‘‘I was born in the Black Country and have lived there most of my life. I’ve always felt that it, and the texture of its part-industrial, part-rural landscape provokes a unique sensation of place, and I try to emulate that in my writing. In God’s Country, the Black Country doesn’t just operate as background scenery, but as a resonant, ever-present figure, and my characters have to deal with that’ – KERRY HADLEY-PRYCE
Kerry Hadley-Pryce has become synonymous with menacing fiction from the Black Country. In this delicious tale a funeral provides the impetus for a claustrophobic narrative packed with threat and paranoia. Guy Flood returns to the Black Country with his girlfriend, Alison, to attend his identical twin brother’s funeral. The reasons he left, and the secrets he left behind, slowly become clear. A chilling dark fiction, dominated by unknown and all-seeing narrator.
KERRY HADLEY-PRYCE was born in the Black Country. She worked nights in a Wolverhampton petrol station before becoming a secondary school teacher. She wrote her first novel, The Black Country, whilst studying for an MA in Creative Writing at the Manchester Writing School. She is currently a PhD student at Manchester Metropolitan University, researching Psychogeography and Black Country Writing. God’s Country is her third novel She lives in Stourbridge and tweets @Kerry2001
My thoughts: this is a strange and woozy novel, written in the second person, making it hard to fully understand the characters and relate to them, at a remove. Having returned to his family’s farm for his twin brother’s funeral, Guy is truculent and remote. His girlfriend Alison isn’t sure what to expect as Guy doesn’t speak about where he comes from, he’s changed his accent, and she’s surprised at how he reacts to his relatives.
There’s secrets and old resentments boiling away as the family gather, Guy’s father is gruff, bordering on hostile and his sister seems to be mentally elsewhere. Alison feels awkward and unwelcome as father and son circle one another.
She’s trying to find out why Guy left, why his relationships turned so sour but he’s shutting her out, and in the remote farm, there’s little relief to be had. Soon it all comes to the surface, none of it pretty.
Written in the distinctive Black Country dialect, Alison is an outsider who can’t always understand what’s being said, who doesn’t understand the ripples between the family, much like the reader, she’s kept at bay. An unsettling and unusual read.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
It would be unfair to blame the woman I met tonight for turning my life upside down. She didn’t.
It was already upside down. I just didn’t know it.
Recently life has been good for Mallory Hansen: a great job, a lovely home, and a wonderful man, Nathan, to share it with.
But now she must ask herself: is it all built on lies?
A shocking accusation has been made against Nathan, and Mallory doesn’t know who to believe. He denies everything, but all the signs point to his guilt. She has learned to trust Nathan, but she also remembers the boy he used to be.
As teenagers, Mallory and Nathan were part of a close-knit group of six friends until a vicious argument drove them apart. Now, fifteen years later, they are back in touch – only to find themselves drawn into a web of mutual distrust, one by one…
The attacks on their lives are skilfully targeted, designed to hit them where they hurt the most, and when a young woman disappears and a baby is abducted, DCI Tom Douglas must try to unravel the past and discover who is the architect of their misery.
A DCI Tom Douglas Thriller
My thoughts: the author kindly sent me a copy of her new book to review and as it’s just been published, here are my thoughts!
I really enjoyed this book, the complicated, tangled mess of the past, six former friends who don’t really see each other any more, a night fifteen years ago that they’ve mostly forgotten and a series of horrific, shocking crimes that bring them back together.
DCI Douglas and his team have to untangle this mess and try to find out why anyone would do this to a group of people – allegations of sexual assault, kidnap, murder, rape. Some of the most heinous crimes and people who cannot understand why they’re the targets.
I only caught on right towards the end, when a few things had started not to add up, pretty much when the police started to pull apart the coincidences and careful building of false evidence and identities. It takes skill to build such a clever story and it had me totally hooked. Who was behind it all? What did a cuddly badger have to do with it? Why was someone so angry so many years later? Well, you’ll have to read it to find out!
