“My daughter…” She licks her lips, then looks down, looks guilty. The girl is leaning against the Rover, staring at us, chewing on her thumbnail. “My daughter and Via haven’t been getting along. I tried to encourage them to communicate, but the more I pushed them together, the more they seemed to dislike one another. I think I had a letter go missing last week. A letter that could have been…important. I don’t even know why I’m telling you this.” She lets out a breath, shaking her head. “I guess I just…I don’t want to know, you know? I hate the fact that my mind is even going there.”

But maybe it should.

The flashback crashes into my memory.

The paper that hissed in her little fist.

Me taking it from her.

Tearing it apart.

Throwing it into the trash can, watching her face blossom into bliss.

Pouring the lemonade on the remains for good measure when her blue eyes twinkled the request.

Setting my sister’s dreams on fire.

Kicking this entire nightmare into motion.

My jaw flexes, and I take a step back. I throw one last glance at the chick, filing her into memory.

Archive under: Shit List.

Revisit document: When I’m able to ruin her.

“So Via’s not with you?” My voice hardens around the words. Like tin. I’m desperate. I have no lead. I want to rip the world apart to find her, but the world is not mine to destroy. The world just continues turning at the same pace, because kids like Via and me? We disappear all the time, and no one notices.

Mrs. Followhill shakes her head. She hesitates, touching my arm. “Hey, why don’t you come with me? I’ll drop Daria off at home, and we can look for her.”

Daria.

I turn around and stalk toward the bus stop, feeling stupid and hateful and alive. More alive than I’ve ever felt. Because I want to kill Daria. Daria made everything fade into the background the first time I saw her, and while I was busy admiring, everything around us burned.

You look like you could use a friend, I told her. Stupid boyish faith. I mentally throw it onto the ground and stomp on it on my way to the bus as it slides to the curb.

Daria was right. I was pathetic. Stupid. Blinded by her hair and lips and sweet melancholy.

Making a beeline to the bus stop, I hear Mrs. Followhill yelling my name behind me in the distance. She knows my name. She knows me. Us. I don’t know why it disturbs me. I don’t know why I still give a fuck that this girl knows I’m poor.

I hop on the first available bus, not sure where it will take me.

As far away from the girl, but not far enough from myself.

The burn in my chest intensifies, the hole around my heart growing bigger, and my grandmother whispers in the back of my mind.

Skull Eyes.

The night before senior year

I spotted you on those bleachers

You looked adorable

Your heart cracking for a guy

Who would love to smash a foot in it and crush it into pieces

Almost Eighteen.

The snake pit is crowded tonight.

It always is when Vaughn fights, and Vaughn always fights. He breaks noses almost as well as he breaks hearts. Breaking hearts, in case you’re wondering, is his second-favorite art. At least six girls have moved to different private schools just to run away from the misery of seeing him gliding through the hallways since he got into All Saints High. He has three more years here, and parents across town are locking their daughters up and shaking with fear.

Every popular guy at All Saints High and our rival school, Las Juntas, in San Diego fights at the snake pit as a rite of passage. This is not my usual scene, but Blythe, Alisha, and Esme dragged me here on the night before school starts. They’re avid Vaughn observers. The jerk spent summer vacation in a studio in Italy sculpting and returned two days ago, so now they need their fix of his beautiful, listless face.

The truth is, Vaughn is too cruel to fall in love, in lust, or even in like. This, however, is a lesson they’ll learn the hard way. I’ll have plenty of fun watching even though I’ll do the whole OMG-sweetie-he-is-so-not-worth-it act.

Side note? He totally is.

“How can someone so violent create such delicate art? He is fuckable to a fault.” Blythe munches on her Little Mermaid red hair as she stares down at Vaughn, who is pacing back and forth on the field, his tattered black clothes clinging to his lean muscles.

Legend claims the snake pit, a deserted football field on the outskirts of San Diego, got its name after a snake plague caused it to be abandoned. The faded, chipped blue bleachers are where the guys are slumped drinking beer. We, the girls, sit with our legs crossed, sipping expensive wine from the bottle and vaping. The Las Juntas crowd sits on the bleachers opposite of us. They don’t wear Swiss brands and drive German cars. They pass half-empty bottles of tequila and rolled-up cigarettes.