Excerpt

First, a few updates: I'm done all my exams, and they went really well, so I'm a lot less stressed. I'm going into my fourth week of vegetarianism and it's also going pretty good, although my friends still look at me funny when I take B12 supplements with my lunch and ask why, exactly, I'm doing this. And last, I'm up to 7,777 words on what I've taken to calling The Exam Novel, though it has nothing to do with exams except I started it then. But to celebrate all the sevens, I'm going to post a short excerpt from Chapter One.

The air was cool, but warm enough that you could get away with wearing only a hoodie. It was the kind of night that you knew was going to be good no matter what you did, whether you went out and danced at a club until dawn or went home and ate Pop Tarts with your brother while playing COD. Addison inhaled, the air around her smelling like car exhaust and smoke, which sounded gross but was, in her mind at least, one of the most comforting smells in the world.

By the time she got to the apartment, the temperature had dropped even more, and she was shivering slightly. She knew that her face and eyes must have been red from the wind, and her choppy blond hair had to be a mess. She attempted to finger comb it in the elevator with no luck.

Finally, she got to the top floor. The fact that the door was locked should have been her first tip that something was wrong, but she didn’t even notice. She just figured that Rian was screwing with her, or something.

“Ri-aan,” she called, drawing her name into two syllables as she knocked. “Let me in!” There was no response, and Addison rolled her eyes. He was probably playing Xbox and got so sucked in that he was ignoring everything else. “Idiot,” she mumbled under her breath, but a smile played across her mouth as she thought of all the times she and Rian had used that excuse over the years: “I’m sorry I didn’t set the table, mommy. I was playing on the Nintendo.” It had never really worked.

Addison set down the Pop Tarts and rifled through her school bag for her key, finding it lurking at the bottom corner of the bag, under layers of books and discarded papers. Of course it was. Picking their dinner back up again, she pushed the door open.

“I’m back!” she cried, walking into the kitchen and setting the Pop Tarts on the counter. “I brought dinner! Rian?” No answer. That should have been the second clue that something was wrong.

Addison kicked off her shoes and made her way to the end of the hall, where her brother’s room was. “Hello?” she called, knocking softly on the door. “Rian?” Pushing the door open, she saw that there was no one there.

Her heart was starting to beat faster now. All Addison could think of was coming home all those years ago to this same apartment. No one was there—her dad was at the office, her brother still at school, in some club or sport—she couldn’t remember now. Her mom was supposed to be there, but she wasn’t. Addison remembered sitting on the couch, the apartment seeming empty and scary, and Rian coming home and sitting with her—because he didn’t know what was happening either. That was when Addison started to panic. Rian was her big brother, her five-year-old brain screamed at her. He was supposed to know everything.

Forgive the awful grammar/spelling :)