A lonely recluse. A missing girl and a community in fear. When the body of a young local girl is found next to an isolated lake, the main suspect is the old recluse who has lived next to the lake for many years – especially when the young girl’s purse is found on the old man’s doorstep. But DCI Emma Gardner and her partner DI Paul Riddick aren’t so sure. Why would the old hermit leave such an obvious clue? And who would want to set the old man up? As they dig deeper into the murder they discover a community in fear, determined to keep hold of long buried secrets. And Riddick is convinced that his own dark past is somehow linked to this crime, too. Gardner fears that she may never get the answers she needs, until a break leads her down a path she’d rather not face. One that runs directly to her own front door… Purchase
Wes Markin is the bestselling author of the DCI Yorke crime novels, set in Salisbury. His new series for Boldwood stars the pragmatic detective DCI Emma Gardner who will be tackling the criminals of North Yorkshire. Wes lives in Harrogate and the first book in the series The Yorkshire Murders will be published in November 2022.
My thoughts: this was a dark and twisting crime thriller, set in North Yorkshire, where long buried secrets threaten to come to light and some will go to great lengths to hide them. Where a murder has the oldest of motives but the clues seem to point in different directions and the detectives are distracted by issues in their personal lives, so it takes a little bit longer to solve.
The body of a young woman, Tia Meadows, is found by the home of a reclusive older man. He knew her father a long time ago, and at first glance all evidence points to him. But digging into the case DCI Gardner finds there’s a lot more going on. Has he been set up? Tia’s father, a man who dominates the local building trade, certainly believes the evidence and goes off to get his own justice, while the police investigate the men in Tia’s life. The answers may lie there instead.
Clever, and well paced, this is a gripping and suspenseful read. As the police work through the suspects and possible motives, their personal lives intrude and distract them, leading to tragedy, before they get back on track. A solid and knotty plot, highly enjoyable.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
Publishing today from Penguin is The Chase, a thrilling new book from Ava Glass, I can share with you the book trailer and the news that’s it’s going to be a TV series, made by the people behind The Night Manager. For more info click here. Review coming soon.
In this breakneck, race-against-the-clock thriller, a female British spy has twelve hours to deliver her asset across London while being pursued through the streets of London by Russian intelligence. Can she make it without being spotted . . . or killed?
A freshly-minted secret agent, Emma Makepeace has barely graduated from basic training when she gets the call for her first major assignment. Eager to serve her country and prove her worth, she dives in head first.
Emma must covertly travel across the world’s most watched city to bring the reluctant adult son of Russian dissidents into protective custody, so long as the assassins from the tracking him down don’t get to him first. With London’s famous Ring of Steel hacked by the Russian government, the two must cross the city without being seen by the hundreds of thousands of CCTV cameras that document every inch of the city’s streets, alleys, and gutters.
The underground, buses, trains and cars, are completely out of the question. Traveling on foot, with no phone or bank cards, Emma and her charge have twelve hours to make it to safety. This will take all of Emma’s skills of disguise and subterfuge. But when Emma’s handler goes dark, there’s no one left to trust. Just one wrong move could get them both killed and the clock is ticking…
A massive new talent in British fiction, Ava Glass’s storytelling is complex and finely crafted, combining twisting plotlines, intelligent dialogue and ambiguous characters, all skilfully brought together in an epic climax. Never before has spy fiction been so nail-bitingly real.
Ava Glass is a former civil servant with the highest security clearance bar one. She has seen just enough of the inner workings of espionage to ensure that she will always be fascinated by spies. This is the first novel in the Alias Emma series.
Sisters Olivia and Clara rehearse with Ninette de Valois at the recently opened Sadler’s Wells. Disciplined and dedicated, Olivia is the perfect ballerina. But no matter how hard she works, she can never match up to identical twin Clara’s charm.
I would kill to be with her.
