Chapter One

The sound of the music as we made our way down into the basement of some fraternity was like a physical blow. I could feel the base thud in my chest. I didn't know what song it was, but I'd heard it before. On the radio, at other parties, or maybe Christina had played it. Some rap or hip hop song. It had one of those beats that changed the way you walked, made your every step be in time with the song.

Christina kissed my cheek before spinning off to the bar. She'd taken a couple of shots of tequila taken from the much neglected alcohol cabinet of our parents' before we'd left the house, so she was already buzzing. Alcohol made her flirty and affectionate. Which usually ended in her making out with someone—or multiple someone's—by the end of the night. It was why she was invited to things like this, one of few high school girls invited to the college parties from the local university. She was fun, wild.

I followed her slowly, picking my way past people. Many nodded to me like I was Christina, we certainly had never spoken. Unless we were standing next to each other, you really couldn't tell us apart. She stood at the makeshift bar, standing on her tiptoes to lean across the counter to show off her boobs to the tender—some poor frat boy who'd drawn the short stick and had to "work", I assumed. We were only about 5'4" so really any amount of counter leaning was an effort. He was smiling, so it must have been working great. The bar was really just a couple of sheets of plywood thrown loosely together into a box and it didn't look so stable under Christina's lean. A few of the guys behind her turned and I could tell they were saying something about her ass, clad in its tiny little jean skirt. She was wearing this tight black halter top that exposed her dainty back and shoulders. It had splatters of white strewn across it that glowed iridescent under the black lights.

I just wore jeans and a dark grey tank top with sequins strewn about up one side that Christina had pulled from her closet and insisted I wear. The sequins glistened under the black lights, but didn't glow almost blindingly like white did. I really didn't care to draw that much attention to myself, not that it would have, everyone else had some form of white on to draw attention to them too.

Christina got some red colored concoction and left the bar and came back to me. Offering it to me, of course, she said "this night is going to be crazy, I can feel it already."

"Me too," I said, shaking my designated driver head at her drink. She brought it to her lips and drank about half of it down in a few gulps. Clearly, it really was going to be one of those nights. She took a step back and faltered a little on her flashy black stilettos. "Careful with that," I said.

She waved her hand at me dismissively, then threw back her head and started moving her hips to the music.

A guy appeared next to us with dark brown buzz cut hair. He had one of those charmer smiles and a body like a football player, which I imagined he was. He reached out and tucked Christina's hair behind her ear. "Hello beautiful," he said in a deep low voice that I could barely hear over the pound of the music. He shot me a similarly charming smile, but I imagine he couldn't miss that Christina was the easier and more welcoming catch.

"Hey!" she said, her eyebrows raising with her voice. "Who are you?"

"Mark Hammilton," he said loudly to both of us, his eyes flicking at me to include, probably just in case we were down for threes. "You two can't be twins, are you? Because I don't think the universe can handle two such gorgeous girls."

She laughed and tossed her hair with a flick of her head. A little bit of her drink splashed out onto the floor. No one seemed to notice or care. "We are twins! You don't happen to be Hammilton from the football team, do you?"

Mark beamed at her in a way that could only mean that he was, in fact, that very person. I couldn't even imagine the candy bar Mark had just become in Christina's eyes.

A couch was catching my eye in the distance and the heals Christina had made me wear were killing my feet so I gently touched his shoulder in an it-was-good-to-meet-you kind of way and started towards it.

The couch, it turned out, was covered in a number of suspicious looking stains so I perched on the arm of it where it was least obviously disgusting.

It was going to be a long night.

As much as Christina liked moving around the party, she kept going back to Mark, something about him had obviously caught her interest. Probably because he was similar to Jake, both were football players. Granted, he was ridiculously attractive, how could he not be with that white perfect smile and chiseled body. He was like the definition of classic man, but not really my type. I didn't like that overtly cocky attitude. I didn't like being treated like I was just a stupid blonde who should want to sleep with him, which is the kind of attitude he had. Or perhaps I was biased since that was Jake's attitude and I didn't particularly like Jake.

