A Better Bad Idea Read online

  Begin Reading

  Table of Contents

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  Thank you for reading this

  Imprint ebook.

  To receive special offers, bonus content,

  and info on new releases and other great reads,

  sign up for our newsletters.

  Or visit us online at

  us.macmillan.com/newslettersignup

  For email updates on the author, click here.

  The author and publisher have provided this e-book to you for your personal use only. You may not make this e-book publicly available in any way. Copyright infringement is against the law. If you believe the copy of this e-book you are reading infringes on the author’s copyright, please notify the publisher at: us.macmillanusa.com/piracy.

  To Drew, who is probably funnier than me but not quite as good looking.

  EVELYN

  REID ELAINE BREWER, 17, of McNair Falls, passed away on October 11, 2018. Beloved daughter to Adam and Helen Brewer, Reid is remembered as a bright, vivacious student and friend by McNair Falls High School classmates. Often seen taking joyrides in her old red Honda, Reid was a great lover of music, board games, and the outdoors. She is survived by her parents, paternal grandparents, and her adoring longtime boyfriend, Ashton. Her cherished grandmother, Elaine Morgan, preceded her in death.

  It took them a few days to find Reid’s body; they had to drag the lake to recover it. Back then, when it all went down, I couldn’t get the image of her water-rotted skin out of my head, seaweed tangled in her hair, all the trash dumped into Victory Lake surfacing with her. But even still, I imagined a look of sick amusement on her face. Reid with wild dark hair flying behind her, sunglasses too big for her face, wearing any color lipstick she pleased. There was a purple one I liked best because Savannah Rykers wouldn’t stop talking about it for days. Tacky, I heard Savannah say more times than I could count. Tacky and unapologetic and pissing Savannah Rykers off: That was Reid, until McNair Falls took the most alive thing in it and drowned her, sucked the life right out.

  She would’ve found that funny.

  I press my fingers to the newspaper clipping taped on the wall next to my beaten-down dresser. The paper has gone that faded yellow of forgotten things.

  Sometimes now, I can almost remember what she was. I remember Ashton, always right there beside her, staring at her like she was his earth and he her moon, orbiting around her like he didn’t even mind she only paid him attention half the time. I remember Reid looking at me and saying, “Evelyn Peters. Lord bless you, girl, you don’t have a clue.”

  I didn’t then, but I do now.

  I finally know.

  You gotta do what it takes to survive in this world.

  REID

  Ashton can’t stop staring at me, and I know why. When he looks at me, he sees nothing anymore but his own hurt and pieces of a broken girl and the anger we both feel, burning red and hot in our veins, and he keeps wondering how he can set himself free.

  But I can’t let him go, not now.

  I tell myself I love him, and maybe I do, but maybe I love what he makes me. Queen of this shit town. Queen of this shit life.

  I could leave or I could stay, and what would it really matter?

  The truth is this: I am nothing, and I think I’ve known that for a while. I mold myself into the shape of whatever is closest to me, cling to it like a parasite. Right now, that nothing is shitty-tasting rum and a cold breeze on colder water and the night sky itself. I’m an illusion. An illusion of music too loud, of carefree summer nights, of racing down dirt roads and taking clothes off and sweat and fights that end in kisses and pain. Good pain. That’s what he wanted—this illusion, right now, is what he wanted. He’s staring at me, and he’s remembering the girl he saw all those months ago.

  It’s hard for him to look away when I’m so alive.

  But he knows. Deep down, he knows.

  He’s only seeing who he wants me to be.

  ACT 1

  KEROSENE

  EVELYN

  Tuesday, October 6, 2019, 11:35 p.m.

  One Minute After

  The options flash through my mind like lightning, faster than I can act on them.

  Cry. Scream.

  Stay. Leave.

  Fight.

  Escape.

  Destroy.

  Don’t give up, Evelyn.

  Please give up, Evelyn.

  Please.

  Run, Evelyn.

  Go.