As rehearsals intensify for the ballet Coppélia, the girls feel increasingly as if they are being watched. And as infatuation threatens to become obsession, the fragile perfection of their lives starts to unravel.
LUCY ASHE trained at the Royal Ballet School for eight years, first as a Junior Associate and then at White Lodge. She has a diploma in dance teaching with the British Ballet Organisation. She decided to go to university to read English Literature at St Hugh’s College, Oxford (MA Oxon), while continuing to dance and perform. She then took a PGCE teaching qualification and became a teacher. She currently teaches English at Harrow School, an all-boys boarding school in North London. Her poetry and short stories have been published in a number of literary journals and she was shortlisted for the 2020 Impress Prize for New Writers. She also reviews theatre, in particular ballet, writing for the website Playstosee.com.
Lucy writes:
‘I have a great love of ballet and am fascinated by its history. I was lucky enough to meet many of the great dancers of the Royal Ballet, even Dame Ninette de Valois when she came to White Lodge to celebrate her 100th birthday. I have performed at the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden and learnt the repertoire for many of the classical ballets.
My novel is closely researched, re-creating the early years of the Vic-Wells company at Sadler’s Wells, and the story is immersed in ballet history featuring characters such as Ninette de Valois, Lydia Lopokova, Constant Lambert, Alicia Markova and Nicholas Sergeyev. Frederick and Dora Freed and their pointe shoe workshop play a key role, as does the history of Sadler’s Wells theatre itself. In a book shop on Cecil Court, I found beautifully preserved theatre programmes from the 1932-33 season at Sadler’s Wells and it was magical to imagine my characters holding those pages.
One major inspiration for me was my twin sister. We spent the first part of our lives doing everything together: first day of school, first ballet class, first piano lesson. We were a unit, referred to simply as the twins, and we had a very special connection. That connection remains even though our lives are so entirely different now. And so, in my novel, I have been inspired by the connectedness and the bond of twins, Olivia and Clara staying so close despite their lives starting to take them in different directions.’
My thoughts: when I was little I wanted to be a ballerina, turns out I have great feet, turnout but the wrong attitude. It didn’t stop me, however, becoming a huge ballet fan. I adore going to see the incredible dancers and of course Sadler’s Wells, the home of British ballet, is a theatre I know well. So this book was very, very much up my street.
Set during the period when British ballet was coming into its own, after being dominated by the French and then the Russians, and featuring some of the greats of the time, this very well researched book takes you right into the heart of Sadler’s Wells and the ballet classes attended by twin dancers Olivia and Clara.
Ballet is a small world at this point, and quite insular, so obsession is perfectly possible and it is obsession – almost mirrored in the production of Coppelia being rehearsed, that we find. Two men, a pianist and a cobbler, in love with the twins, but not in a necessarily healthy way. Then there is the twins’ own obsession with ballet, with their performance, their career. One is a purist, the other wants to be a star. This is post Pavlova, pre Fonteyn (although a very young Margot makes a tiny cameo) and there’s maybe a gap for a star dancer in the company. Could Olivia or Clara fill it?
It’s also, ultimately, a love story. Between the sisters, who share their lives with each other almost to the exclusion of others, and with ballet. One I can definitely appreciate, I may never have become a dancer, but sitting in the audience, watching the incredible performers, the hours of work and the honed, perfect bodies, you can fully see that love and obsession that still draws young dancers to it today. A brilliant, highly enjoyable book.
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
Welcome to The Broken Darkness book tour! Read on for more info about this gorgeous collection and visit one of our instagram hosts for a chance to win a paperback copy of your own!
