She stared at the screen, incredulous.

  The SCS invites you to participate in the Origins Fete.

  She’d heard about this so-called “Student Council Select” before. She was in her third year at Bridgemont University, and she’d been listening to whispers about its secret society since she was a freshman. Everyone knew about them, but no one knew who they were. She’d written them off as snobs, the self-proclaimed elite, arrogant and pretentious.

  But now they were talking to her.

  Report to the Student Union this Friday at 9 PM. Go around the back. Don’t worry. No one will stop you.

  The Student Union building was at the southernmost end of campus. As far as Savannah knew, there was nothing behind it but a patch of grass before the forest and the downward slope of Crestwood Summit. There was a wide balcony on the back of the second floor. From there, a person could almost see the entire length of the two-mile descent to the city. On a good night, one could make out the skyline through the trees.

  Why did they want her to go around back?

  Do not come early. Do not be late.

  Incredulity melted to a creeping unease. To hear it from some, the Origins Fete was a party. Others called it an initiation.

  Ask no questions. Do not reply to this email. Do not report this email.

  The sent-by line read only, “SCS Social Chair”.

  If you fail to show, you will never be asked again. Not everyone gets to go, Savannah. You have been deemed worthy. You should be grateful.

  Savannah supposed she should be, at that. She was an archaeology major with a perfect GPA. She was a bookworm, and a health nut besides. She hadn’t been to many parties.

  But there are conditions.

  She had expected something special today, but not this. Savannah was not especially popular. She had good friends, just not many of them.

  You and your fellow pledges will submit your names to a lottery. At midnight, two names will be drawn. One of them could be you.

  “What on Earth?” she muttered to herself, hardly aware she was speaking aloud. She’d already been a pledge back when she’d first gotten here—had allowed herself to be tarred and feathered with honey and crackers in her damned underwear. She’d been eighteen, then, and scared out of her mind. Alisha, of course, had laughed all the way through it. Alisha was braver than Savannah.

  If you are deemed sufficiently cool at this first little soiree of ours, no participation in future lotteries will be required. You will be one of us.

  “Alisha,” she called over her shoulder. “Alisha, get up. I have to show you something.”

  A friend will contact you. She’ll tell you what to do.

  Across from her, on the opposite bed, Alisha stirred. Slurred a curse. Rolled over.

  You’re a good listener, aren’t you, Savannah? Are you good at following instructions?

  It was still dark out. The window between them looked out over a moonlit parking lot. In a few hours, it would be packed with the cars of commuter students. At this hour, it was practically empty.

  “Alisha—oh, my God, come on.”

  This is a Bridgemont tradition that goes back generations. We were here before the Behavior Reformation Laws, before there was an age of transition. We are the torchbearers, the keepers of light in the dark.

  Okay, now that was hokey.

  Your presence is expected.

  Alisha propped herself up on an elbow, palming sleep from her eyes. She blinked big brown eyes at Savannah, brushed frazzled ringlets of dark hair out of her face. Then she picked up the alarm clock from their shared nightstand and dropped it with another groan. “It’s … four in the morning, Sis.”

  Alisha and Savannah were sorority sisters, not real sisters. Alisha was full-figured, rather on the heavy side, outgoing, insufferably chatty—basically everything Savannah wasn’t. And they were inseparable. They didn’t keep secrets from each other.

  Savannah’s eyes lingered over the final two lines of the email.

  Tell no one.

  “What is it?” Alisha asked.

  And get ready for the time of your life.

  “Nothing,” Savannah said, closing the laptop. “Sorry. Spam email, something stupid. Go back to sleep.”

  Alisha flopped herself back down and was instantly unconscious.

  Well, happy birthday to me, Savannah thought. If this is how being twenty-one starts, it’s going to be one hell of a strange year.

  ****

  Every day, she arrived at the same time, just ten or fifteen minutes after the gym opened. It was hard not to notice her, even as she shouldered through the doors in a loose set of modest blue sweats, the duffel bag of her school clothes slung over her shoulder. Scott couldn’t have said what it was about her, her wavy blonde hair done up in a short ponytail—he’d never seen her wear it down—the soft blue of her eyes…

  There were lots of women who fit that description around campus.

  She went directly for the locker room. Scott checked his watch: 5:14.

  He eased the pulley weights back down to the stacks and stretched his arms, rolled his shoulders, and worked out some of the tension.

  She was a creature of routine, just as he was. She wasn’t as fervent about getting here right when the doors opened, but she clearly liked having the gym to herself as much as possible, enough so that she dragged herself out of bed ass-early to do it. But on the odd occasion someone she knew showed up during her workout, she was always smiling, always welcoming, her laughter half-stifled and a little self-conscious.

