Chapter 6
chapter
six
SHAY
Three weeks before the graveyard.
Good girl.
It felt like I was trying to hide a heart under my floorboard. Good girl beat loud and thunderous from my phone.
I should have reported him or called the police. I definitely should have at least blocked him. Instead, as I waited in line at my favorite tea shop before work, I sent a message.
Give me one reason I shouldn’t call the police right now.
Void responded instantly.
You should call the police.
Do you do this a lot? Stalk your matches?
No.
So…why me?
Three dots appeared, then disappeared. I chewed my thumbnail, trying not to think about those three stupid dots. What was wrong with me? Was I really hot for praise from a stranger who’d hacked me? From some dangerous lunatic?
Graham was right. I was fucking broken.
Delete your account.
A reckless fire ignited in my body.
Or what?
Don’t want to scare you, Maniac.
I bit my lip, stifling a laugh.
What could scare me more than you hacking into my account?
A lot.
Like?
I was responding too quickly. Too eager.
Like what I’ll do to you if you don’t listen like a good fucking girl and delete your account.
“Morally Gray?” A barista called out my order, tearing my attention to the present.
“Me,” I said, stepping up and grabbing my drink. Tropes was a local bookstore and café that sold romance novels, and whose drinks were always some kind of romance pun. Like my tea of choice, a London fog, was a Morally Gray.
You hacked this account. I’m sure you can hack my dating profile and delete it for me.
Nice try, little Maniac. If I do it for you, it doesn’t count.
I took my steaming tea out into the brittle early-morning air. It wafted floral and rich into my nose. Most people would say this was the worst time to be in Utah. Smog choked the air. No snow covered the naked trees. What little snow we did get quickly turned dirty and gray by cars.
But I didn’t see that.
I saw the sun rise behind the cragged mountains, a melting sherbet of pinks, oranges, and purples.
At work, I attempted to distract myself with answering the unanswerable.
And it almost worked. This was always where I could lose myself.
When I was sick and feeling alone, when I had to spend my day getting poked and prodded at the doctor and my evenings making up for the schoolwork I’d missed, I turned to the scale and mystery of the universe for comfort.
And it almost worked.
After work, I paused before my car and took a quick selfie with the sunset as my background, and posted it.
Then I put my phone away.
That was normal. People shared selfies all the time. It didn’t matter that the last time I posted, I was wearing a “Just Voted” sticker and talking about our (hopefully) future female president.
My hands itched. I didn’t even make it all the way home before pulling my phone back out at a red light.
Eames, Lithie, and Olly had liked it. The few people who followed me, from my work or old college classes, had watched it.
I scanned the list, and my breath caught when I saw the person at the bottom.
A man in a black skull mask.
That continued into the week. I took a selfie in front of my favorite bookstore, or posted a photo of my current read, and I told myself it wasn’t for anyone. But I felt an electric jolt every time that black mask appeared.
“You’ve been posting regularly,” Olly said when I got into work on Wednesday. “Did hell freeze over?”
“I thought you were hacked at first,” Eames said.
I released a somewhat stilted laugh.
Hacked.
On Thursday, I woke up feeling heavy limbed. I knew if I pushed it, I’d get a weeklong flare-up. So I called in sick. Which meant I had all day to lie in bed and think about Void. I hadn’t taken a selfie today, because, well…sick in bed.
If he knew you were sick, he wouldn’t want to keep talking to you—
I opened my photos and picked an older, though still recent, photo of me taking a selfie outside of work. Then I posted.
Void didn’t know me, and the odds of us ever meeting were slim to none.
I could be whoever I wanted.
I could be healthy.
On Friday it was my turn to get the group lunch, and I picked out a new seed-oil-free Mexican place. Saturday we hosted book club and argued about whom the heroine should have ended up with.
“Hey, so, not everyone needs to end up with the dark-haired shadow daddy,” Olly said.
“Oh my god,” Lithie said. “It has nothing to do with his hair color and everything to do with the fact that he cheated on the heroine and there was no groveling.”