The Broken Darkness
Publication Date: January 26th, 2023
Genre: Dark Fiction/ Spec Fiction/ Short Story Collection
Publisher: Gorgon Blood Press
In her debut collection, Theresa Braun explores the inner workings of the human heart and what it is we most desire—forgiveness, acceptance, love, fame, or merely to escape who we really are. Whether we are battling ghosts, demons, mythical monsters, the past, or other dimensions, we are really facing the deepest parts of ourselves. These thirteen tales of horror and dark fantasy may appear to be a matter of good versus evil, but they are all a reflection of the hidden corners of the soul that are often shades of broken darkness. The characters in these stories must face their inner and outer terrors, or else suffer the consequences.
Theresa Braun has a Master’s degree in English literature and lives in South Florida where she has taught literature and writing for over 20 years. Traveling, ghost hunting, and all things dark are her passions. In 2018 Unnerving released her horror novel Fountain Dead, a coming of age ghost story. Her short works have appeared in The Horror Zine, Sirens Call, Hardened Hearts, and Best Indie Speculative Fiction: November 2018, Double Barrel Horror (Volume 3) and Emporium of Superstition.
My thoughts: these short stories are sinister and creepy, dark and compelling. From ghosts who keep reliving the moments of their deaths, to haunted places, things that go bump in the night, vampires and other sinister goings on, there’s something for every horror fan here. And of course, there’s exactly 13 tales, fitting perfectly into the theme of the book as a whole. Satisfying chilling.
We’re thrilled to share the first novel in the Heroes of the Empire series, The Cavalier by Israh Azizi! Read on for more details!
Heroes of the Empire: The Cavalier #1
Publication Date: November 22, 2022
Genre: YA Fantasy
She calls the Empire home. He pledges to bring its downfall.
Death is Velamir’s close acquaintance. As a student in the Chishman academy, he cannot escape the brutal war. When he’s sent on a mission with three fellow academy cadets, Velamir returns to the Empire, the land of his birth. Calamity befalls the group as they trek through enemy territory, and Velamir learns a part of his past that makes the mission far more personal. Burdened with the deaths of the unavenged and the chance of losing his own life, Velamir must decide if revenge is worth the cost.
Natassa knows her role well: The silent and obedient girl. The one who looks away from the torture her father, the emperor, inflicts on the Empire’s inhabitants. The princess. But she’s a shackled prisoner, and somewhere under the mask is a spark of rebellion. When she learns of her father’s intention to marry her to a man she loathes, Natassa crafts a risky plan of her own—one dangerous enough to get her killed.
Two searching hearts. Two perilous paths. Velamir must find the courage to face his past and Natassa must find the strength to face herself before the war consumes them both.
Israh Azizi resides in the land of ten thousand lakes with her family and five cats. Since she was a little girl she has been a lover of words and fanciful tales. It was her dream to one day share a story of her own with the world. With sheer determination, lots of love, and a decent amount of caffeine, she managed to make that dream come true. Besides reading and writing, she has a dizzying number of hobbies, some of which include bossing around her younger siblings, experimenting with new baking recipes, and playing board games with her family and close friends. When life’s plot twists don’t cross her path and her fingers aren’t dancing across the keyboard building a fantastical adventure, she can usually be found in a quiet corner with a good book and a steaming cup of coffee.
Nothing is more important than family . . . Matt Forrester has followed in his dad’s footsteps, climbing the police ranks to become a DI. But when he receives an urgent call for help, Matt has to rethink his career. His dad has been murdered, and Matt’s not going to let this case go. It doesn’t help that his current boss is sleeping with his ex-wife. Hermia Forrester didn’t follow her brother into the police force, instead she works in research at the university. But, she’s not going to let that stop her from helping her brother find out what happened to their dad. But the siblings soon find themselves surrounded by more danger than they ever imagined. Can they both survive this case or will there be more of their family in the morgue? The thrilling first instalment in the Forrester Detective Agency Mystery series. Purchase
Anita Waller is the author of many bestselling psychological thrillers and the Kat and Mouse crime series. She lives in Sheffield, which continues to be the setting of many of her thrillers, and was first published by Bloodhound at the age of sixty-nine. Her first book for Boldwood will be published in August 2022.
