“sarah?” gabe cleared away the alarm clock and stack of magazines, then balanced a tray of food on the nightstand beside the head of his sleeping stowaway. her pillowcase was smeared with charcoal streaks of eyeliner and gabe remembered waking up to her midnight ramblings.

“sarah?” he said again, louder this time. 

her eyes yawned, then flicked left and right as she reoriented herself in the bedroom. she locked on gabe and narrowed her brow.

“i made eggs,” he said.

she pushed herself up, grappled a butter knife from the tray and held it to her face. it took gabe a full ten seconds to realize she was using the knife’s reflective surface as a mirror; pursing her lips, adjusting the curve of her smeared liner, testing the grip of the black jewel on her nose and straightening fallen strands of hair. she sighed, placed the knife back on the tray, and hugged the sheet around her bra. she noticed her mess on the pillow and rubbed her thumb on the dark streaks. “shit,” she said. “i normally sleep on my back.”

“no worries.” gabe hid his amusement from the butter-knife charade. “it’s just the case. if you ruined the actual pillow, we might'a had problems.” 

he could still see a black outline of lacy bra through the covers. sarah was the literary foil to rose-the-photographer; her dark and dramatic style stood in diametric opposition to the airy floral dresses of the bitch who stood gabe up. 

he pried his eyes from her chest and grabbed a tee from the floor. “here.”

sarah took the shirt, shook out the wrinkles, and pulled it over her head. “thanks.”

he placed the tray on her lap and rolled the office chair to her side of the bed. breakfast consisted of scrambled eggs (sprinkled with green peppers and cubes of ham), toast, bacon, and orange juice.

“you didn’t have to do this,” she said.

gabe took a bite and observed sarah’s fork picking the eggs like edgar’s beak searching for sunflower seeds. he mentally slapped his forehead. “you’re a vegetarian, aren’t you?”

sarah tried to hide her first genuine smile. “maybe.”

“city girls; you’re all crazy. there’s no ‘animal’ in the toast or juice. promise.”

(over the last several months, gabe began to grow sheepishly aware of the creature living inside of him. it had always been there, clamoring for the panzyish longing of wimps and self-loathing depressives: SYMPATHY. when he was a kid, friends called the urgings “pissy fits.” the art-institute critic called them “romantic.” the more gabe communed with the ridiculous THING, the more he could control it. but now the creature smelled the moist aroma of GIRL and battled with gabe’s brain and tongue and lips to coax out a silly statement that might finally bring a healthy serving of pity.) “i’ve never had a girlfriend,” he said.

(sarah’s quick response squished the creature and hampered his heart.) “you still don’t.”

gabe covered his embarrassment with a gulp of oj. “i didn’t mean...” he stammered, “i was just tryin' to break the ice. my parents’ll be in and out of this house until evening. that means i get to spend the day with you, and i’d like it to be less awkward than it was last night. i told you something about myself; that i’ve never had a girlfriend.”

“you really wanna get to know me right before we off ourselves?”

“why not?”

sarah set her fork across her untouched breakfast. “i’ve never been on a boat.”

“wasn’t so hard, was it?”

sarah cocked her head in fake annoyance.

“never been on a boat...” he repeated. “not a cruise or a rowboat or—”

“nada.”

“how old are you?”

“how old do i look?” she lowered her chin but kept her eyes on his.

“twenty-two?”

“seventeen.”

seventeen! he thought. “and you’ve never been—”

“your family probably has ten boats,” she said.

“just one. i think it was built in the seventies.”

“i haven't been on a boat, but i HAVE been to all forty-eight states.”

“damn, your family likes to travel! i’ve been to three.”

“bull. you’ve been all over the world.”

“my parents have.”

“what a gyp.” sarah took her first sip of juice. her lips pressed a transparent blotch of day-old lipstick onto the rim.

gabe stood from his chair and took the tray from her lap. “yeah, life sucks.”

“let’s try to make it through the day without being depressing, okay?”

“deal.” he walked across the room with the tray on his palm, then opened the door and set it on the hallway carpet. mom would get it later (she might wonder about the second plate and glass, but she wouldn’t ask.)