I kept my eye on this new Mark guy and stayed in my corner. Occasionally I got up to move around or dodge people who were convinced I was Christina and wouldn't believe me when I told them I was her twin. Apparently the twin thing was the "oldest trick in the book" according to some awkward, geeky looking guy Christina must have flirted with to get something from. She knew a surprising amount of very drunk or very stupid people. Perhaps they were both. Or maybe I was just irritated that she hadn't mentioned me before.

And then a whoop sounded from the door into the basement. The crowd of people making cheering and greeting noises blocked my view from seeing who or what it was. Mark put his arm around Christina and led her in the direction, a big smile on his face as he yelled something over the music to her. Curiously I stood up to get a better look, but didn't make my way towards the mass.

Finally a guy broke from the crowd, a thirty pack of Bud Light in each hand. He was tall, over six feet tall, with messy blonde hair and a hard jaw but he had a big smile on his face as he laughed at something someone yelled at him. He was wearing a white wife beater and hip-fitting baggy black jeans. He was one of those thin lean muscled people, but his shoulders budged as he lifted the cases of beer at Mark, who'd stopped him. Mark hit him in the other shoulder with his fist and the guy surprisingly didn't budge. He just smirked and said something that I couldn't begin to hear from across the room with a big black speaker pulsing behind me. I watched him be introduced to Christina whom he politely nodded at. He was probably the first person who didn't take an extra ten seconds to roam his eyes over her body and smile or whoop approvingly. He just looked past her and around the room.

Then his eyes fell on me, and I felt stupid for just sitting there staring at him. Suddenly the casual perch I'd made didn't feel so casual anymore. I looked down at the gaudy bracelet Christina had been too excited about me wearing for me to have the heart to take it off before we left the car. But when I looked back up he was still looking at me, then he glanced back at Christina, obviously making the twinship connection. I smiled and nodded at him, not sure what else to do other than acknowledge my staring, hoping it made me seem less creepy. He didn't nod back, he just looked at me for a moment and then looked away, smiled and said something to Mark and walked toward the bar and away from me. The song changed and Christina put her hands on Mark's delectably buff chest and started pushing him back towards the mass of dancing people blocking my view to the bar where the blonde guy had disappeared to. She weaved into the swarm and I could just barely make out Mark's head probably a foot or more above hers.

I crossed my legs and laid my head back against the wall behind me and closed my eyes, actively choosing not to think of what could have contaminated the wall before me. I liked the song that was playing. He was singing about how "you're way too beautiful girl". It reminded me of my sister.

A weird sort of sixth sense feeling, or maybe vibrations on the floor under my feet made me open my eyes and lift my head to see a pair of jeans standing in front of me. Big slightly baggy jeans on a tall, slender figure, his black belt with boring silver buckle just below my eye level. I looked up into the face of the tall blonde guy who'd dramatically entered a few moments earlier. In each hand he held two beers, one opened, one unopened. They were in glass bottles and some brand I didn't recognize. Clearly they were higher class than the typical frat party beer, even higher class than his bud light, since bud light was pretty high class for frats. He didn't bend down to talk to me, or try to yell over the music. He just looked at me with one eyebrow quirked, his lips set in what could only be described as a not quite smile.

I felt small and insignificant sunken into the arm of the couch and slouching against the wall so I quickly got to my feet. He'd been standing with his toes just about to mine though so when I stood up my body was an inch or two from being flush with his. I stumbled quickly off to the side. A smirk spread across his face at this, like he'd planned it. He took one pivoted step towards me, reclaiming that distance between us, and leaned in to my ear but didn't touch me. "Who are you?" he asked, his voice heart-throbbingly low. That kind of low rumbly voice that belonged to a male phone prostitute.

"Who are you?" I demanded back. I wasn't flirty and boy crazy like Christina and, well, I had self control, I told myself. I took another big step to the side and slipped out from between him and the wall. He pivoted to follow me with his eyes. He didn't make an attempt to slouch to my level, instead he seemed to like making me look up at him. He took a step closer to me once more and said, "I'm Blake, I'm the guy with the beer. Who are you?" He offered the still sealed beer to me, which I appreciated since he was obviously considerate of the fact that girls like me didn't drink from open containers at shady frat parties. I was flattered really, but maybe that was just his icy blue eyes.

