Copyright © 2014 by Suzanne Brockmann and Melanie Brockmann
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Cover design by Tony Sahara
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Contents
Front Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Read on for a Sneak Peek at Night Sky
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Q&A for Dangerous Destiny (a Night Sky prequel) with Suzanne and Melanie Brockmann
About the Authors
Chapter One
The crap hit the much-needed fan when I saw that the crazy girl was locked and loaded.
Yes. Crazy girl. She was wearing a pair of guns in Wild West style holsters wrapped around her lean hips. Guns, as in, the kind that hold bullets and are used to shoot objects and/or sometimes people, depending on the mental health of the girl holding them. Which brings me back to the crazy.
Unfortunately for all of us, this girl had her crazy cranked to eleven.
It wasn’t just because she was clad in camo pants and this really long, ugly trench coat—the kind favored by survivalists everywhere. I mean, all of that didn’t exactly help her image, but the crazy-vibe had much more to do with the fact that she was looking right at me with super-wild, bloodshot eyes as she muttered that they were coming to get her—and that this mysterious they would come and get me too.
What happened after that, when she dropped her coat and exposed her personal armory to the rest of my classmates, was chaos as everyone around me ran for cover…
But I should probably backtrack to a quasi-normal moment prior to the terror and turmoil, because, believe it or not, things weren’t really going my way even before I braced myself for a deadly hail of bullets in my new high school’s outdoor lunch area.
It was a Monday morning that had started out predictably lame.
In my opinion, Monday mornings always sucked. But today was especially bad. It was the beginning of week two here in Florida, aka The Land of the Living Dead, where the average age of my new neighbors was seventy-five.
And, okay, I’ll be the first to admit that the scenery here wasn’t too shabby. Sparkling blue ocean and white sandy beaches. And Mom had clearly chosen to move us to a town where most people had a ton of money. The stucco McMansions with their barrel-tile roofs that lined practically every street were testament to that, along with the endless rows of impeccably manicured palm trees and red hydrangeas. But the heat. Oh, God. The heat. And humidity. This was nothing like the weather in Connecticut. And I didn’t like the change. Not one bit.
Add that to the fact I now had zero friends. It doesn’t matter how cool you were, or how many friends you might have had at your old high school, the new girl is the new girl. Bottom line.
And no one wants to be the new girl, particularly not one who randomly appears in the spring—in the middle of the school year.
And I wasn’t just from out of town. Connecticut was a thousand miles away, but it might as well have been a thousand light-years. My clothes were all wrong—I had too many sweaters and not enough sundresses. My hair was not blond or painstakingly straightened. But the biggest difference between me and the kids of Coconut Key Academy was that I was New-England-winter pale and not carefully, skillfully tanned.
I felt like a rat tossed into a tropical snake tank—completely out of my element, confused, and trapped. But unlike most rats, I was well aware that I was in danger of being devoured, my bones spit out and left to bleach in the relentless southern sun, by any one of this school’s well-established cliques. Or anti-cliques. The members of the science, accounting, and French clubs were circling me with the same hungry looks in their eyes as the jocks and the popular kids. The only group who seemed unaware of my fresh meat status were the stoners.
The worst of the narrow-eyed who are you judgment happened on the bus.
Yes, I took the bus to school.
I was one of the many unlucky losers who staggered down the steps, plopping out from the bowels of the bus, slightly sick from the bumpy ride and noxious diesel fumes, disoriented and blinking in the bright sunlight.
And may I state that the school-bus-riding experience is as awesome in Florida as it had been in Connecticut. Some truly terrible things apparently don’t have any regional differences.
That morning, as always, I sat by myself. Everyone stared, but no one bothered to talk to me, just like they hadn’t bothered talking to me all last week. As the bus approached the school, I aimed my eyes out the filthy window, watching as the early morning sunlight created shadows that offered me brief glimpses of my reflection. I could already see that my glaringly not-blond hair was doing its crazy crap. Mother Nature had “blessed” me with curly red locks—something for which Mom insisted I should be grateful. But with the Florida humidity, I didn’t feel like thanking anyone. Especially since I could feel my coils of hair frizzing up and out at an alarming speed. By the time I got to homeroom, I’d look like Bozo the Clown at a metal concert.
“Who’s the redhead?” I heard a girl whisper behind me, after the bus wheezed to a halt in front of Coconut Key Academy. I didn’t bother turning around. It was all I could do not to attempt to smooth down the red hair in question.
“That’s the new girl,” another girl said from a few rows back, new emphasized as if were equivalent to contagious or maybe even vomit-soaked. She lowered her voice as if revealing some additionally terrible secret, but I heard her just the same. “She’s a junior.”
“A junior?” The first girl giggled, a mix of horror and schadenfreude-filled delight. “Oh my God, puh-lease just shoot me if I’m still taking the bus junior year.”