“so, what’s the plan?” he said when he returned to his chair.

sarah distracted herself by wrapping her forefinger around a loose thread from the sleeve of the borrowed shirt. she snapped it off and flicked it to the floor. “remember when you were just a kid and too stupid to know how bad life really is?”

gabe almost laughed at the sudden change in tone, then remembered sarah was actually suicidal... and deadly serious. “i remember,” he said.

“i want to find that moment again tonight. for a few hours, i’d like to forget why i’m here. i think if we can do that, we’ll have the best night of our lives.”

“what did you have in mind?”

“why don’t you plan the perfect day for us? i don’t have any cash; maybe you could max out your debit card and take me to dinner.”

gabe grinned to mask his trepidation. this girl wanted to end her life. tonight. in his bedroom. if he was going to stop it, he needed to implement his plan.

part one: find out why she’s sad.

part two: show her a good time.

“well?” sarah prodded gabe from his train of thought. “what do you think?”

he nodded. “yeah. let’s do it.”

*  *  *

once again, jules found herself as a black-and-white demon in a technicolor world; a candy store this time, with racks and jars topped with assorted sugar. so far, dante fire’s idea of fun wasn’t far from her boyfriend’s.

when trev developed this scheme over a year ago, jules considered using SEXUALITY to form connections. but out of seven targets, none of them showed signs of physical attraction. doug (shotgun-doug from jacksonville) came the closest when he asked if she had any unfulfilled desires. when she declined, he offered her a cigar. the other four boys were too fixated on self-loathing to see the girl before them. ashley (NUMBER ONE, from AA) didn’t show any hint of bisexual tendencies... and emma kissed her, but not out of attraction.

gabriel jones, however, was infatuated.

the boy sent her to the candy store while he “plundered” the bread shop. now she perused the glass cases and selected chocolate-covered raspberries, caramel turtles, and maple sugar candies in the hardened shape of leaves. she remembered the melt-in-your-mouth delicacies from the autumn festival in the hills north-east of LA and wondered if they were as delicious now as they were then.

“is that everything?” asked the man behind the counter.

jules fished a bill from her cleavage. “can you break a hundred?”

*  *  *

grand harbor’s downtown strip was worthy of the usual brochure adjectives like “quaint,” “homey,” and “historic,” and based on the heavy stream of foot traffic, the masses agreed.

jules unwrapped a maple leaf and placed it on her tongue.

jesse.

that final trip to the autumn festival had been a distant blur before the creamy taste rekindled the memory... now jules could feel her sister’s tiny hands shaking her shoulders beside a llama in that shit-stinking petting zoo. jesse wiped sugary drool from the corners of her big sister’s mouth as they sat together in straw and droppings. 

she asked why jules was smiling. she asked why jules wouldn’t talk.

now the taste of MAPLE was inseparable from the chemical euphoria of hillbilly heroin, and back in downtown grand harbor, jules spit the sour chunk to the curb.

“damn. it’s just candy,” gabe said as he approached from the bread store.

jules scraped her tongue with her teeth. “it tasted weird.”

“you didn’t steal anything, i hope. my dad knows the owner.”

“why would i rob that place? you just gave me two hundred dollars to buy candy.”

gabe reached into his own bag, tore off a piece of blueberry bread, and brought it to her mouth. the gesture startled her, but she bit the lump from his fingers and let the sponge soak up the leftover nostalgia.

“best bread in the world?” he asked.

jules nodded. “mm hmm.”

*  *  *

“ready?”

“i’m not doing that. it’s not even dangerous, it’s stupid.”

“but it’s on my bucket list!”

“not mine.” jules stood beside gabe on a wooden platform at the tip-top of “the region’s largest sand dune.” the front of the hill was gold with patches of slender beach grass. the city of grand harbor webbed from the base, clear and bright in the afternoon sun.

gabe rolled his neck and stretched his arms. “i did this when i was a kid but i was only allowed to go halfway.”

“are you five?”

“are you chicken?”

before jules could retort, an suv pulled into the turnaround behind them. “you go,” she said. “i’ll walk.”

“your loss,” gabe said and leapt from the platform to the sand. he crossed his arms over his chest, howled with glee, and tumbled down the hill.

jules waited until the boy became a distant speck, then turned and swaggered to the open window of trevor’s car. she leaned inside, sucked her boyfriend’s lower lip, then crossed her arms on the frame. “missed you,” she said.

“explain to me what you’re doing in public in the middle of the afternoon.”

“it’s his last day.”

“so?”

“you know why i do it.”

“if someone sees you—”

“yeah, i know. but if you take this away from me, i’m done.”

trevor sneered and mocked her words with a baby voice. “wah wah wah. this town is shit and the only motel with a vacancy smells like sweaty taint. what the fuck went wrong last night?”

“chill, baby. he’s not the first to need more time. his parents were home, but—”

“how sweet! did they welcome you in? make a nice dinner? huh? did they get a good look at your face so they can describe it to a sketch artist when you screw this up?”

“they didn’t know i was there.”

“where did you sleep?”

“on a couch in his room.”

“if they see you—”

“TREV. i’m careful.”

“what about tonight?”

“they’ll be out.”

“you're sure?”

“baby. calm down. this one’s worth the wait.”

trevor squeezed the steering wheel until his knuckles turned white. “i knew that brat was loaded out the ass. he’s gonna go through with it?”

“honestly, i'm not sure. he’s not like the others—”

“but you’ll make it happen?”

she smiled. “it’ll happen.”

trevor wrapped his hand beneath the back of her wig and tangled his fingers through real hair. he squeezed. she winced. “you’re doin’ good julesie-baby.” he pulled her head into the car and opened her lips with his.

when trevor had his fill, he quit the kiss, tightened his grip, and spoke in her ear. “i’ll see you tonight, sweet girl. and we'll celebrate.”

*  *  *

gabe was laying on the ground when jules arrived. sand was stuck to his face and arms and every other inch of exposed skin, and half-digested chocolate-covered raspberries formed bubbling rivers in the sand beside his feet.

“where next?” she asked.

“i think i need to wash off,” he said.

*  *  *

jules hadn’t worn a bathing suit since she was eight and wouldn’t be caught dead in a mismatched rainbow two-piece like the gaggle of bikini girls splashing in the water or soaking up eighty-eight degrees of pure melanoma in slutfest rows across the beach. three well-positioned post-it notes would do a better job covering the tiny breasts and hairless no-nos of the girls gabe dared not gander in the overdressed presence of his gothic date.

fully clothed, he dove through a speedboat’s wake and emerged lanky, tan, and shaking mud from his hair.

jules stood a foot from the shore. she stepped back before the same miniature wave reached her ankles.

gabe motioned for her to join him.

she shook her head.

he stepped toward her with outstretched arms, fingers skimming the top of the water, and joyful menace in his eyes.

jules lowered her chin. “if you splash me. i will kill you.”

*  *  *

shit shit shit! gabe pushed the truth back for too long: his parents were never planning to go out... the party was coming to them.

organic patterns pulsated on the wall from the projected image of a music visualizer. the shapes danced, morphed and spun in ten-foot hurricanes of dizzying color.

gabe paced circles around his foosball table, smacking his palm against each handle to twirl the ridged players. he maintained a frown, sighed repeatedly (loud enough for sarah to hear over the music), and tried his best to look forlorn.

sarah didn’t need to pretend. her body—perky and authoritative this afternoon—seemed weighed down by thoughts of the impending pact. her eyes were heavy too; sluggish and wet with apparent despair. she placed a clump of deflated trash bags on the edge of his desk, then removed two pens from a drawer.

edgar observed the proceedings from his bookshelf roost.

she’s really going to do this, gabe thought. she really wants to die.

“can you check again?” she asked. “i’ve had knots in my stomach all night.”

he nodded and walked to the hallway. he leaned his forehead against the wall and listened to the pre-party bickering that would resolve itself at the first ding-dong of the doorbell.

he stepped back inside the room. “they’re still here.”

“you said the party was at nine.”

the party IS at nine. he thought. the guests arrive in fifteen minutes. “i have an idea. it’ll help you relax.”