  Tuesday, October 6, 2019, 1:34 p.m.

  Ten Hours Before

  Smoke is curling up into the crisp October sky over Tyler McBee’s head.

  It’s gray against more gray, a bleak, cool day in McNair Falls, South Carolina. I’d dug through my dresser for an old sweater this morning, pulled it out, putting my fingers through the holes eaten into the knitted navy material.

  Tyler’s eyes catch mine when he sees me walking toward him, interested. He has a long face, his hair too short in the front, probably work done by his mama’s scissors. He’s leaning against the cheap aluminum siding on the outside of the gym, facing the trees next to school.

  “Can I bum?” I call to him, once I’m close enough. I shiver against the breeze. Weather tends to yo-yo around this time of year, one day hot and humid, the next a chill stealing into the air, wrapping you up in its windy tendrils. I hate the cold. And I hate the weakness of a nicotine craving.

  Tyler’s already got his box of Salems out, offering me one. He flicks the box toward me with his wrist, shaking a cigarette loose. I grab it, pulling it between two fingers.

  Sometimes, when I like to imagine I’m a better person than I am, I think I’m less addicted to the nicotine than to the moments before it hits my lips. Holding the cigarette between my fingers, watching some desperate boy offer a flame to me, and then sucking in the smoke like sweet release. Like a brief twinkle of freedom, control.

  I lean against the wall of the gym next to Tyler, looking out over the trees blowing in the breeze. My red lips leave a stain behind on the cigarette wrapper.

  “What are you missing?” Tyler asks, not quite looking at me and not quite not looking at me.

  “History,” I answer, easy. Exhaustion works to drag me down, and I fight back just as hard. History is death, I want to tell him, and there’s enough dead things around here without piling on. But if I did that—said that—I might not ever be able to get another cigarette, so I keep quiet.

  I know what to do. Glance over at Tyler, keep my gaze down, my eyes soft. There’s not a lot I can get in this world, so I always play nice with those who give.

  “You?” I ask, letting smoke escape out the side of my mouth.

  He snorts, ashes his cigarette against the wall. “Haven’t been to math all week. To be honest, I’m not really sure I have time for all this anymore.”

  “School,” I finish his thought for him, inhale, blow out slowly. I feel the way he’s watching me, eyes catching on all those holes in my sweater. I always feel it.

  “You know the deal. I figure I could at least be working for the Dowds on their land, doing something useful, making some money. Instead of in here”—he gestures at the wall, the school beyond—“learning nothing. This shit’s never gonna do people like us any good.”

  Drag. I roll the words people like us around in my mind. “You gotta do what’s right for you.” I don’t really know what that means, but I’ve gotten used to speaking to people in clichés. Keeps me from saying anything real.

  “You still work over at the store?” Tyler asks me. “For Reid Brewer’s parents?”

  Reid Brewer. The name sounds so foreign coming out of his mouth. Like a thing that only existed before, i
n the quietest breath of the wind, in the deepest secrets of a soul.

  But that’s not right, is it? Reid existed everywhere.

  “Yeah,” I say.

  “She’s been dead almost a year now, yeah?” he asks.

  I shrug. “It’s sad,” I say because that sounds true.

  Tyler thinks on that for a minute and then nods. “That’s life, isn’t it? Can’t escape sad shit.”

  I can’t help but laugh, surprising Tyler and me both.

  Tyler drops his cigarette, stubs it with his toe, and kicks it off the thin sidewalk bordering the gym and into the grass. “You wanna get out of here?” he asks me.

  I push my fingers through my hair, slow, careful. Glance up, like I’m ready and willing to be offered up to him as compensation. Like a prize pony. “I’ve got biology. And I’m not ready to quit just yet.”

  “Aw.” He moves closer, head tilted down, eyes hungry like all boys when they look at girls like me. “Maybe some other time.”