I shook my head at it though. "I'm Kris, the designated driver." I took a step back from him to put a good foot and a half between our bodies. He took another step closer and I could feel his warmth radiating off of him.

He leaned in to my ear again and I could feel his breath tickle my skin, "oh that's too bad, how did you get stuck with that?" He smelled like leather and cigarettes and some amazingly arousing cologne.

I side stepped him again and said, "You met my twin."

He smirked again and followed me with a pivot and a step again, putting us inches apart again. "Yes, I did. She's had a few of these, hasn't she?" he asked, wiggling the sealed beer at me before handing it blindly to a guy standing behind him. The guy, startled, stopped talking to the girl next to him and looked stupidly at Blake for a moment before accepting the beer with a yelled "thanks" over the music. Blake didn't even give him a glance, his eyes were fixated on me as he brought his own opened one to his lips and took a long drink.

"She has," I agreed and took another step back but I bumped into a girl who was dancing with another girl, she sent me a unamused look. I quickly bounced away from her and took a couple steps away from the crowd and back towards the less occupied corner of the room. Blake pursued me with aggressive, eyes, which bored into me. I looked to the girl I'd bumped into in attempts to avoid his gaze, she'd momentarily stopped dancing to run her eyes up and down his body a few times before noticing me looking at her and quickly went back to dancing.

"You look out of place."

I looked back up at him, but somehow he'd gotten really close to me again, so I took another step back. "Whatever," I said, not really knowing what else to say to something like that.

"It's refreshing," he said, like I hadn't said anything. I didn't really know what that meant, so I took another step back and glanced around for my sister. She was nowhere in sight, typical. "How old are you?"

"Seventeen," I said, honestly, we'd just had our birthday a few weeks ago. Christina usually told guys she was eighteen so that they'd think she was legal and wouldn't freak out. In a way, I hoped it scared him off, and in a way I sort of held my breath as I waited for his response.

His smile just broadened. "Illegal," he told me, taking a step closer to me and taking another long swig of his beer.

I took another step back, but I bumped into the wall and to my left was immediately the adjacent wall. Somehow he'd backed me into the corner and his smile broadened again when he saw that I'd noticed it. He pressed his hand against the wall over my shoulder to lock me in and drew closer to me. Still a few inches between us. My small frame miniaturized next to his over 6' one. He was tall and thin, with what I guessed were very strong, very toned muscles. The kind that didn't bulge unless he was using them. The kind whose size betrayed his immense strength. It made me wonder how much he could bench. I would always hear the athletes and tough guys bragging to each other in the halls that they could bench 200 pounds or so.

In his other hand he lazily held the mouth of a beer bottle between his fore and middle fingers. He had a silver ring around each finger, I couldn't tell what the designs were though. Around his wrist was some sort of winding twisting tattoo and up his tanned, defined arm, just below the shoulder and above his bicep on the other arm was another tattoo: this one a ring of barbed wire around his forearm.

"Yes, illegal," I said pointedly.

"I like that."

"How old are you?" I demanded like somehow if I kept talking he wouldn't think he was intimidating me or getting to me at all. I really didn't know what to think of him or what he was doing.

"Twenty-two."

"And contributing to minors?"

He just smiled at me, apparently amused that I'd pointed that out.

I rolled my eyes, like I was completely unaffected by those blue-grey eyes. "Illegal."

"Illegal," he agreed, smiling down at me and moving a little closer, his body heating mine simply from proximity.

"You like that." I meant the illegal part, but for some reason the way his smile broadened, I realized he may have thought I meant getting close to me or something. He was five years older than me.

"I like that." He had perfect white teeth and a slightly crooked nose, like it had been broken. "Can you dance?"

I made a face at him. "Of course I can dance."

"Let's dance then."

And for some reason, as I grasped frantically for a reason not to, I found myself saying, "that would be illegal." It was lame. Very lame.