More giggling.
I pretended not to hear them, even though my stomach was in knots. I grabbed my backpack and quickly exited the bus, offering the driver a quick thank-you wave without glancing behind me.
Eff my mom. Seriously. Eff her.
It was bad enough being here. And being new. And being hot and miserable. But I still wasn’t allowed to get my driver’s license. Especially not now. And, if Mom had her way, not ever.
Back home in Connecticut, it wasn’t a big deal, because I’d had friends who already had their licenses. Nicole, for instance. She’d driven me everywhere.
But here, in the Land That Time Forgot, I was destined to ride the bus until the end of senior y
ear. Friendless and alone. And mocked for it.
It was then, as I was blinking back my tears of despair, as I was about to stagger away to find a bathroom to cry in, that I nearly got knocked over.
“Unnh,” I said, as I wildly flailed and stumbled to keep my footing. All I needed to cement my status as loser-junior-who-rides-the-bus, was to add loser-junior-who-face-plants-in-front-of-the-entire-school-before-homeroom to my résumé.
A girl in a trench coat had plowed into me as she’d stormed by, and even though she was shorter than me and looked like a kid playing dress-up in that massive coat, I was sure that I’d have a big ol’ bruise on my arm from our encounter.
Miracle of miracles, I stayed on my feet as the girl kept speed walking toward the entrance of the school.
“Hey!” I called out after her, my heart thumping inside my chest as I threw my arms up in exasperation. This near-death experience had been the last straw. My anger dried up the unshed tears that moments earlier had blurred my vision. “Aren’t you gonna at least apologize or something?”
The girl in the trench coat stopped and turned back to look at me, and I saw she was also wearing camouflage-print cargo pants. When her eyes met mine, I noticed the dark purple half-moons beneath them, casting exhausted-looking shadows over her pale cheekbones. She was probably about my age, although it was hard to tell, considering she looked so visibly worn. Despite her lack of makeup and the almost clammy sheen to her cheeks and forehead—along with a mop of straw-colored hair that hung limply around her face—the girl was striking. Maybe not pretty. But certainly memorable. It was hard to break eye contact. Her default expression was sullen, but as she held my impatient gaze, her mouth dropped open. The look in her eyes was weird. Like she was surprised. Or almost as if she recognized me.
It was then, as she was staring at me and I was glaring at her, that it occurred to me that her outfit was odd for more reasons than one. First, as I’d mentioned, the damn coat was about ten sizes too big for her, like she’d raided her grandfather’s closet. Second, today’s temperature was about twenty thousand degrees with nine hundred percent humidity. I was already sweating, just standing there in my shorts and tank top. I couldn’t imagine how uncomfortable she must have been.
But anger was winning out over my curiosity, and I wanted that apology. I couldn’t care less what weird fashion statement she was trying to make with her six-months-late Halloween costume. “Well?” I demanded.
The girl took a step toward me, her lips parted slightly. People shuffled around us, girls carrying expensive purses and flipping their hair, tanned boys wearing polo shirts as they goofed off and marched confidently toward their classrooms.
There was something wistful in her eyes, then. Something hopeful and oddly inclusive. It was certainly more direct than any of the furtive and curious looks I’d gotten from the other kids, pretty much continuously since my first day.
Oh, God. Maybe this was my fate. I’d end up making friends with the other big weirdo in school. Bozo Girl and Hobo Girl. The perfect match. Friendship, friendship, just a perfect blendship…
She took another step toward me and lifted up her hand slowly, pointing at my face. “You,” she whispered. “You’re one of us.”
At first I thought that maybe the girl was pointing at someone behind me. The expression in her eyes was so intense and oddly personal. But I’d never seen this girl before in my life. Whoever she was, she hadn’t been in school at all last week. At least not that I’d noticed. And I would’ve noticed.
I turned around to check, but nope, she was definitely pointing at me.
Before she could say anything else—or before I could counter with an incredulous one of who?—the first warning bell cut through the air, signaling that homeroom was about to start. The clamor was exactly the way I imagined a humongous exclamation point would sound—if exclamation points made noise.
And it seemed to break whatever spell Hobo Girl was under, because she abruptly turned and quickly walked away.
“Apology accepted!” I called after her, not because I wanted us to be friends, but because it occurred to me, after looking into her eyes, that I probably didn’t want to be on this girl’s shit-list.
Chapter Two
The redheaded girl.
I know her.
Know her from inside the dreams.
Inside those terrible, murderous, bloody dreams. She’s there, running through that barn. I’ve seen her—terrified, her eyes filled with fear. I’ve heard her—screaming, her voice mixing in an awful chorus with all those other girls. Little girls.
Oh, God.
Make it stop. Can’t. Can’t make it stop.
Please, God.
That’s what one of the little girls keeps saying, in the dream that is not just a dream. The dream that is more than a dream. Please, God.
