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Home wasn’t home so much as a hotel room stocked only with Sydney’s stolen clothes, Mitch’s chocolate milk, and Victor’s files, but that wasn’t the point At this moment, home would have been any place that wasn’t Merit Ceers on the wooden grip Victor had already begun to dig

“What if…,” she said, sing, “… what if the other people accidentally wake up?”

“They won’t,” cooed Victor “Just focus on this grave Besides…” He looked up from his work “Since when are you afraid of bodies?”

“I’m not,” she snapped back, too fast and with all the force of so Which she was Just not Victor’s

“Look at it this way,” he teased, durass “If you do wake the”

Sydney leaned forward, her short blond hair falling into her eyes, and began to dig The torked in the dark, only Victor’s occasional hu the air

Thud

Thud

Thud

II

TEN YEARS AGO

LOCKLAND UNIVERSITY

VICTOR drew a steady, straight, black line through the word marvel

The paper they’d printed the text on was thick enough to keep the ink fro as he didn’t press down too hard He stopped to reread the altered page, and winced as one of the ht-iron fence dug into his back The school prided itself on its country-club- that encircled Lockland, though striving to evoke both the university’s exclusive nature and its old-world aesthetic, succeeded only in being pretentious and suffocating It ree

He shifted his weight and repositioned the book on his knee, wondering at the sheer size of it as he twirled the Sharpie over his knuckles It was a self-help book, the latest in a series of five, by the world-renowned Drs Vale The very same Vales ere currently on an international tour The very sah time in their busy schedules—even back before they were best-selling “eurus”—to produce Victor

He thu of his an to read For the first ti a Vale book simply for pleasure No, this was for credit Victor couldn’t help but s down his parents’ works, stripping the expansive chapters on ees He’d been blacking them out forbut satisfying affair, but until last week he’d never been able to count it for anything as useful as school credit Last week, when he’d accidentally left his latest project in the art studios over lunch—Lockland University had adoctors and scientists—he’d co over it He’d expected a repri literature, or maybe the material cost of paper Instead, the teacher had taken the literary destruction as art He’d practically supplied the explanation, filled in any blanks using ter

Victor had only nodded, and offered a perfect word to the end of the teacher’s list—rewriting—and just like that, his senior art thesis had been determined

Theout several sentences in the ht of the tome If he were in need of self-help, he would search for a thin, simple book, one whose shape mimicked its promise But maybe some people needed more Maybe so that ical aid He skimmed the words and smiled as he found another section to ink out