Read an Excerpt
Excerpt from Chapter One
The first thing I heard was a door banging in the wind. It spooked me because I didn't even know there was a house here among the trees, this far out of town. Slow down, heart, I thought. Darina girl, get a grip! But back then a falling leaf would have spooked me. It was two days after Phoenix had died.
So the door banged and my heart thumped, and I was looking for something on that hill, I don't know what. I walked to the top and looked over the ridge and there it was-an old log-built, falling-down house with a porch, a big old barn, and one of those round water tanks on stilts, all rusty and decrepit. So was the truck parked at the front of the deserted house, with its fenders falling off and the roof caved in, and yellow grass growing knee-high around the porch.
It was the door of the barn that banged shut. Open-shut, open-shut, whenever the wind grabbed hold.
I guess most people would have walked away.
Not me. As I said before, I was lost and looking for answers to big questions about love, loss, and the meaning of life. Darina on a mission, you might say. Like, how come four of my classmates at Ellerton High had died in the space of a year? Jonas, Arizona, Summer, and now Phoenix. I mean, how weird and tragic was that? It scared the hell out of everyone, I can tell you.
But the last one-Phoenix-broke my heart. I was in love with the guy, mostly from a distance. Then for two blissful months we were dating. My flower tribute to him, placed on the spot where he got stabbed, was pathetic. It read, "I'll miss you forever, with all my love, Darina" and didn't even scratch the surface of the way I felt.
So I was going to stop that barn door banging then take a look around the ghost house. I wanted to get inside, see how the people had lived-what plates they had put on their table, what chairs they had sat on.
But first the barn. The door was huge and held together by a hundred rusty nails. The inside was dark. I could see old horse halters hanging from hooks, a pair of dusty leather chaps, some cobwebby rakes, and brushes.
And a whole bunch of people standing in a circle, chanting a rhyme at a guy standing in the center. I didn't believe my eyes when I first saw him, but that guy was Phoenix, stripped to the waist as true as I stood there. Phoenix who had died from a knife wound between his shoulder blades. The knife had plunged through a major artery and he'd bled to death. An older guy, with gray hair, stepped into the center of the circle and placed his arms on my dead boyfriend's shoulders.
"Welcome to our world," he said.