My thoughts: I can already tell that this is going to a be a corker of a series. This book online sets off at a blistering pace and we’re thrown into a shocking and terrible case. Matt’s father and business partner are brutally attacked and killed by unknown assailants. Was it to do with their past careers as police, their current PI business, or something completely different?
Matt hands in his badge to be able to investigate and when his beloved sister Hermia, is also attacked, he and best friend Steve, as well as his former police partner Karen, step up the case. They will stop at nothing to find the perpetrators and land them where they belong – in prison.
Gripping and totally thrilling, this book rattles along at a fair clip, and what the gang uncover is dark and disturbing but if they can survive and solve the case, will change things forever. And then there’s the small matter of a bit of romance too!
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in the blog tour but all opinions remain my own.
This year’s festival, taking place from 20th-23rd July in Harrogate, will be chaired by multi-award-winning crime writer Vaseem Khan, who has curated a programme featuring some of the biggest and most exciting names in crime fiction and thriller writing. Special guests on this year’s incredible line-up include: festival favourite and author of the much-loved Vera series Ann Cleeves, while festival co-founder Val McDermid will open the 2023 Festival with an unmissable in conversation event, as well as hosting the highly anticipated showcase of the four debut crime writers to watch in the New Blood panel. Two global bestselling thriller writers join forces as Lisa Jewell will introduce her new nail-biting suspense None of This is True with author of The It Girl and In A Dark, Dark WoodRuth Ware; Southern noir author of international hit Razorblade TearsS. A. Cosby and mastermind behind young detective Nell Buchanan Chris Hammer will be in conversation; historian Lucy Worsley will be revealing more about the life of the Queen of Crime and former resident of the Old Swan Hotel, Agatha Christie; crime writing brothers, Lee Child and Andrew Child will discuss collaborating on the iconic Jack Reacher, and Jeffery Deaver, author of the bestselling Lincoln Rhyme series will be returning to the festival to talk about the latest Colter Shaw thriller, Hunting Time.
Want a cheeky sneak peak of Colleen Hoover & Tarryn Fisher’s upcoming book Never Never?
Charlie Wynwood and Silas Nash have been best friends since they could walk. They’ve been in love since the age of fourteen. But as of this morning… they are complete strangers. Their first kiss, their first fight, the moment they fell in love… every memory has vanished. Now Charlie and Silas must work together to uncover the truth about what happened to them and why. But the more they learn about the couple they used to be… the more they question why they were ever together to begin with.
Forgetting is terrifying but remembering may be worse…
The Number One Sunday Times bestselling author of It Ends with Us joins forces with the New York Times bestselling author of The Wives for a gripping, twisty, romantic mystery unlike any other.
1
Charlie
A crash. Books fall to the speckled linoleum floor. They skid a few feet, whirling in circles, and stop near feet. My feet. I don’t recognize the black sandals, or the red toenails, but they move when I tell them to, so they must be mine. Right? A bell rings. Shrill. I jump, my heart racing. My eyes move left to right as I scope out my environment, trying not to give myself away. What kind of bell was that? Where am I? Kids with backpacks walk briskly into the room, talking and laughing. A school bell. They slide into desks, their voices competing in volume. I see movement at my feet and jerk in surprise. Someone is bent over, gathering up books on the floor; a red-faced girl with glasses. Before she stands up, she looks at me with something like fear and then scurries off. People are laughing. When I look around I think they’re laughing at me, but it’s the girl with glasses they’re looking at. “Charlie!” someone calls. “Didn’t you see that?” And then, “Charlie…what’s your problem…hello…?” My heart is beating fast, so fast. Where is this? Why can’t I remember? “Charlie!” someone hisses. I look around. Who is Charlie? Which one is Charlie? There are so many kids; blond hair, ratty hair, brown hair, glasses, no glasses… A man walks in carrying a briefcase. He sets it on the desk. The teacher. I am in a classroom, and that is the teacher. High school or college? I wonder. I stand up suddenly. I’m in the wrong place. Everyone is sitting, but I’m standing…walking. “Where are you going, Miss Wynwood?” The teacher is looking at me over the rim of his glasses as he riffles through a pile of papers. He slaps them down hard on the desk and I jump. I must be Miss Wynwood. “She has cramps!” someone calls out. People snicker. I feel a chill creep up my back and crawl across the tops of my arms. They’re laughing at me, except I don’t know who these people are. I hear a girl’s voice say, “Shut up, Michael.” “I don’t know,” I say, hearing my voice for the first time. It’s too high. I clear my throat and try again. “I don’t know. I’m not supposed to be here.” There is more laughing. I glance around at the posters on the wall, the faces of presidents animated with dates beneath them. History class? High school. The man—the teacher—tilts his head to the side like I’ve said the dumbest thing. “And where else are you supposed to be on test day?” “I… I don’t know.”
