Comes the Night by Norah Wilson, Heather Doherty Page A

7
Miss Gun-to-a-Knife-Fight
    Brooke
    B ROOKE CRACKED THE seal on her third—and unfortunately last—sample-sized vodka of the night, and tossed it back. It burned all the way down, but it didn’t burn hard enough. Not hot enough.
    She tossed the empty mini-bottle at the trash barrel—maybe a twelve-foot shot from the swing where she sat—but it hit the rim and bounced away. Hell with it. Let it lie there.
    That weirdness last night. It had scared the crap out of her, but at the same time, she wanted to do it. Wanted to try it herself. To ‘cast out’ as Connie Harvell evidently called it in her diary. Or so Alex said. It’s not like anyone was getting their hands on that diary any time soon. But whatever it was called, Brooke wanted to do it.
    What would it feel like to be out of your body? To fly free? To become one with the night, the darkness...
    A masculine laugh followed by a chorus of feminine giggles broke into her thoughts. Great. Just what she didn’t want—company. She pushed off the swing and headed for the deep shadows beyond the pool of light cast by the sentinel lights illuminating the elementary school playground.
    She’d barely made the shadows when a group of teenagers burst into the circle of light. But their destination was a picnic table behind the backstop of the child-sized baseball diamond. Brooke was already headed for the street when the guy spoke, freezing her in her tracks.
    Seth Walker.
    With the vodka still burning in her belly, she turned back. Seth climbed up to sit on top of the picnic table, and oh, God, he looked good. Then a petite, black-haired girl whom Brooke didn’t know clambered up to sit beside him. To remove any doubt that they were together, he slung an arm carelessly around her. The other kids—and they weren’t all girls as she’d originally thought—took seats on the bench. She recognized the tall guy as Seth’s brother, Bryce. And the girl with Bryce was Emalee Sorenson, though they didn’t really look like a couple. The other skanks she didn’t know.
    Brooke’s instant reaction was to go over there and tear Seth’s arm off at the shoulder socket, then use the bloody limb to beat the crap out of the girl he was with. She had to take six or seven deep breaths before she breathed away the last of the red haze of fury fogging her vision.
    Then, just as she had herself under control, laughter rippled through the group again. The sound hooked her right in the gut. Last year, she’d been the one beside Seth, holding court with these losers, or other ones like them. The Walkers were an important family in Mansbridge. They had money and old-town ties. Anger boiled inside. That was her place by Seth’s side. Now more than ever, and especially after that first weekend back.
    No, forget about that weekend. Seth obviously had.
    Fists squeezed at her sides, she made her decision.
    No one saw her approach. Briefly, she thought about drifting quietly into the light until someone noticed her. As much as it would please her to hear Seth shriek like a girl in front of his friends, there was no way she was coming off as a stalker. He meant nothing to her. Nothing .
    Well, eventually he’d mean nothing.
    Besides, she had a better idea.
    “Seth?” she said, injecting her voice with surprise. “Omigod, Seth, is that you?”
    Seth froze at the sound of her voice, and she strode into the circle of light.
    “Uhhhh... Brooke. Haven’t seen you around for a while.”
    Yeah, for about five weeks, you piece of crap . “Yeah, funny thing about that, especially since I’ve been trying to reach you.”
    “Um... yeah... well... I been kinda busy.”
    “So I can see,” she said, letting her gaze drift ominously over the petite girl at his side. “I have something I really need to tell you, but I didn’t want to leave a message on your parents’ machine. I mean, the last thing you want your parents to hear about is that HPV infection. I know I’m certainly not planning on