  And that was it, probably. She was genuine, sincere. She was nice.

  Scott mopped sweat from his brow with a hand towel. You don’t know shit about her, he thought. You don’t even know her name.

  He moved the pins lower on the stacks, adding twenty pounds to each side. That was officially twenty pounds more than he wanted on either side, but—

  It’s okay, he said to himself. You’re “of an age” now, dude. You’re supposed to take notice. You should introduce yourself. There’s nothing wrong with that. You’ll be less of a creep, waiting for her to come through the door every day like you do, if she knows who you are.


  For five years, it had been perfectly legal for him to have a girlfriend. In little more than another year, all of the age-based behavioral restrictions would be behind him. Nothing wrong with laying a little groundwork ahead of that time, especially with a friendly young woman like the one who would emerge from the locker room any second now.

  Most of his frat brothers had girlfriends. Some had even ignored the law, taken the chance…

  Had sex.

  Zeke and Rusty. And they had talked about it. Bragged about it.

  Scott would never do that, not even to his high school buddies back home. Even if he was that much of a jerk—he didn’t think that he was—he wasn’t that stupid. Word from the home front was that the senator’s son, Robbie McNeal, got caught trying to spy on some girls in the shower at ECU last semester and had gone down hard for it. Scott and Robbie hadn’t been close in high school—Scott had graduated two years ahead of him—but they knew each other. Robbie was a bit of a pushover. If Scott really felt like it, he could probably wheedle the full dirt out of him over Spring Break. Scott just had no desire to find out what “transitional punishment” was until he wasn’t a transitional anymore.

  “Let’s just say the law set him good and straight,” his father had said, “with no permanent harm done. All you have to worry about is pulling that average the rest of the way up to an ‘A’ before you graduate.”

  That and making crew captain next year, Scott thought, forcing another lift. Got plenty going on without thinking about all of this other crap.

  But goddamn, it didn’t take much to get him worked up these days.

  And there she was, in a short-sleeved exercise shirt and knee length shorts, her hand towel slung over her shoulder, a water bottle in a belt sleeve at her waist. Briefly, before he could look away, she caught his eye. Oh, well, he thought. That’s me, busted.

  He waved, and she waved back. Was that a blush rising in her cheeks?

  There was no time to confirm. She turned from the women’s locker room door and jogged over to the stationary bikes before he could be sure. He decided he wouldn’t approach her while she was on the bike. She wouldn’t want to talk while doing cardio.

  She didn’t bring her earbuds today, he observed. Neither had he.

  He got back to his reps, and instantly regretted putting the extra weights on the pulley.

  But not too much. The extra work—plus the hopeful prospect of learning this girl’s name, maybe even having a conversation—took his mind off the email he’d woken up to this morning.

  ****

  Five minutes into her cycling, Savannah was already thinking about stopping. She didn’t want to be a big, sweaty mess if the boy in the muscle shirt—with the short black hair and the dark, puppy dog eyes, she thought without looking at him—decided to come over and talk to her. What would she say to him if he did? What would she do?

  He better, she thought. I’ll never have the guts, that’s for sure.

  Seven minutes now. Beads of sweat, nothing disgusting. Anyway, people came here to sweat, didn’t they?

  Behind her, she heard the main doors swish open again, admitting more people. It was legs-and-abs day for Savannah. She hoped her favorite machines wouldn’t be taken when she was done on the stationary bike. She hoped—

  But as the morning crowd started to trickle in, she began to imagine them as shadows, not just anonymous but sinister. She let the fantasy take hold, didn’t fight it. Any one of these people could be one of them.

  A friend will contact you, the email had read. She’ll tell you what to do.

  It was Wednesday. It would have to happen soon. And what had they meant by “friend”? Was it possible she already knew someone in The Select?

  That possibility was unaccountably exciting. Crazy things like this didn’t happen in Savannah’s sheltered world of books and exercise, writing and online gaming. She’d only had one underage drink in her life. She had a license but rode a bike or took the bus instead of buying a car. She saved money instead of spending it.

  I’m the most boring person I know, she suddenly realized. I have to do this, even if it’s totally stupid. Even if I regret it for the rest of my life.

  She fingered the heart-shaped pendant at the end of her necklace. It was the only golden thing she owned. She rarely took it off, but her hand went to it regularly. Sometimes, she imagined her mother’s patient, reasonable voice speaking through it. Today, it seemed to dare her.

  Take a chance, Vanna. Maybe they won’t be as stuck-up as you think. It’s not like you have anything else going on this Friday.