“Sit down,” he says. I don’t know where I’d go if I left. I turn around to go back. The girl with the glasses glances up at me as I pass her. She looks away almost as quickly. As soon as I’m sitting, the teacher starts handing out papers. He walks between desks, his voice a flat drone as he tells us what percentage of our final grade the test will be. When he reaches my desk he pauses, a deep crease between his eyebrows. “I don’t know what you’re trying to pull.” He presses the tip of a fat pointer finger on my desk. “Whatever it is, I’m sick of it. One more stunt and I’m sending you to the principal’s office.” He slaps the test down in front of me and moves down the line. I don’t nod, I don’t do anything. I’m trying to decide what to do. Announce to the whole room that I have no idea who and where I am—or pull him aside and tell him quietly. He said no more stunts. My eyes move to the paper in front of me. People are already bent over their tests, pencils scratching. Fourth Period History Mr. Dulcott There is a space for a name. I’m supposed to write my name, but I don’t know what my name is. Miss Wynwood, he called me. Why don’t I recognize my own name? Or where I am? Or what I am? Every head is bent over their papers except mine. So I sit and stare, straight ahead. Mr. Dulcott glares at me from his desk. The longer I sit, the redder his face becomes. Time passes and yet my world has stopped. Eventually, Mr. Dulcott stands up, his mouth open to say something to me when the bell rings. “Put your papers on my desk on the way out,” he says, his eyes still on my face. Everyone is filing out of the door. I stand up and follow them because I don’t know what else to do. I keep my eyes on the floor, but I can feel his rage. I don’t understand why he’s so angry with me. I am in a hallway now, lined on either side by blue lockers. “Charlie!” someone calls. “Charlie, wait up!” A second later, an arm loops through mine. I expect it to be the girl with the glasses; I don’t know why. It’s not. But, I know now that I am Charlie. Charlie Wynwood. “You forgot your bag,” she says, handing over a white backpack. I take it from her, wondering if there’s a wallet with a driver’s license inside. She keeps her arm looped through mine as we walk. She’s shorter than me, with long, dark hair and dewy brown eyes that take up half her face. She is startling and beautiful. “Why were you acting so weird in there?” she asks. “You knocked the shrimp’s books on the floor and then spaced out.” I can smell her perfume; it’s familiar and too sweet, like a million flowers competing for attention. I think of the girl with the glasses, the look on her face as she bent to scoop up her books. If I did that, why don’t I remember? “I—”
“It’s lunch, why are you walking that way?” She pulls me down a different corridor, past more students. They all look at me…little glances. I wonder if they know me, and why I don’t know me. I don’t know why I don’t tell her, tell Mr. Dulcott, grab someone random and tell them that I don’t know who or where I am. By the time I’m seriously entertaining the idea, we’re through a set of double doors in the cafeteria. Noise and color; bodies that all have a unique smell, bright fluorescent lights that make everything look ugly. Oh, God. I clutch at my shirt. The girl on my arm is babbling. Andrew this, Marcy that. She likes Andrew and hates Marcy. I don’t know who either of them is. She corrals me to the food line. We get salad and Diet Cokes. Then we are sliding our trays on a table. There are already people sitting there: four boys, two girls. I realize we are completing a group with even numbers. All the girls are matched with a guy. Everyone looks up at me expectantly, like I’m supposed to say something, do something. The only place left to sit is next to a guy with dark hair. I sit slowly, both hands flat