Roses & Ruin

Prologue

I think someone is watching me.

I see no one, but I swear I can feel it, some invisible itch on my bare throat and arms, coming from the other side of the road.

I’ve only been walking for about five minutes. I can still hear the party, that amniotic blend of bass, beats, and laughter. I can turn around, go back. I don’t have to be out here in the pitch black, all alone.

Except tonight, during my first—and probably last—high school party, I discovered that I can be crushed on all sides by every sweaty kid in twelfth grade and somehow, somehow feel more alone than I do in the middle of a dark, empty street at eleven thirty on a Saturday night.

I scurry down the left side of the road. There are no sidewalks, so I figure it’s the safest place to be, visible to oncoming cars, able to dodge off the road if necessary.

I walk quickly from each small circle of streetlight to the next. The feeling of being watched only gets worse. There’s a soft rustling of leaves from the dark.

“Just the wind,” I say out loud. But I’m passing an overgrown shrub of coyote brush, and the leaves are very still. There is no wind.

I start to run.

I round a curve in the road, and the silhouette of the Willow Flat Bridge takes shape ahead in the darkness. My throat and lungs burn, sweat stings my eyes, and my arms are pumping as I run. There is no sidewalk on the Willow Flat Bridge either, but it is the shortest way home.

The road has begun a slow incline when someone shouts at me from the dark.

“Get back here!”

I freeze. Icy dread spreads through my veins. The voice shouts again.

“Come here right now.”

I turn to see a hulking shadow taking shape…and then a smaller, quicker shape appears, dancing around the feet of the first. I hear panting and the jingling sound of clinking metal.

A large, stooping man with a tangled beard is wrestling a fat, happy-looking beagle into his collar. On the ground beside him is a fishing pole.

Oh my god. I want to faint with relief. You’re not supposed to fish in the Willow Flat River, so people like to do it at night. I let out a harsh breath, and the fisherman squints my way. I’m so relieved, I actually smile at him.

I see it on the fisherman’s face first. He glances over my shoulder, and his eyes get buggy and huge. He points behind me and screams nonsense.

“It’s—look—gonna— Move, goddammit!”

I only have time to turn my head once before it’s there, right in my face: an enormous truck careening toward me, headlights blinding.

There’s no time to scream, to dodge, to take a breath.

No time for anything but dying.

A terrible force slams into my side. All the air squeezes from my lungs, and I feel a whirling, tumbling sensation, like I’m bouncing and rolling. I cannot breathe and everything is black, so I am sure that it’s happened, that I’ve been hit by the truck and I’m dead.

But why did it hit me from the wrong angle? And why are my lungs on fire? My eyes fly open. I’m on my back, staring up at the full moon and twinkling starry sky. I fight to suck in air, but my body is not obeying. Dimly, I realize I’m clawing at my throat.

Something strong and cold wraps around my wrist, pulling my hand off my neck. A shadow appears above me.

“You just got the wind knocked out of you. Relax.” The voice is a low, furious rumble, and it sinks straight into my bones. I immediately go still. Half a second later, I’m able to breathe again.

The moment sweet, delicious oxygen floods my body, the shadow takes shape, turns into the face of a boy who cannot be much older than me, if at all. No one on earth has ever been as beautiful as this boy.

His thick black hair hangs over dark, furrowed brows, his cheekbones and jawline sharp and cut.

His eyes are an impossible deep blue with purple shards.

The only things soft about him are his lips, his bottom one surprisingly plush.

Everything about him is symmetrical and chiseled, as if he were painstakingly measured and sculpted over one thousand years.

It hits me all at once: the bridge, the truck, my death—

“You saved me,” I breathe. I raise myself on my elbows. Instantly, silently, impossibly, the boy retreats into shadow. I sit up all the way. “Wait,” I say. “Wait,” I repeat, louder. But he’s disappeared.

The fisherman appears above me, pale and sweaty. “You just keep holdin’ on, an ambulance is on the way,” he shouts. “Driver fell asleep, swore he drank three Red Bulls.”

Before I know it, I’m swarmed by paramedics and policemen. They pepper me with questions as they kneel beside me and check my vitals, but I’m still staring into the shadows where the boy disappeared.

“Don’t let him leave,” I keep saying. “You can catch him still, maybe.”

“Who?” A policeman squats beside me.

“That boy, the boy who saved me,” I cry, pointing at the inky black where he disappeared. Two EMTs swap looks.

“Darlin’,” the fisherman says, “I saw the whole thing. There’s been no one here but you, me, and the dog this entire time.”