"Yeah, I'd like that."

"Maybe I wouldn't?" I said finally, and ducked under his arm and started way from that dangerous little corner.

"I think you might like it too," he said in my ear from behind me as he followed me.

I turned around, startled by how close he'd been so quickly, "what makes you think that?"

Immediately I had to back up because he was so close to me and he followed me aggressively, clearly backing me towards the dance floor. "Because you're an intriguing clever little thing that I'm finding I like."

"Because I'm illegal," I pointed out, grasping desperately to still be just talking. Dancing involved physical contact in a place like this.

He smiled and slipped one hand along my waist around to my back and pulled me gently up against him. "Because you don't belong here."

"And you do?" I demanded, pulling back from him, slightly offended.

His hand pressed hard into my back and pulled me flush up against him and his eyes seemed to dance with amusement. "No, I don't."

I had to crane my neck to look up at him or else stare at his pecs which I could tell without touching were toned rock hard. I couldn't really help but put my hand on them though. Nor could I help running the other hand up his stomach, up his pec, and over his shoulder. He had an amazing six pack under that shirt. "You looked pretty welcome," I said, trying to fend off the sexual tension he seemed determined to ignite between us.

"I am welcome, but this isn't my scene. I don't usually stay." He started rocking his hips against mine to the music and there was really no way for me to resist moving with him.

"But you're staying now."

"For the moment, yes." He smiled down at me and took another few swallows of his beer. When he spoke again I could smell it on his breath. It smelled good and I almost wished I wasn't designated driver this night. But oh boy, how would I have been able to deal with him, if I'd been intoxicated?

"Kris!" a voice screeched in my ear. Both our heads snapped towards the sound. For a moment I'd been captivated by him, absorbed by his piercing eyes and inquiring words. It was Christina and she looked more than a little drunk and absolutely tickled pink. I hardly ever danced with people at parties, I would talk to people, but my socialization went as far as casual conversations. I guess I'd always felt like going to parties with Christina was more of a babysitting job than a chance to have a good time.

"Hey," I said to her and glanced back up at Blake. He'd stopped dancing with me and the intensity had left his eyes. He looked at her almost as though he was annoyed by her interruption. I could imagine why, but it felt weird having it be Christina interrupting instead of me. I'd pulled Christina away from people she'd been grinding or making out with to go home and they'd given me similarly hostile looks.

"Who are you?" she asked, her eyes traveling down his body to linger on his chest before looking back up at his face. And for a moment I held my breath, a stab of momentary jealousy or something like fear that she might take him from me, that he might like her flattering words and easy confidence better than my awkward stupid comments.

"Blake," he said flatly. And then he looked back at me and some, but not all, of the intensity came back. It made me let out the breath I hadn't realized I'd been holding. And then I realized it actually surprised me, that he thought anything special of me. That he had that look in his eyes when he looked at me and not my twin. We looked the same and at that moment we were dressed similarly, but there was something about me that he was more interested in. It made my heart flutter in my chest. He just looked at me for a half a second, pointedly, then leaned into the ear opposite Christina and said, "I've got to go, I'll see you again." He pulled back and touched his hand to the side of my face and gently rubbed my cheek with his thumb before stepping back and turning on his heal to walk away from me. He didn't look back, just disappeared through the door out of the basement. My heart sank down into my stomach as I watched him go.

"Oh my god," Christina said to me, practically bouncing up and down. "Kris! He's a babe!"

I nodded and I wanted to smile and be happy with her, but ultimately he'd walked away. I didn't believe for a second that I'd see him again. And, really, I was almost upset with her for interrupting.

"Did he think you were me?" she asked. It simultaneously stabbed at my gut and sent chills up my spine as I realized that, incredibly, she hadn't had anything to do with what had just happened.

"No," I said, and really I think it was the first time that a guy like that hadn't thought I was her. She almost looked hurt by my answer so I added, "He's not a regular here."

"Really?" she asked, "Mark acted like he knew him pretty well."