on the table. His eyes dart toward me and then he bends over his tray of food. I can see the finest beads of sweat on his forehead, just below his hairline. “You two are so awkward sometimes,” says a new girl, blonde, across from me. She’s looking from me to the guy I’m sitting next to. He looks up from his macaroni and I realize he’s just moving things around on his plate. He hasn’t taken a bite, despite how busy he looks. He looks at me and I look at him, then we both look back at the blonde girl. “Did something happen that we should know about?” she asks. “No,” we say in unison. He’s my boyfriend. I know by the way they’re treating us. He suddenly smiles at me with his brilliantly white teeth and reaches to put an arm around my shoulders. “We’re all good,” he says, squeezing my arm. I automatically stiffen, but when I see the six sets of eyes on my face, I lean in and play along. It’s frightening not knowing who you are—even more frightening thinking you’ll get it wrong. I’m scared now, really scared. It’s gone too far. If I say something now I’ll look…crazy. His affection seems to make everyone relax. Everyone except…him. They go back to talking, but all the words blend together: football, a party, more football. The guy sitting next to me laughs and joins in with their conversation, his arm never straying from my shoulders. They call him Silas. They call me Charlie. The dark-haired girl with the big eyes is Annika. I forget everyone else’s names in the noise. Lunch is finally over and we all get up. I walk next to Silas, or rather he walks next to me. I have no idea where I’m going. Annika flanks my free side, winding her arms through mine and chatting about cheerleading practice. She’s making me feel claustrophobic. When we reach an annex in the hallway, I lean over and speak to her so only she can hear. “Can you walk me to my next class?” Her face becomes serious. She breaks away to say something to her boyfriend, and then our arms are looped again. I turn to Silas. “Annika is going to walk me to my next class.” “Okay,” he says. He looks relieved. “I’ll see you…later.” He heads off in the opposite direction. Annika turns to me as soon as he’s out of sight. “Where’s he going?”
She stops outside a doorway. “This is me…” I say, to see if she’ll protest. She doesn’t. “Call me later,” she says. “I want to know about last night.” I nod. When she disappears into the sea of faces, I step into the classroom. I don’t know where to sit, so I wander to the back row and slide into a seat by the window. I’m early, so I open my backpack. There’s a wallet wedged between a couple of notebooks and a makeup bag. I pull it out and flip it open to reveal a driver’s license with a picture of a beaming, dark-haired girl. Me. Charlize Margaret Wynwood 2417 Holcourt Way New Orleans, LA
I’m seventeen. My birthday is March twenty-first. I live in Louisiana. I study the picture in the top left corner and I don’t recognize the face. It’s my face, but I’ve never seen it. I’m…pretty. I only have twenty-eight dollars. The seats are filling up. The one beside me stays empty, almost like everyone is too afraid to sit there. I’m in Spanish class. The teacher is pretty and young; her name is Mrs. Cardona. She doesn’t look at me like she hates me, like so many other people are looking at me. We start with tenses. I have no past. I have no past. Five minutes into class the door opens. Silas walks in, his eyes downcast. I think he’s here to tell me something, or to bring me something. I brace myself, ready to pretend, but Mrs. Cardona comments jokingly about his lateness. He takes the only available seat next to me and stares straight ahead. I stare at him. I don’t stop staring at him until finally, he turns his head to look at me. A line of sweat rolls down the side of his face. His eyes are wide. Wide…just like mine.
ramblingmads 