Chapter Eight

Tall, Dark, and At My Front Door I move around my new apartment–bigger and brighter than I expected and already filled with a few furnishings courtesy of Brianna and Zack–organizing boxes in little stacks, trying not to freak out but failing miserably. I did it. I left home and moved hours away from Silver Valley. Not for school. Not temporarily. But with a goal, a plan for the future. And a job that might actually be the best thing to ever happen to me. I’m working fro

“Don’t hate me.” I pull the phone away from my ear to check the screen. Yup, I saw it right. It’s Brianna. Eyebrows scrunched, I return to the call I answered less than 30 seconds ago, still confused. “Why would I hate you?” “Because I did something that might make you mad. And I hate when people are mad at me because I’m afraid they’ll never speak to me again. The fear of rejection never gets easier.” “You’re the world’s biggest pop star. No one is rejecting you.”

My Last Nerve A knock on my bedroom door pulls me away from the dark spiral of my killer’s rampage. I’m writing the crux of the climax, where my heroine figures out the pattern and is able to stop the psycho before he kills the man she’s fallen for. “Colleen? Are you almost ready?” I hear my mom’s words but they make no sense. My brain takes much longer than it should to process the fact she's talking to me in the present and not from the pages of my work-in-progress. “