  “Maybe.” I toss my cigarette down after his and step on it on my way around him. Once I’ve turned the corner, I lean back against the siding, breathing in and out slow, letting myself have this moment alone.

  I hate when anyone gets too close to me.

  But the bell rings a moment later, signaling for me to get on with it. I straighten back up, dust off my too-tight jeans and ratty sweater, and I keep going.

  It’s not like the alternatives are any better.

  Tuesday, October 6, 2019, 11:40 p.m.

  Six Minutes After

  I can’t exactly walk and I can’t exactly run, but I am leaving—maybe leaving my home, maybe this whole world, running headfirst into the wooded terrain behind our trailer, dark and wild and inviting. The lights fade behind me, and it is so hard to stay upright with the pain nipping at my heels. The ground is sloppy or I am sloppy. Either way, I wait for the inevitable fall.

  My fingers are wrapped tightly around the neck of a bottle, and my palm is sweating, the earth attacking me with claws, pulling me down, vicious. Fall, it begs, cry and scream and give in at last. But I won’t let it have me.

  So I keep going deeper into the woods behind our trailer, to sweet escape, to where screaming and a clanging, broken piece of shit heater don’t echo in my ears.

  Smile, Evelyn, warn those trailer walls, whispers of Mama’s old boyfriends and teachers who know better. Don’t frown all the time. And don’t you dare fucking cry.

  I unscrew the top off the bottle and toss it away like so much trash, letting the vodka hit me and hit me and hit me again. At least it hurts in a way that wants to hold me close, rock me to sleep, make me forget. It splashes down the front of my navy sweater as I push forward, and I don’t stop drinking, heading toward the old moonshine still.

  I hear the crash of plates breaking and see welts on pale arms, smell food burning, and I’m lost in then and now and my skin vibrates to remind me I’m stuck in it forever and always, in this prison I can’t escape from.

  And then I stop. I forget. Because I am here, at the still, and someone is there, in front of me. Someone else is at the still and I have been too loud and they are looking too closely and now

  And now.

  and now

  “What are you doing?” His voice is warm, I think, preposterously. Like a blanket in the cold night, wrapping up syllables and words and keeping them safe.

  I’ve always liked his voice.

  “Hello?” He’s still watching me, and I am exposed. I pat my pocket, searching for a lipstick or eyeliner or something that isn’t there, like it can hide me. Help me disappear into the only mask that protects me.

  It’s him.

  “Evelyn?” he finally says at last, and I know—know—he’s known who I really am, all along. He’s been waiting to say it, waiting to confirm it.

  But he sees me. Ashton Harper sees me.

  And Ashton, he might’ve been running in this direction just as hard as I was running from the other. I like to imagine him that way, like he’s still hurting, always hurting, a constant ache he can’t escape. Neither of us can escape.

  God knows we both got plenty to run from.

  Tuesday, October 6, 2019, 2:47 p.m.

  Eight Hours and Forty-Seven Minutes Before

  The final bell rings, and Savannah Rykers is between me and my locker.

  It happens like this sometimes because I’ll be copying down my assigned reading for English after the bell rings, and then I’ll turn out into the hallway and there she’ll be at her locker, one row down from mine. I’d never admit it to anyone else, but I try to avoid her, scheduling my trips to my locker when I know she’s not there, shrinking away like a scared animal if she is, sometimes just showing up to classes without books.

  It’s a dance we do because nothing can turn my hardened shell soft quite like Savannah Rykers.

  But today, I’m in danger of failing if I don’t do my math homework, and if I don’t hurry, I’ll miss the bus.

  I stare straight ahead, walking past her with purpose. But I think she must sense me somehow, connected to me through a link we are both desperate to break, because her head snaps up and her eyes are on me.

  “Evelyn Peters,” she says. “Do you ever go to your locker?”

  Most other girls in this school ignore me, like they’re afraid they might catch whatever I have. But Savannah can’t help herself; she’s always got something to prove when it comes to me.

  At least before, Alex was always around. He’d offered me some sort of protection.