I shrugged and she did too. Then, speak of the devil, Mark slipped from between a few people behind her and snuck up to kiss her neck. She jumped and yelled something at him, playfully slapping his shoulder. He nodded his head at me before pulling her away from me and towards the dancing mass.

For the rest of the night I replayed the time he and I had spent together over and over again. He had treated me like Christina, like the most beautiful girl in the room, yet I liked to think he hadn't looked at her the same way. And something about that made me extremely pleased with myself.

...

Running. It had always been a concept I never understood. There were always solutions, there were always more options. Running away was a simple, cowardly thing to do. The kind of thing lazy people did. Leaving never solved any problems; it only created more bitter ones.

But that night I really only had one thing on my mind. And I really was only capable of thinking one thing. Rational thought, concern for others, ideas for other alternate solutions... were all silent. It was as though even my own head knew better.

My hand shook as I reached for the handle of our front door. My pale skin seemed sickly against the golden brass that sparkled in the partial moonlight and dim porch light, it's eco-friendly lightbulb glowing a feint purple as it struggled to wake from a day long slumber. Even more sickly was the smeared blood on the back of my hand and I lifted and fixed my eyes on the door. My mother hated those lights and tonight I did too.

When I entered I heard the familiar faint murmur of laughing from the dining room several hundred feet away, just beyond the kitchen. It was book club night. The kind of book club that drank wine and complained about their uneager gardeners, inefficient maids, delinquent children, or their needy yet emotionally unavailable husbands. It was late now, they were likely deep into a third bottle of Menage a trois. My stepfather was either in his study, working vigorously at whatever obsess-worthy case he had at the time, or at his office, doing the same. I think maybe a tiny part of me wished that someone was walking past the entryway just then. Someone to notice, someone to see what I had become. But no one was there. And no one knew.

I made my way towards the back of the house, towards my and Christy's room. It was the first Saturday night of summer and Christina, my life-hungry twin, was out on a date with Jake Bradshaw, her on-again-off-again quarterback boyfriend, though she had plans for a summer romance with someone older and more sophisticated, maybe a college guy home on break. Christina was everything I was not: peppy, charismatic, confident, popular, graceful. We were identical twins with cliche matching names, but I was more the cerebral, selfconscious, and awkward sidekick whom everyone knew from association.

Christina was on the cheerleading team. Every party had her name on it's list. She had a strong B+ average GPA and gorgeous blonde hair that shimmered and glowed whenever she so much as tilted her head. She walked effortlessly in the most impossibly high-heeled shoes. Everyone at our high school wanted to be her friend and would do just about anything to be standing next to her in a picture posted on Facebook.

Now she was a fresh high school grad, as of about a week ago, already accepted to the high class—and even higher tuition—local private college. Whose frat parties she had, of course, been going to for over a year already. At a month and a half shy of 18 years old, she was on her way to conquering the world, one stilettoed step at a time.

And of course, why wouldn't she be successful? Why wouldn't everyone love her? She was smart, athletic, sweet, fun, and flirty. Your classic all-American blonde. Yet she had that troublesome streak to her that made her the envy of every cooped up rich girl in the neighborhood. She was afraid of absolutely nothing, could drink half the guys in school under the table, and give any guy within sight a hard on just by biting her lip. During the day she was perfect and dutiful, but at night the wild party girl came out. They balanced perfectly, and no one saw anything but flawless grace and enthusiasm.

No one but me of course. I saw the mascara run down her cheeks after another breakup with Jake. I held her hair back as she threw up the half a fifth of tequila she'd drank. I saw her screaming at my mom when they fought. I saw her pinch at her love handles in the mirror and do about a thousand side bends to try to get rid of them.

None of these things changed who she was to me though. She was my sister. My twin. I loved her. She looked exactly like me, yet we were completely different. I don't know what went wrong with me or what went right with her when we were growing up. But she blossomed into this exquisite orchid and I in to a dandilion. Had I not been completely identical to her, to the point where people were constantly mixing us up... Had our stepfather not been wildly successful in his law firm and made so much money and raised us in this rich California town... Perhaps I would have been completely forgettable.

