Chapter 1

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Providence Station
100 Gaspee Street
Providence, Rhode Island 
Friday, June 12
8:09 AM

The scorching train platform was overflowing with assholes. Most of them hipster assholes—the ones who wear embarrassingly tight pants, stupid old-man shoes, and slouchy hats that look as if they have been run over by a logging truck. The logger had likely pulled over, climbed out of the cab, and said, Hey, I'm not using this beard. You seem like the creative type who brews coffee for a living and owns an obscure breed of dog. I'm thinking of shaving. Do you want my beard? To which the annoying hipster replied, I own a purebred Irish wolfhound and work at Starfuck-You-Very-Much, and yes, I would love your beard—as long the product you've used to keep it supple is certified organic.

The flow of people would not stop. It was becoming claustrophobic. A woman whose fat ass stretched out her patterned pants, which resembled a southwestern throw blanket, talked loudly on her phone. She slammed into me as she shifted her over-sized bag that looked suspiciously like a dead cat.

"Don't shove me, bitch," I muttered. The overabundance of hipsters, the blinding heat, the unbearable pounding in my temples was pushing me beyond reasonable thought.

"I'm sorry," said the southwestern cat-killer in front of me, the woman I was now imagining as a heap of goo on the floor. "Did you say something?"

I just stared at her, making sure I held her gaze just long enough to be marginally uncomfortable. She looked away first, continuing her inane conversation.

"I know, right? I was shocked when I got out of college and there was no demand for a bio-philosophy major. I mean, I double minored in education and web design. I thought I covered my bases."

I rolled my eyes and tried to bend my elbow. The sea of bodies was oppressive, limiting my movement and my ability to find a goddamn diet bar in my bag. That and an aspirin. I had nothing to wash it down with, but I didn't care. I would dry swallow it. Hell, I would dry swallow a pumpkin filled with nails if it would stop the fucking pounding in my head.

The air changed. A whoosh of stale stench and an even hotter breeze, much hotter than the already-hot-enough-to-melt-your-tits-off wind whizzing by my over-heated head, swooped in from the train tunnel. The screech of brakes echoed off the stone walls, and the giant purple commuter rail train roared to a stop.

"Providence!" yelled someone official-sounding over a scratchy loudspeaker. The doors squealed open, releasing even more assholes onto the platform where I stood, helpless, drowning in a sea of sweaty, Boston-bound idiots. We pushed past one another, reversing the flow of commuters, those disembarking, those boarding, those embarking on a journey to save the neck of an ungrateful, long-lost brother.

That would be me. Evie McFagan, sister of said ungrateful, long-lost brother known as Richard Musäus. Go ahead and laugh at my maiden name. For your information, it sounds like moosehouse, and why don't you try growing up as a size extra large with a last name that refers to one of the most non-dainty animals in North America? Then talk to me, after a hellish adolescence, about how "well adjusted" you feel.

Yeah. Think on that, Freud fans.

Elbowing my way onto the narrow train, I found a seat on the upper level of a double-decker car. A twenty-something boy in a tweed jacket was about to sit next to me but changed his mind at the last moment.

By the way, who the hell wears tweed in a heat wave? Stupid hipsters. That's who.

I nestled in and stared out a dirty window covered in scratchy-looking graffiti with the lovely addition of something unsavory smeared all over it. There wasn't much to see in the tunnel, except for dark, stone walls. The air conditioning was either broken or just completely incapable of keeping up with the heat, and I could feel the sweat trickling into my cleavage, collecting in all the places where skin met skin.

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