But I know better. I know that no one can help her.
No. There is no escaping this. This is fate. This is destiny.
And now, this redheaded girl—her name, I knew it when she spoke to me—Skylar. Sky is here in real life. In real time. Right in front of me, like an apparition. Like a ghost from an awful, unavoidable future. And she’s like me! And we’re both like the little girl who prays and prays and still bleeds out in the end.
Blood as red as mine, as red as Sky’s.
She’ll die too. Just like all the other girls. Just like me. For I’ve seen the future in my dreams and it is so.
But then, all in a rush, it’s clear.
Sky is like me. Special. Wanted. Greater than. And soon to be hunted like an animal, and dragged to that barn to die. And it’s my job to save her.
It’s my job to change her fate, just like I’m changing my own.
There’s only one way to win, to keep them from winning. And I know, with a sudden, intense certainty, what to do.
I need to kill Skylar, too.
Chapter Three
“Mind if I sit here?”
The kid in the wheelchair looked up at me in surprise, his mouth full from a bite of a ginormous meatloaf sandwich. He glanced around at the unusually populated quad and saw that my usual table was occupied, before looking back at me, his eyebrows raised.
This outdoor lunch area was an unspoken no-hate zone, unlike the cafeteria with its also unspoken but heavily enforced rules about who could sit where, when. Until I could figure it all out, I was keeping my distance.
The fact that the lunchroom smelled terrible reinforced my decision. One whiff from the doorway on my very first day in this paradise, and I kept walking—outside to this quad where the stoners ate their brownies and cheese-puffs, or stretched out right on the brick pavers to nap like cats in the sun.
And, truth be told, the quad wasn’t all that bad. Five teal-painted metal picnic tables had been arranged about the grounds. Some were set beneath the shade of large, manicured palm trees, while others peeked out into the open, for the sunbathers who wanted a full-on roast. The pretty pink bricks spread all the way to the long line of cafeteria windows, each of which were floor-to-ceiling and tinted just enough so that the students eating inside were visible to outsiders as a collection of teenage silhouettes. Two smaller tables were in the corner, right between the outside wall of the auditorium and the perpendicular lunchroom building.
All last week, whenever I came out here with my brown bag lunch from home, I heard the refrain, as if sung by Kermit the Frog: The stoners, the black kid, and me.
The black kid was also the kid in the wheelchair, and frankly, he was the only one of both unique subgroups in this otherwise generically white-bread high school. And, unlike me, with my new girl status, his labels were never going to change.
All last week, we’d assumed a kind of détente. The black kid had pulled his wheelchair up to his table—the one in the corner—and I, too, sat alone at the small table next to it, head down as I focused on my e-reader. And since the stoners were pretty solidly in their own worlds, that left the quad in a state of near-
silence, which was fine with me.
But today, on Monday-crummy-Monday, obnoxiousness occurred. Hobo Girl McCrazyPants had parked herself in my regular seat, which meant that all of the tables had at least one inhabitant when I arrived. And after this morning’s weirdness on the sidewalk in front of the school, I wasn’t going to get within conversation range of her.
That left me sitting with the stoners or…“Please?” I added as I smiled, just a little, to show the kid in the wheelchair that I came in peace.
The boy smiled back, taking care to keep his mouth closed while he finished up his admirably huge bite. After washing his food down with a gulp of soda from the can in his cup holder, he made an appreciative “Aah” sound.
He was in band with me—that was the only class we shared. He played first trumpet while I was in the back with the third clarinets. I should’ve sat first chair, too, but because I was new and the musical pecking order had been established long before I’d arrived, I was going to finish out my junior year of band playing whole note As and B-flats, and counting rests.
Thanks again, Mom.
“Knock yourself out,” the boy told me, returning his attention to that sandwich. I watched enviously as a huge dollop of what looked to be hot sauce dripped out between the bread and onto the top of the table.
He was sitting where he always sat, his chair parked at the end of the corner table. I tried not to drool too obviously as I took the bench that put my back against the brick wall, instead of the row of windows. This way, I was still perpendicular to the wheelchair kid, yet I could monitor Hobo Girl, who’d finally noticed my arrival. She was now watching me with her crazy intensity on heavy-stun.
Meanwhile, my new luncheon companion didn’t offer any conversation—not even an introduction—as I pulled my own sandwich out of my bag. So I went first. “I’m Skylar.”
“Calvin,” he said, adding, “Jesus.”
Yeah. My lunch tended to be worthy of an entire hymn sung to a higher power, begging for salvation. Today, it was a sad-looking, flattened half-sandwich composed of Mom’s favorite gluten-free bread, a liberal but nasty-ass slice of Tofurky, and organic, aka puke-worthy, lactose- and egg-free mayo. With hydroponically grown Bibb lettuce, as if that made it all okay.
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