You Only Die Twice (Rom-com Thrill Rides #2)

Chapter 1

Alice

It took five seconds of staring into her empty parking space for Alice Thornton to compute that her car had been stolen. It took another five seconds to locate it. Ten seconds for an averagely shitty day to level up into an extraordinarily shitty day.

Technically, she decided, it wasn’t stolen. It was wedged. Hood to trunk between the Montrose High Memorial Library and the science lab. Not an inch of room at either end.

Couldn’t have been driven there, not without the wheels turning sideways.

Had to have been … carried? How many high school seniors did it take to carry a small car from the faculty parking lot—she mentally judged the distance (two hundred feet?)—to a concrete strip twelve feet across?

They had to have measured it and figured out where it would just fit. Shitheads.

And now there wasn’t a student in sight, which meant they had to be secretly filming her reaction, probably live on social media.

Breathe. If she was doomed to go viral, better it be as the teacher who maintained Zen-like levels of chill upon discovering her mint-green hatchback stuck between two buildings than as the teacher who lost her shit, even if, in fact, she was losing her shit.

She closed her eyes and inhaled through her nose: freshly cut grass, burnt metal and dusty wood chips from the workshop, the tang of internalized rage.

For now, it was satisfaction enough just to imagine taking a sledgehammer to the science lab and then driving tank-like over the rubble as students dove from her path, the lab exploding into a fireball behind her car.

One day she might even appreciate the ingenuity—a step up on last year’s seniors, who’d covered the principal’s Prius in foil.

Today, damn it to hell, she needed a double espresso from Main Street before her afternoon classes.

She pocketed her keys, spun, and forced herself into a casual stroll toward the English department, head high, chin level.

Would this qualify for emergency roadside assistance?

Best-case scenario was to get the car quietly returned to its allotted space during senior assembly in seventh period, drive off after school as if nothing had happened, and never mention it.

This time in sixteen days, she and her car would be on vacation, and the pranksters would be spending their summers packing her groceries.

Survive the day. That’s all you need to do. That’s all you ever need to do.

Not that Thorntons had ever been good at that.

Alice was half a step from the door when a girl called out from behind her. “Ms. Thornton?” Alice locked an unconcerned smile into position and swiveled. A tall kid she didn’t recognize held out several stapled sheets of paper. A new student? Strange time of year for a transfer.

“What’s this?” Alice said, taking the papers.

“Complaint Form,” the girl said, pointing at the top page. She leaned forward and flipped it. “Summons.” Flip. “Affidavit of Service.” She flicked back to the top page and double-tapped the paper with purple fingernails painted with skulls. “All here.”

“Is this for a paper? Did you want the civics teacher, because she’s—”

“Is her name also Alice Thornton?” The girl pointed to a typewritten name on the front page. ALICE THORNTON—DEFENDANT.

Frowning, Alice speed-read the first paragraph—some lawyer she’d never heard of representing some guy she’d never heard of, claiming her book had defamed him, announcing he was pursuing legal remedies, and demanding she “cease-and-desist” from selling further copies.

Another prank, obviously, though it looked and sounded remarkably legit.

She shook her head and shoved the papers at the girl, who held up her palms in a no-takebacks gesture.

“Truly impressive,” Alice said. “But you’re too late—you guys already got me with the car.”

“You’ve already been served? Who by?”

“Nice work, seriously. Authentic. Inventive. But one prank per teacher per student body per day is sufficient. Come back tomorrow.”

The girl jammed a hand on her hip, skewing her blond head and ponytail to one side, so she resembled a question mark. “Legally, it doesn’t matter if you believe me, but I’m gonna need you to sign the affidavit to confirm receipt.” She pulled a pen from a side pocket of her pink backpack.

“This is so close to being plausible, but you’ve overlooked a key thing. My book can’t defame anyone. It’s fiction. I wrote it at my kitchen table with a friend, over cups of coffee and blocks of chocolate.”

The girl shrugged and pushed a backpack strap up her shoulder.

“You know, a novel?” Alice tried. The girl’s face remained blank. “A spy thriller? Russian agents, CIA moles, dead drops, black ops, Moscow Rules, vodka… Entirely made up.”