*  *  *

the driveway made for a shitty hideout. three homes were attached to the gravel, all rigged with motion-sensitive spotlights and decorative lamp posts. at least one house had a dog.

trevor could barely see the target's window from his position in the street. he stifled his audacity by remaining in the car, but the confinement only prickled his nerves and he craved a cigarette.

emma’s ipod whined with the kindergarten lyrics of some smooth-faced boy who'd have to snip his dropping nuts if he wanted to keep his singing career. trevor unplugged the pop-shit from the car's stereo and listened instead to the invisible hum of the motor and the distant laughter of a drunken bonfire. it was summer after all. and not quite dark.

though he never got a decent look at THE BOY, trevor could justify his growing hatred with the topiary rosebushes that stood like lollipop guardians at the kid’s front door. THE BOY’S lifestyle was no different than those of the boarding-school brats trevor buddied with in his sole semester of college. THE BOY never worked a day in his pampered life.

they’re all the same, he thought and cracked his knuckles through leather gloves. let him die.

ten to nine. according to julesie's texts, the parents would be gone soon.

*  *  *

when gabe suggested they smoke the hookah to kill time, the pain melted from sarah’s eyes.

his bathroom smelled like lavender and seaweed thanks to the air freshener (refilled weekly by the cleaning crew) and his sandy-soaked clothes draped over the shower rod. he opened two tins of shisha tobacco and let the potent combination of peach and menthol dominate the other odors.

from the bedroom, sarah’s phone buzzed with another text.

“mint is okay?” he asked.

“i’m down for anything.”

gabe pinched the sweaty crumbles into the bowl, then wrapped a square of foil over the rim. “light the coals?” he said.

“i have a better idea.” sarah leaned into the door frame and dangled a teabag from her fingers. “mix this with the shisha.”

the “teabag” was actually a baggie with crumbles of marijuana. “i don’t think that’s a good idea.”

“you have a massive wall of morphing color patterns.”

“yeah, but—”

sarah rolled her eyes and elbowed him away from the prepared bowl of tobacco. she removed the aluminum, sprinkled in the grass, and mixed it up with her finger. “you’re not really supposed to smoke weed from a hookah, so make sure you clean it good in the—” she caught her mistake mid-sentence and carried the bowl silently to the fancy blue pipe on the bedroom floor.

the couple sat indian style between the couch and the projected visualizer. sarah wedged the bowl onto the top of the hookah, then plucked a lighter from the coal tray. “you can’t use foil,” she said. “you need to light the grass directly or you won’t get high.”

gabe nodded. 

(what excites you? what frightens you? what turns you on? i think you’re a romantic, gabriel.)

the concoction sizzled beneath sarah’s flame. she held the hose to her lips and pulled the smoke from the pipe, through the bowl, out the hose, and into her chest. she held it until her eyes drifted, then exhaled a whirling tapestry of exhaust.

she offered the nozzle to gabe. he took it.

(run away from home, get stoned, lose your sentimental outlook on life...)

*  *  *

car headlights cut the darkness in half and trevor winced but didn’t budge. the beams rounded the driveway, flashed across his face, and came to a halt in front of the target’s home. three adults stepped out.

he grabbed his phone from the cup holder and pounded a text to jules. “who the hell is that????”

*  *  *

the phone buzzed with trevor’s hundredth text and snapped jules from her tranquility. she handed the hose back to gabe and read the message.

before she could text back to ask what he was talking about, the doorbell rang downstairs. “who’s that?” asked the growing paranoia.

gabe coughed. “i don’t know.”

“can you stand up and check?”

he dropped the hose and meandered to the window. “looks like somebody’s here.”

jules wondered if trevor saw the pale face and pink eyes of the boy peering out the window. “no kidding,” she said. “WHO?”

gabe chuckled. then laughed. he turned from the window and stumbled back to the hookah.

“something funny?”

“when mom told me they had a party tonight, i didn’t know it was here!”

the thought of trevor’s bottled fury might have frightened her if she wasn’t high. instead, she took another hit of the peach-mint weed and texted him back. “not tonight.”

ten seconds after pressing “send,” jules heard the sound of squealing tires and—maybe her mind was messing with her—fists pounding a steering wheel. “i can’t believe this,” she said.

“we’ll do it sunday. i promise.”