  No more.

  “I saw you sneaking around behind the gym with Tyler McBee during history today.” Savannah has this way of projecting her voice so no one around her can miss a word she’s saying—and people love to listen to Savannah.

  “Did you?” This is my strategy: to pretend I’m not afraid of her, to will myself to not be afraid of her. It’s my strategy with everyone. So, I keep moving past her and open my locker. She slides up beside me.

  “Surely you could do better than that.” She says it like a whisper, but somehow her words echo all around us. “I know you’re desperate, but even I never expected you to sink that low. Things really that bad since Alex took off?”

  “Alex graduated.” I keep my head buried in my locker.

  “And didn’t bother to take you with him. Does he even speak to you anymore now that he’s done with you?”

  It’s a sore subject, but I try not to show it. Alex was my best friend, but even worse, last year somehow Savannah figured out that I’d go over to Alex’s house to sleep sometimes, sneak right in his bedroom window. Alex used to laugh about it. “I have always wanted to be in a hetero scandal,” he’d joke with a grin.

  And it’d been okay then, when he’d been beside me, laughing too.

  I close my locker to find myself face-to-face with Savannah. “Why are you so worried about what I do?” I ask her. But it’s a stupid question because Savannah isn’t worried about what I do at all. She’s humiliated by my very existence.

  “You purposely make yourself look like a slut in all that makeup,” she tells me, shaking her long dark hair as if some new revelation has crashed over her. She’s so pretty in an easy way, a cutout from a magazine of Ideal Girl. She can’t hurt me, though. The makeup is mine, the only thing I control. She can’t hurt me.

  “I purposely make myself look like a slut so you’ll stay away from me.”

  “Why don’t you just get out?” she asks me, and this time she actually does drop her voice, a question for me alone—her only real question. I’d answer, but the problem is I don’t know where she wants me to disappear from: the locker, the school, her life? It’s not like any of this was my choice.

  I’m no one to everyone except Savannah, to whom I am everything.

  I answer her back in a whisper, too. “I’m not hurting you, Savannah. Leave me alone.” I turn away from her, and she hates that, too, when I don’t fight back. She shoves past me, pushing me against the l
ocker. It doesn’t hurt, not really.

  “Fuck you,” I say because I can’t help it and I see the way everyone looks at me in my ratty old sweater, my mascara dark and lips painted for war.

  I look like the scary one, so I must be.

  Savannah whips back around, and I know immediately this was too bold by half. “What did you just say to me?” she demands.

  I straighten up. “That I fucked him. Tyler. That’s what you wanted to hear, right? That’s what’ll make you happy?”

  “You’re disgusting,” she says, and the way everyone’s eyes find me, see me as something unworthy, it must be true. At least if I’m a villain, I’ll be a good one. It’s better than the truth.

  Tuesday, October 6, 2019, 11:43 p.m.

  Nine Minutes After

  There’s not much left of the old moonshine still buried deep in the woods past our trailer—the spot Mama calls the Old Home Place. Half of a shelter remains; two collapsed wooden poles have caved the tin roof in on one side. Some barrels and pipes rust away. Mama says my granddaddy used to run shine out of here, but it’s not like Mama hasn’t been known to lie.

  I clutch my bottle close to me, aware—so aware—of everything wrong in that moment, from the cold air choking my lungs to the bruise blooming on my hip, right where my sweater meets my jeans.

  “You’re not supposed to be here,” I say.

  “Hey.” Ashton toasts me with a flask. “That’s usually the line people use after they get to know me.”

  Ashton Harper, I think, like the rest of it has been erased. Ashton. Ashton Harper.

  And then I think, Reid.

  “Are you”—he twitches back a piece of dark hair that has fallen into his eye—“okay?”

  I can’t stop staring at him. I watch the way his eyebrows come together. The way he licks his lips.

  I take a pull from the bottle of vodka, sitting with the words. “That’s a hell of a question,” I say at last.