But I was Christina's twin, and apart from how we dressed, spoke, walked, talked, acted, and functioned in society, we were precisely the same.

I closed our bedroom door tightly behind me and crossed to the opposite side of the room, my side, and to my closet. We'd always shared a room. There was another bedroom, set up still as a guest room, that my parents had always assumed one of us would move into, but we never had. Maybe it was because our room was one of the few things we had to unify two entirely different lives.

I pushed open the closet doors and fumbled on the top shelf, deep in the back corner for my duffle bag. The movement caused a sharp pain to seer through my shoulder and I dropped it with a hushed yelp. Gritting my teeth I gingerly picked it up again and shook the dust off of it. And then I attempted to empty my closet into it. Mostly I took jeans and shirts, underwear, socks. Simple things. And I didn't bother to fold. I had an edge and I was terrified if I waited it would fade and I would lose my nerve, like the last time.

I was just zipping the overstuffed duffle shut when I noticed that leaning over had made my nose start to bleed again. Holding the back of my hand against it to keep it from dripping on the white carpet—a feat I'd failed to prevent before and had to blame on a spilled bottle of nail polish—I dragged the duffle with me into the bathroom. Once there I didn't bother to turn on the light, I knew the sight I would see. I turned on the faucet on cold and, cupping my hands under the water, splashed the water up on my face. It seered with the burning sting of open skin somewhere around my eye and upper lip. Over and over again I splashed and rubbed at my cheeks where i knew blood had dried. Then i padded my face dry with a towel and, not daring to peer at my reflection in the dim moonlight that had filtered through the bedroom window and then through the open bathroom door, I held the towel against my right brow and started to gather my bathroom essentials, stuffing them in turn into the accessory pockets of the duffle. Then I left the bathroom, grabbed a sweatshirt off the end of my bed, a picture book from the night table drawer, and headed for the door.

I opened it and listened for a moment in case anyone had decided to take this moment to make an exit, but the murmurs from the dining room seemed as cheery as ever. So I lifted the duffle's strap up onto my shoulder and I left, easing the front door silently shut behind me. I made my way across the driveway to where I'd parked the little '94 convertible BMW Phil had gotten me for our 16th birthday. Mine was black, Christy's was read and a '96. But they worked and were great for the summer here in California.

I heaved my duffle into the backseat and climbed into the driver's seat. From the dash I took my cap, tucked my hair back under it and put my sunglasses on above the bill for later. Then I turned the keys I'd left in the ignition earlier. The engine roared to life and for a moment I worried that my mother or Phil would notice, but, really, I knew better.

I eased it into drive and, with a sharp turn of the wheel to turn around in our broad driveway, I coasted out into the street and started north. I had the lights on bright and they stared out at the road ahead of me. As far as that light could go was all I could see of my future. It was all I cared to think about, because at this point, there wasn't anything to think about except to recall what had just happened and what would happen again if I stayed. So I drove.

I drove past all the things i knew, the street I'd learned to ride by bike on, past the road that lead to my middle school, past my high school. Past all the things I knew from my childhood, the ice cream place we used to go in the summer before we were too old and went to the beach to drink instead. And then past places that maybe meant even more. Past the movie theatre, past the first restaurant we'd been to, past the mall where he'd bought me a new sweater after we'd ruined one running around in the rain one day. And maybe that hurt most of all, leaving those good memories behind.

Then I was on the on ramp for the freeway, then on it going north. It was still familiar, Christy and I had taken this up a town before to go to a different mall once and again to go to a college party the next town over. One hand on the wheel, I fished into my front pocket with the other. From it I drew the tiny piece of paper I'd been carrying around with me ever since the last time. I'd come home to an entirely empty house and I'd searched through all of my mom's things to find her address book and the inconspiciously written phone number and address of a person I couldn't remember. I'd planned to leave that night, but searching had given me time for the adrenaline to wear of, for the rational to set in. I had hesitated. And then nothing happened for weeks, but I kept it in my pocket, subconsciously ready for that moment when adrenaline, pain, and fear might push me to do it. To run.