“we were supposed to do it tonight.”

“do you want my parents to walk in and call the police? ‘cause that’s what they’ll do if they see a strange girl handing me pills. they’ll throw us in one of those padded rooms.”

“this is fucked up. i came here for one reason. now i feel like i’m dating you.”

the doorbell rang twelve more times. with each ring, laughter blossomed in semi-pretentious peals up the stairwell and squeezed through the crack at the base of the bedroom door. with each bout of laughter, gabe notched up the volume on the instrumental ramblings of explosions in the sky until the hidden subwoofer rattled the plastic bracelets on jules’ arm. the projector’s beam was a visible cone of light in the hookah’s smoke and the psychedelic chaos of the visualizer kept the girl entranced until the song faded and the shisha charred black.

gabe hit mute but the colors still pumped to the beat of the silent song. “tell me,” he said, “why do you want to do this?”

(if she ignored the question, maybe it would go away.)

“i want to know your darkness,” he continued. “i can see it, but i want to KNOW it. i want to LEARN from it.”

when trevor first presented the rough outline of their scheme, jules wrote a depressing backstory to convince her new “friends” that her sadness was valid. but she never needed it. for the same self-absorbed reasons her targets weren’t interested in sex, they didn’t give a damn about her problems, only that they had company in death.

but here was gabriel, NUMBER EIGHT, asking for validation.

jules stalled. “it’s a depressing story.”

“i wanna hear it, pretty please?”

recalling the details of the dormant lie was like putting a puzzle together under water. “mom died when i was ten,” she said slowly without prying her eyes from the colorful screen. “i live with my dad now. we argue. sometimes he drinks. sometimes i make him mad. i can be a bad daughter.”

“no brothers or sisters?”

“no. my boyfriend cheated on me with a prissy little whore who still wears butterfly barrettes and a promise ring. her name’s samantha but he called her sam.”

“that’s hardly a reason to stop living.”

“i failed every class last semester and i’m supposed to be in summer school. i have learning disabilities and... i just can’t do it. a hundred friends... but they’re all fake.”

“what about the person who keeps texting?”

“...he’s real.”

“oh.”

“i already missed too many classes. if i go home now, dad’ll kill me. might as well save him the trouble.”

“you sound clinically depressed.”

“maybe.”

“you should see a doctor.”

“no insurance. no money.” she looked away tragically then summoned the mother of all suicidal clichés, “i know that if i die, nobody will come to my funeral.”

(jules was aware of the irony; her real life was significantly darker than the textbook backstory of the typical suicidal teen.)

gabe laid on the floor. “i wake up every morning knowing i’m alone—”

“i don’t need to hear this,” she said. “just tell me we can do it soon.”

“...sunday. my parents haven’t missed night-church in years.”

jules didn’t reply, but closed her eyes and leaned her head against the sofa cushion. two more days.

two more days and they would reach their goal. seven days and they'd have a down payment on a two-bedroom house; a sliver of backyard would be plenty if the grass was green. someplace warm. trevor liked the west. she liked the south. maybe sonoma? that’s where they grew grapes for wine.

but only distance mattered; at least a hundred miles would separate her future home from a past that gabe would never know.

*  *  *

midnight. sarah was asleep and the desire to TOUCH had never been stronger. rubbing fingertips along the pleated canvass arm of the couch, gabe craved the goose-bumps on her exposed silk waist.

he examined her make-up. he wanted to lick his finger and rub away a circle of foundation like a porthole to the real sarah. if he could find the girl beneath the mask, he’d tell her not to be sad.

he stood. sarah looked small and sprawled from his hovering vantage; some baroque variation of ALICE collapsed at the bottom of the rabbit hole beside the caterpillar’s bong. john was in the room too, hanging (hanging!) on the post above the fairytale princess. gabe shook his head and pulled his hair to keep that corpse from haunting this unfamiliar state of mind.

walking to his bed was like playing a first-person-shooter game. the walls and floor slid past his peripherals, but he couldn’t feel his own strides. he gathered the covers from the bed and draped them over the sleeping girl. if he could take her pain as his own, he would.

gabe needed to cut this muddle of HIGH if he was going to save the girl. 

he needed a plan.