“They weren’t even together—”
“This is why I suggested we add love triangles to our list of banned tropes,” Eames interrupted. “Because you two cannot fucking handle them. We barely recovered from Hunger Games Gate.”
“The fact that you’d be anything other than Team Peeta suggests a serious lack of critical thinking,” my sister mumbled.
“Right, because being Team Jacob is the hallmark of good decision-making,” Olly said.
While Eames tried to convince everyone we replace love triangles with “why choose,” I picked up the book and took a selfie. Then chewed the skin of my thumb, waiting to see who watched my story.
Like clockwork, Void popped up.
Thanks for the rec.
Void sent a picture of him holding the book. I had a half second to register that he somehow already had it, because the photo was on a vanishing timer.
I drank in everything I could find.
His hands were gloved, his face masked, the background blurred. A small sliver of skin showed where his neck met the mask—tanned. Golden. A faint soft, white powder dusted the side of his neck.
Then it vanished, just as Void sent another.
Keep wondering which chapter is your favorite.
I chewed on my bottom lip and stared at the words until they blurred into a mess of pixels. What was wrong with me? Call the police. Delete this. Do anything else. I’d received enough safety warnings from my mother and college orientation to know I’d blown past red flag and straight into danger.
I knew what I wanted. I wanted to be chased. To be made to submit.
But it was hard to say it aloud, because whenever I told Graham what I wanted, it was like he went out of his way to do the opposite.
So I just said:
Chapter 11.
It was probably the hottest dubious consent scene I’d ever read.
A distant part of me screamed I was playing with fire. But I’d always had to be so good. I had to eat the right food or I’d get sick. I never partied, because it would make me sicker. I was always on my best fucking behavior. And what did I get?
A chronic illness and an ex-fiancé.
Maybe I wanted to be bad for a minute. Or, at least, not worry about being good.
It took Void uncharacteristically long to respond.
What do you like about it? Be specific, Maniac.
I chewed my lip. It wasn’t just that he chased her through a graveyard, it was that he knew exactly the right buttons to push to make her submit. I like that he knew her more than she knew herself.
I started typing it out, then stopped.
I was feeling weird. Wired. The only time I’d ever felt like this was when I’d had my worst insomnia streak and I was awake for three days in a row. My limbs buzzed. My gut in a knot. Heart racing.
So instead of responding, I sent a different question.
Do you plan on asking me out, or are you just going to keep stalking me?
Three dots lit up my screen, and then he responded.
Keep stalking.
I should shut the app. Delete it. Vote with Eames on why choose—because, really, Lithie and Olly were the worst with love triangles. Instead, I responded.
So you’ll stalk my stories but you won’t date me?
Yep. Stalker, remember.
I was hoping you might be the kind of stalker who likes to climb through windows.
I moved my mouth around, trying to suppress a smile—something was seriously wrong with me—when Void sent another message.
What is so out of control in your life that you need someone to take it from you?
I blinked. My heartbeat pounded. The room blurred. That was not some teasing, flirty response. It was surgical. Cutting right to the marrow of me.
Who said anything is out of control?
I lied.
Lying is not the game, Maniac. You answer my questions, and I’ll decide when you’re ready. When you stop answering, I’ll know you’re not.
The room narrowed into a pinprick. Suddenly I was back in my high school bedroom, missing school for the tenth day in a row, and being forced to quit the debate team because I couldn’t reliably commit.
Nothing in my life was in my control, but if I wasn’t in control of every little thing, I got sick. And even when I was in control, I still got sick.
This suddenly felt way too real.
I just want you to know I don’t plan on meeting you either.
Three dots, then,
Okay.
I worked my mouth.
I don’t do that. I don’t meet strangers. I especially don’t meet them when they’ve hacked my account.
Three dots.
Okay.
Stop saying okay.
Three dots.
Why are you talking to me, Shay?
I swallowed, goose bumps rising at him using my name.
“Shay?” My sister’s voice pulled me back into reality.
“Huh?” I blinked, looking up from my phone. All three looked at me, waiting. “What?” I asked.
Olly cocked her head to the side. “What are you doing?”
“Oh.” I placed my phone down. “Checking on the delivery.”