Chapter One
Jules and Quinn didn’t know that today would be an anniversary they will never celebrate.
“You’re going to the concert?” Quinn asks.
“Why do you say it like that?” Jules replies.
“I don’t know. You just don’t seem like you—”
“I’m into grunge music,” Jules interrupts. “What, because I don’t wear flannel when it’s ass-hot outside and actually comb my hair and am not, like, ‘intellectual,’ I can’t go see one of your precious bands?”
“Shhhh.” The study hall monitor hisses in their direction. The stern woman patrols the cafeteria like she’s making rounds in the mess hall of a penitentiary, not a high school.
Jules narrows her eyes at Quinn. She’s not sure why she cares what he thinks.
If she’s honest, she shouldn’t be talking to Quinn Riley.
Her friends would not approve. But somehow she’s started looking forward to the one hour of forced confinement together in eleventh-grade study hall every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.
“You don’t have to be mean about it,” Quinn says softly, like he’s withholding a smile.
“Are you going?” she asks.
“To the concert?”
“No, to the circus.”
For someone who seems surprisingly smart—always with his nose in a book, scribbling something in a journal—Quinn can be slow on the uptake.
“No. I need to watch my little brother tonight.”
“On a Friday night?”
He nods. Turns back to the paperback he’s creased and is holding in one hand.
Jules has seen him with his brother. At Godfather’s Pizza after the game that one time.
Jules was with her group, the football players and pom-squadders and pastel-wearing popular kids.
Her boyfriend Brad called Quinn’s family “The Fritos,” since his mom works at the potato chip factory.
Called Quinn’s brother a freak. She remembers the encounter mostly because she noticed how kind Quinn was to his brother.
The kid wore oversized headphones, like to block out noise, and tilted his head funny.
She remembers Quinn’s mom looking tired.
Old but pretty. One of Brad’s friends said, “With those tits she should be riding a pole not making potato chips,” and the guys all laughed.
“Whatcha reading?” she asks in a singsong voice, purposefully needling him.
Quinn raises his eyes to hers. If she didn’t spend three hours a week bantering with him she might be intimidated by the glower. The smoldering eyes under the wisps of his unruly dark hair. The lips that she sometimes imagines touching hers.
“It’s called A Separate Peace,” he whispers.
“What’s it about?”
“It’s about a guy who just wants some peace while he’s reading during study hall.”
Hmph.
He shakes his head, relents. “It’s about two friends at a boarding school during World War II. Rich-kid struggles. You might relate.”
“You don’t have to be a dick.”
He looks at her for a moment, like he sees right through her. “Sorry, you’re right.”
He’s sincere. When’s the last time Brad said Sorry, you’re right?
“The book sounds…”
“Boring?”
“I just thought maybe you’d be interested in something with, like, serial killers or…” She lets the sentence die.
Serial killers who eat people are all the rage.
The movie with Hannibal the Cannibal and that real-life monster, Dahmer.
Plus, Nebraska’s very own psychopath who they still haven’t caught, though he’s not a cannibal.
The one local newscasters call the May Day Killer, with a glint in their eyes.
He strikes on May 1st—five girls all around Nebraska over the past five years, all on May Day—so everybody is freaked out today.
Quinn exhales loudly like he’s disappointed in her. Or maybe disappointed in what she thinks of him. And she likes the idea that he might care about her opinion.
“No serial killers. But the concert tonight … The opening song on their album—‘Once’—it’s about a man who’s losing it and goes on a killing spree.
” Quinn digs into his backpack, retrieves a beat-up Walkman, opens it, and hands her the cassette.
“The third song. At least listen before you go tonight.”
Jules examines the cassette, a Memorex with a blank label. “Ah, how sweet, you made me a mixtape,” she says in an exaggerated sweet tone. “A love letter in song.”
“I didn’t make it for—” Quinn stops, shakes his head, annoyed.
Jules grins. Despite what she said, she isn’t really into grunge, has no clue about tonight’s band or any other gloomy plaid-wearing group. She liked music better when it was fun—in junior high with those guys with big hair who sang about having nothin’ but a good time.
The bell rings and Quinn shoves his book into his backpack and disappears into the crowd without saying a word.
“Bye,” she calls after him, her tone chiding his rudeness. Serial killers have better manners.
Quinn pushes through the bodies in the narrow hallway. He holds his head up high, ready for a shoulder bump or someone snickering, calling him Frito or Cheeto or Dorito. None of those nicknames make sense since they’re not even potato chips. But whatever.
Jules at least pretends she hasn’t heard the names.
He appreciates that. She’s not a bad person, Jules Delaney.
She’s just a victim of circumstance. So pretty—no, pretty isn’t an adequate word—so beautiful that she can’t help but be a little full of herself.
Who wouldn’t be? People stop whatever they’re doing and gawk when Jules Delaney struts by.
And she’s surrounded by followers feeding on the table scraps of her popularity.
Quinn wonders sometimes what that’s like, being popular.
Homecoming royalty courts, parties, admirers.
He pretends those things are stupid, that they’re beneath him, but he knows the truth.
He just needs to get through the month, then the summer, then his senior year. Keep up his grades for a scholarship and go far, far away where people at college don’t know him as Frito, don’t know he has no real friends, don’t know he lives in a shack on the shitty side of Monarch, Nebraska.
He feels a lump in his throat. Truth is, his brother needs him here, and Quinn knows he won’t get much farther than that potato chip factory.
College, a new life … it’s a fairy tale. A story.
Once upon a time.