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"So whose party are we going to tonight?" I slipon my faded jeans

"Reha face, I slip on a fitted black shirt "Doesn’t she live all the way up by the lake?" I ask, putting my boots on

She pokes her head inside the closet "Don’t be such a downer, Em For once can’t you let loose and have some fun?" Shea downer" I collect my car keys from the dresser, clip on my maroon pendant necklace, and set the feather in the jewelry drawer "I just hate driving e And there’s just so many people at Remy’s parties"

She pouts out her lip and bats her eyelashes at o have fun like two nor it We go to the Star Hollow Coe since neither of our parents could afford anything else We have to get grants each semester, buy our books used and rent them e can, and we live at hoht by Professors who don’t know h school teachers did and soe at all

Acutally I do One day I hope to get the hell out of this shithole town I live in, away from my mom, my brother, my home, all full of painful o to parties"

She pokes ht, can’t you try?"

Sighing, I nod ht, I’ll try, but it’s kind of hard to have fun when people look at you like you ht murder them"

"No one still blames you for your dad’s death The cops even said there was no way it could be you--that’s why they dropped the charges"

"Actually, they didn’t say that They just didn’t have enough evidence to push the investigation further"

"Yeah, but no one thinks you really killed him," she reassures ree "They think that’s why I disappeared for a week--that I was on the run from the cops"

"Well, maybe if you’d tell someone where you were…" She waits, but my lips stayed sealed and they’ll stay sealed until the day I die She rolls her eyes and crooks her pinkie finger in front of her "No one thinks you’re a killer Noear on it that you’ll have fun"

"Fine," I grimace and hook my pinkie to hers "I swear I’ll try to have fun"

She tightens her pinkie "Not try--will"

"I promise I will have fun," I say with a frown

She ju her hands animatedly as I fasten my studded bracelet to my wrist, then we head out the door

"And reo back on your word," she says, skipping down the stairs, swinging her arms

"Yeah, yeah, the bad karon karma, but karma has had randmother’s life

"Dude, why do you look like you’re about to coainst the kitchen doorway, singeing a stray thread on his hoodie with a lighter His scraggily brown hair is hidden beneath a grey beanie and, as usual, he has paint all over his hands He’s about the saht as me and kind of scrawny There have been a lot of tier than hter fro to hurt yourself one day Or hurt soe around him and dash into the kitchen where the carpet switches to tile I sainst the floor and watch it break

"What the heck is wrong with you?" Ian shouts, picking up the broken pieces

Ian is twenty-one, two years older than me, and he still lives at ho artist, which erator and hanging out in the attic--his "studio"

He snatches htly "Why do you have to be such a bitch sometihin fla--he wants to be there I jerk away and suck a sharp breath through my nose I’ve seen his death before, and each time is equally as painful In a beautiful world full of roses and sunshine, I’d be able to change his self-inflicting death But as far as I know, death omens are irrevocable and as peres of my journal

He rubs the black and yellow paint off his cheeks "Look, Elances at Raven, worried about her reaction "I just haven’t been sleeping that great lately"