  The system screen on the exercise bike beeped the fifteen-minute mark and switched to Level 1 difficulty. Warmup complete. Savannah considered pedaling through the two-minute cooldown but let her feet rest idle in the pedal straps instead. She sipped from her water bottle.

  “Hey.”

  Savannah almost choked.

  It was Puppy Dog Eyes, and he was standing right behind her. “Oh, hey,” she fairly spluttered, then instantly said, “I’m sorry. Kind of caught me off guard.” Climbing off the bike, toweling off around the neck, she remembered to smile.

  “No, my fault,” the boy said, extending his hand. “Scott Lachance.” Then, when she didn’t immediately answer, he added, “Architecture.”

  “Savannah Miles,” she said, shaking hands, painfully aware of the dampness of her palm—and either feeling or imagining the hint of a mildly pleasant electrical charge through the sweat. “Secular Archaeological Studies of Religious History. Okay, that’s out of the way.”

  Up close, it was clear that Scott Lachance was as nervous as she was, even though he was trying to play it cool. He chuckled. “That’s, um … very specific. So, what happens to the secular part if you … I don’t know, dig up God, or something?”

  She shared in the laugh. “Then I start going to church, I guess.”

  Reflexively, her brain went into panic mode—Oh, God, what if he’s super religious? Savannah, you idiot—and started formulating another apology.

  “I’ll hold you to it,” he said amiably enough. “’Til then, how about a beer at Finney’s?”

  He’s asking me out. Holy cow, Mom, you said this would happen one day and now it is.

  Actually, she’d been asked out before—more than once—but this was the first time she thought she might…

  “Sounds like a good time,” she said, hoping her face wasn’t as pink as it felt. Then she remembered. “Oh—damn it. Listen, Scott, I’ve got a birthday thing going on later tonight…”

  That wasn’t the only thing, either. She wasn’t looking forward to her wellness visit later this morning. She got them twice-annually, like everyone else on campus, but having to report to the med labs on a school day made for nothing but stress. There’d be work to make up later, and she’d have to trust Mandy Jameson to record the lecture for her.

  “Yours?”

  “Yes,” she said, exasperated with herself and more than a little embarrassed. She’d brought up her damned birthday, like a little kid expecting an instant present. “Just turned twenty-one.”

  “In that case, maybe this afternoon?”

  “Really?” she said, surprised and rather flattered by his tenacity. That was when she had planned on making up the notes, but…

  “Oh, hell, yeah,” he said. “I’d be honored to buy your first beer.”

  “Well,” she ruefully admitted, “first legal beer, anyway.”

  There you go again, she thought. If he didn’t think you were a total heathen before—

  “That’s what I meant,” he forged on, undaunted. “One o’clock okay with you?”

  She smiled at him. She nodded.

  “Great,” he said. Then, looking all around himself as if wondering what came next, he finally went on, “Okay, I’m gonna jet. Finney’s, though. One o’clock.”

  “Looking forward to it,” Savannah said. And she was. She let it show. “See you then, Scott.”

  You
can’t be very far into your workout, she thought as he ambled off to the changing rooms. But she understood why he was leaving. If both of them had stayed at the gym at that point, they would have turned the place into Awkward City.

  “Happy birthday,” he called back to her, then passed through the locker room door.

  ****

  Unchaining his bike from the stand outside the gym entrance, Scott allowed the elation and expectation to wash over him. I did it, he thought. I asked her, and she said yes. He was grateful neither Rusty nor Zeke had been on hand. God only knew what they would have said right there, out in the open and in front of everyone. But he could imagine it.

  From Rusty, something like: “Finally, Scotty steps up to the plate!”

  Scott hated being called “Scotty”. Which was why Rusty called him that.

  And from Zeke, who fancied himself something like an older brother, “Shy boy makes a move! Good for you, man. Now, here’s what you do…”

  They were seniors, and they’d actually been a real help back when he’d been new. Pedaling back to his dorm—which he occupied alone out of choice, and it stretched his modest budget to its limit—he wondered if he would tell them. There was no harm just in letting someone know he’d offered to buy Savannah Miles a beer, and she’d accepted. Zeke would be the better choice. He’d be encouraging, if a bit of a know-it-all. Rusty would tease him all through Scaffolding and Safety, which was a two-hour class. Maybe all the way to one o’clock.

  Not until you’ve done it, he decided, turning onto University Way.

  It was almost six in the morning. The plaza was lit with the burnt orange glow of the rising sun. Just past the low-roofed brick buildings of the Golden Tech and the campus police was the Jam and Java. He could stop for a quick coffee and bask in his success for an hour or so. The mock-up floorplan of his make-believe middle school wasn’t due until…