“Don’t look at me—I don’t write the letters. I don’t even read them.”

The girl held out the pen. It had a fluffy white tail. Alice stared at it, blinking. Still no other students in the vicinity. Where was the video camera—on the girl’s bag?

This couldn’t be … real.

Could it?

“I’m … not … signing anything until I talk to my lawyer,” Alice said, feeling silly. Was she giving the pranksters the reaction they wanted? Her lawyer probably hadn’t dealt with anything trickier than wills and estates in three decades—and Lord knew Alice’s family kept the woman busy with those.

“Whatevs. Smile.” The girl held a phone up and snapped a selfie.

Alice caught a glimpse of herself on the screen, a pale stunned trout next to the girl’s wide grin and tanned face.

“Or not,” the girl said, checking the photo and pocketing the phone.

“I don’t have your writer friend on my list, but maybe she’s getting hers later. ”

“She died.”

“Oh, cool. That’ll be why.”

“Do you even go to school here?”

“You’re really not keeping up, are you, ma’am?”

“How did you get let onto campus?”

“Baby face like this?” The girl—woman?—shrugged again and walked away with a backward wave of the skull-tipped fingers. “Have a nice day!”

So much for the school’s “enhanced security measures.” Come to think of it, where were the extra security guards when Alice’s car was being forcibly valet-parked?

Alice studied the top page of the document as her footsteps echoed along the corridor.

She unlocked her classroom door and backed in, pushing it open with her butt.

Thick, textured bond paper. The letterhead of a D.C.

law firm she might have heard of, though any three surnames strung together sounded like a law firm.

The language looked authentic, but what would she know?

She dumped her keys and purse next to her laptop, dropped onto her chair and slapped the document onto her desk.

“Shit,” she said. Even if it was genuine, it was clearly toothless. But would she need a lawyer to make it go away? A single consultation would cost ten times the ebook royalties she’d earned.

Survive the day. She took a deep breath, and gagged.

What was that smell? Rotting garbage? Swallowing hard, she wheeled her chair to the side of the desk.

Nothing in the trash can but paper, and the room had smelled fine when she’d left it.

Well, “fine” was a relative term for a room inhabited by twenty-five teenagers in June, but it hadn’t been this bad. Another prank?

“Bad news?”

Alice yelped and leaped to her feet. A man was sitting on the sofa in the reading corner, leaning forward, hands clasped, eyes locked on hers.

Definitely not a student. Big and built, unshaven, wearing fluorescent orange coveralls.

A garbage collector? She grabbed her blue plastic-handled scissors from her desk and jabbed them in his direction.

“Who are you?” She’d locked the windows and both doors before she’d left—she’d checked twice.

Was he one of the strangers who’d been reported lurking around the school?

“Just a curious reader.” He held up a phone. A familiar book cover filled the screen, open in an e-reader app: Names Have Been Changed by Annika Vasnetsova and Alice Thornton.

“How did you get let in?”

“Smelling like this? Who was going to question—” He stood and went to wipe his hands on his thighs.

He stopped just short, wrinkling his nose and staring down at the coveralls as if he’d just discovered he was wearing them.

“‘How did you get let in?’” he repeated slowly, lifting his gaze.

“You emphasized the ‘you.’ Who else has been here?”

“Outside, just now,” she said, pointing like he wouldn’t know where outside was. “I got … served, I guess. So if that’s what you’re here for, you’re too late.”

He laughed, abrupt and humorless. “You got served. I’m shocked.” He strolled toward her, scanning the basketball court outside the windows. “Defamation? Dissemination of state secrets?”

She raised the scissors to eye height—his, not hers. They shook. They barely cut paper, and he had to be six-three and broad with it. She glanced at her purse. Her cell phone was buried somewhere inside. “Who are you?” she repeated.

“You don’t recognize me?” He stopped at the front row of desks and perched on one, tapping his phone screen. He swiped ahead a few pages in the novel and started reading aloud, stretching his legs in front of him and crossing his ankles above filthy work boots: