Chapter 1

HAIL

Maybe my neighbors already called the police. If they did call the police, that would be particularly problematic. I’m less than nine months to graduation—four, if I graduate early. We’ve managed to keep a low profile in Macen—a small town I essentially despise. If we have to move again, odds are we’ll end up in Greenland, or quite possibly somewhere even more remote. I’m thinking I should prepare to pack my bags and be gifted a new name because I’m pretty sure I’ve just found a dead body lying in my backyard.

The dogs tipped me off. Typically, my neighbor’s dogs growl at me (anyone really) like I mean to hop over the fence and barbecue them. This morning they hang back. Their eyes train on the unconscious body half-hidden by grass.

Across the yard, the gate opens.

Slate-colored suit, low slung fedora—this man striding across broken leaves doesn’t look anything like a cop to me. My lungs swell, ready to scream.

“Olivija.”

I know that voice. But it isn’t until the wind picks up—until I smell him—that I recognize who he is. Raw cedar swirls with sandalwood. I haven’t seen this man in nearly a decade. When last I saw him, I stood in line, a sniveling kid watching his coffin get lowered into the ground.

Sweeping past me, he whips off a glove and feels for the man’s pulse. Two fingers linger over a tattoo on the man’s wrist.

“Good,” he straightens. “I can’t have this kid dying on my grounds.”

Every synapse in my head short circuits. I have no words.

Eyes still obscured by the shadows of his hat, the man cups my chestnut cheek in a callused palm. “How you’ve grown,” his voice threads between awe and grief.

Silence electrifies the space between us, pinning the breath in my chest. Only for a moment, the corner of his lip trembles. I wonder how it is that a phantom could radiate warmth.

When he speaks again, his tone has returned to its former calculation. “I need you to take this man into the house.” For the first time he wrests his gaze from my face, lets it wander to the top floor of the house behind. Through the layers of wood and brick, he finds her. “Don't tell your mother. Not about any of this. Not yet.”

He’s already half way across the yard to disappear the way he came before I remember to exhale.

“I’ll call you with further instructions. Keep this quiet, my Little Olive. Ice cream when I get back? Strawberry.”

I’m 10 again. Incredibly pleased with the new spoilers on my bike. Hush money for the fact that he’s bailing on our family vacation for a business trip to Belarus. “Ice cream when I get back,” he ruffles my hair bound in mickey mouse poufs. “Strawberry.”

The gate groans. An engine growls.

 “Dad?”

Gone.

The heat of the young man’s body broiling the grass where he lies, the warm tingle against my cheek, the lingering imprint on my shoulder—all tell me this is no hallucination. Take this man into the house, he said.

Long buried memories well up. I remember watching my dad and my grandfather do this every so often, sometimes my brother too. They would bring strangers at varying pit stops between life and death into our house. Once or twice, I’d heard my mother yelling behind closed doors. I used to kneel in darkness with my nose pressed up against the banister, straining to see, to listen. I remember thinking, even then, that I witnessed something that I shouldn’t have known.

I haul the stranger into the white, colonial house. Unload him on my bed. No one hears. No one sees. No one notices. In the quiet of my room, my heart rate slows. I truly look the guy over for the first time. Dried blood crusts over several purple bruises. A few strands of matted black hair cling to what might be, beneath all the wreckage, a handsome face. Or, might have been a handsome face.

A sudden muscle spasm is just my phone vibrating against my thigh. For a moment I stare at the unknown number. “Hello?”

“Where is he now?” my father asks. Ambient noise in the background says he’s driving and fast.

“In my room. With me.” I want to ask what’s going on, but somehow, you’re supposed to be dead just doesn’t have the right ring to it.

“Your mother and sisters, where are they?”

Nudging a stack of books out of my way, I pull the curtains shut. “Getting ready to leave. Where are you?”

“Get to school. Now.”

I blink into the open space. “What?”

“Your mother will get suspicious if she sees your car.”

“I just leave this guy here?”

“Yes. He won’t be on his feet anytime soon.”

“I don’t think he’ll be back on his feet at all if he doesn’t get help right now. Mom can help him…”

“No. You weren’t supposed to… Your mother cannot know that you have seen me. Not yet. When school’s over, come back to the house and wait for my call.” His voice fades, but I hear him say, “Get me a runner.”

“Should I tell them it’s The Alchemist?” Someone else is with him.

“No. Just a Chemist…” Click. Silence.

Upstairs, Mom yells for the girls to hurry it up. Eight o’clock. Now I am late for school. Lateness today is negligible. Here I was thinking the most eventful thing Fall semester senior year would be finding a suitable college to justify a potential life of indentured servitude. I take one last sweep of the room. The man struggles to breathe. If he’s dead by the time I get back, that’ll be some real irony for you.

Subscribe below to finish chapter one and find out what happens next...