Asher Banning still mourns his mother after three years. When his friend, Caden, decides to get their group of friends together for Christmas as a way to help Asher not feel lonely for the holidays, things quickly turn upside down.
MATURE: for expl...
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Caden sat next to me. "Asher, ya need to come inside." His accent was soothing and calm. "It's gettin' colder . . . we don't want ya to freeze."
I would've said I don't care but it wasn't the time to make stupid comments. With a deep inhale through my nostrils, I stood, walking away toward the house. Caden followed.
I glanced up at the moon one last time, shining through the forest. The stars glittered and brightened up the night sky.
"Hey," Freyja greeted me at the front of the house. She didn't smile. I stepped inside and walked into the living room.
Automatically, my eyes landed on Sam. He sat on the couch, staring at a glass full of alcohol in his hand.
The room was silent. Piper stared at the walls; Abigale's eyes traced the ceilings. Tori and Paris stared at the ground; arms hung low in-between their thighs. Nick held a bottle of tequila, swinging it back and forth, staring at it.
The scenery was surreal. Kirsty was no longer with us. It was weird to think that. How did she die? Where did her soul go? Do we have souls?
I didn't know what, but something had to be said. And I couldn't take the silence any longer. "What the hell happened?"
Silence.
"I know she died . . . but why? How?" I said. The solutions and equations I tried to think of buzzed inside my brain. But when I thought the answer was clear, a blank feeling came over me. "How did she even get into the—"
"Ash . . . not now." Tori lifted her head. Our eyes met. Her eyes held kindness and a peace-treaty look. She didn't want to deal with a fight as if she tried to say Sam doesn't want to hear this.
The hell with Sam. Screw him. Kirsty may had been his girlfriend, but she was our friend, too, and we had the right to know what happened.
Before I argued this, Sam spoke, sniffling. "No, Tori. Let him. We need to figure out what happened to her." His gentle and innocent eyes looked up, glancing around the room as quietness fell once more.
"H-how can we do that?" Abigale asked, now fiddling with a pink rubber band on her wrist.
"I . . . I don't know. Investigate? Think? H-have common sense?" It was all I could think of. Many of the crime thrillers I read was all about this. How the detective got to the bottom of whatever murder he dealt with. How he asked questions to the suspect, looking for clues, and used his common knowledge to figure out the end result.
But we were a group of idiots. How could we come up with a resolution?
"Okay," he said, sniffling again. "Then let's think." Sam wiped away his tears with the back of his hand, throwing back his head to look at the ceiling.
