Prologue

Violet is wearing the purple shirt with the sparkling stars on the night I come to kill her. I bought it for her last summer at this second-hand store downtown called Pointless Trends. Cost me six bucks, although I lied and said I paid twenty-five, and that was only after a fierce negotiation with the store owner, an aging punk with wrinkly cheeks and receding green hair, who wouldn’t part with it for anything less than fifty. Not that the cost was the big thing of course. I would have paid the fifty just because I knew she’d look good in it; I was just glad I didn’t have to.

Violet looked it over once, twice, and then told me it was too sheer, that you could see the outline of her bra, and since she already had too many people starring at her chest for all the wrong reasons, she didn’t want to dress in anything that would encourage them.

I’d never seen her wear it before tonight, standing on tiptoes outside her window, my feet trampling her mother’s shrubs, a twelve-inch kitchen knife in my hands. Violet tugged on the shirt. I couldn’t make out the slightest hint of a bra.

Something cool and wet strikes my temple and runs down my cheek. It feels like a pinprick, and I look up into the dark night sky as a thousand tiny pinpricks rain down from the heavens, ruining what is left of my makeup. As if becoming a killer isn’t enough, I’ll have to become a soggy killer too. Awesome.

Violet lies on her bed, her stomach rising and falling evenly with every breath. Torn fashion magazines, shoes, and the DVD cases of bad teen flicks, bought 2-for-1 from the close-out bin at Vid Stop, litter the ground around her bed. All the shelves in her dresser hang open, a pair of little blue boyshorts dangling off one of the handles. A flat-screen TV, currently tuned to Worst Boyfriend Ever, glows brightly.

A pair of white Teddy bears, one missing its left eye, rests on top of a nearby dresser each wearing a gold locket tied around their necks with a red ribbon. The letter ‘V’ is engraved on one locket, the letter ‘A’ on the other. From the window, it looks like the one-eyed bear with the V-locket is drooping slightly to one side, leaning against its companion for support.

Over Violet’s bed hangs a collage of shirtless photos of actor Tom Lockhart, clipped from hundreds of fan mags she and I had collected over the years. Pictures of Tom jogging without his shirt, boxing without his shirt, modeling a suave grey sport jacket, minus a shirt. A hand-written word balloon taped to one of the cutouts read, “I’d pass through Violet and Abby’s portal anytime!”

My eyes come to rest on the heart-shaped vanity in the corner, which houses Violet’s ridiculous collection of make-up. I’d never noticed just how out of place it was, this tiny oasis of calm and stability in the room of someone who valued neither. Jars of concealer sat neatly stacked, one on top of the other, while tubes of lipstick lined up against the mirror like miniature military figurines preparing to march off into battle. Open up one of the drawers and you’ll find any number of creams, blushes, and glosses, all carefully categorized by name, brand, and color, all bearing semi-sexual names like “Flirt” and “Tease.”

We were twelve the day Violet sat me down in that chair for the first time, shaking her head in disbelief when I confessed I’d never done my own makeup before. Violet treated proper beauty care like a religion. To her, running that tiny black pencil around my flickering eyelid was like a saint rescuing some small, impoverished child from starvation.

“You’re, like, super lucky I’m doing all this for you,” she said as she poked my eyes with pencils, plucked my brows with tweezers, and crimped my lashes with curlers. “I still can’t believe your Mom never went over this with you. Seriously, I’m considering calling Child Services.”  

“Mom’s pretty busy. She works all day, and her classes don’t get out till late.”

“Hey, I totally support your Mom’s desire to become Ms. Fortune 500, but explaining how to properly remove a lipstick smudge is one of the most important things a mother passes on to her daughter. It’s right up there with loving your body and the best place to buy tampons. Okay, I think we’re done. Take a look.”

I opened my eyes slowly, unsure what to expect. What greeted me were dark, smoky eyes and full, plump lips richer and redder than I thought possible. I looked like a girl from one of those old black-and-white movies; a girl who charmed, who flirted, who lied to get out of trouble, and who kissed boys without feeling embarrassed. All the things Violet made look easy.

“You know, I hate to brag, but this might be my finest creation yet,” she said, admiring me like a sculptor would a statue—or a little girl with her favorite dress-up doll.

My current waterlogged reflection bears little resemblance to the pretty, sultry starlet Violet created that day, and yet seeing the well-maintained vanity sitting amongst the clutter reminds me that nothing about my best friend has ever made perfect sense.

Contradictions are dangerous things. They define us, make us who we are, but they also make us wild and unpredictable. Bottle them up inside the body of a teenage girl, and it’s plugging in the launch codes for a thermonuclear warhead. An explosion is inevitable, and there will be bodies.

And I saw the bodies: Justin, Tim, and poor, poor Mr. Avery. There may have been more, but I don’t know. There are so many things I don’t know.

When I hit the playback button on the past few months of my bizarre, deranged life, what drives me insane is how maddingly predictable it all was. The road to purgatory had been lined with warning signs; I just chose not to listen. I thought I could save everyone. I thought I could be the hero.

I thought wrong.

I wish I could go back and warn everyone, tell them all to run away to somewhere safe—like Alaska. I wish I could warn myself too, paid more attention to St. Michael when he told me that all ties must be severed. I wish I wasn’t standing outside my best friend’s window holding a freakin’ butcher knife about to do the unthinkable. I wish Violet and I—

And then I stop. I stop wishing—maybe for tonight, maybe for the rest of my life. Wishes are for children, and I can’t afford to be a child any more.

All girls obsess over the moments that mark her passage into womanhood. First kiss, first period, first time with a boy, each moment cutting a clear line between the young girls we were and the women we’ll become. I look down at the kitchen knife, dried blood beneath my nails, and realize this is my coming-of-age moment.

I peer back inside. Violet is staring dead at me, her eyes like tiny red embers. Something awful is trapped behind those eyes, something with terrible plans not just for Violet and me, but for everyone. Maybe the whole world.

This is it. This is my last chance to set things right. I have to. So much of this is my fault after all. I’d been a crappy hero. Now all I can do is pray I’ll make a decent killer.

Next Chapter: Girl Talk