Page 71 of The Hallows Boys

I sit down on my bed, grabbing a cookie and waving a hand for her to join me. She smiles a tiny smile, but sadness runs through her features as she sits with me. “I really am sorry, Sage.”

“It’s okay,” I breathe. “I’m just not ready to share those photos with anyone. They’re from when my parents lived here.”

“I wish I had photos of my dad,” she breathes, grabbing a handful of chips.

I shake my head. “I’ve never heard you mention him. You don’t have to share with me if you don’t want to, Juliet.”

She puts some chips in her mouth. “I feel like you might be the only one that even comes close to understanding, honestly.”

I eat some more of my cookie, then grab another. “What do you mean?”

“My dad didn’t die.” She swallows. “But he left when I was a baby. He picked another kid over me, like I wasn’t good enough or something. He chose to watch some other girl grow, leaving me with my mom.”

I click my tongue. “Then he’s an idiot.”

She smiles sadly. “Maybe.”

I don’t know why I do it, but I stand up and go to my vanity to pull the picture back out. Sitting back down, I lay it between us, putting a finger just above my father. “That’s my dad, Andrew. People say I get my smile from him.”

Juliet leans forward, falling silent while she stares at the picture. After a minute, she points a finger to my uncle Aaron. “That’s your uncle? He looks just like your dad.”

“Yep.” I swallow. “They’re twins.”

Juliet grabs the picture, flips it over, and then her eyes go wide as she looks at me. “The Hallows Boys?!”

I laugh. “Yeah, did I not mention that part? My dad and my uncle founded the Hallows Games.”

She stares at me, blinks a few times slowly, then laughs. “And your mom was chosen for the games or something? Talk about history repeating itself, huh?”

I snort. “Tell me about it.”

* * *

The moon hangs above us as Juliet and I lie on our backs on my roof. It’s a clear night, and the wind has seemed to calm down so it isn’t too cold. The shingles of my house provide a very uncomfortable bed for us, but the joint Juliet brought with her is making it worth it. I’ve never been a big smoker, since cheering calls for clear lungs, butwhen in Rome,right?

Juliet takes a big hit, blowing a cloud of smoke up into the night sky as she hands the joint to me. “Have you heard our famous scary story yet?”

I take the joint, my head light and spinning. “No?”

She giggles. “The Blackmore Tragedy. It’s actually a really sad story, but I’m sure details have gotten twisted over the years, so I can’t promise everything I know is true.”

I suck on the joint softly, only pulling a small amount of smoke into my lungs before I hand it back to her. “Well, don’t leave me in suspense.”

She huffs a laugh. “Back in the day, there was this sweet girl who went to Blackmore High. People said she was a quiet girl, kind of a loner.”

I cut her off. “Is this about you?”

She laughs. “Shut up.”

I chuckle, turning my head to look at her as she takes another hit from the joint. She blows the smoke out, then continues. “As I was saying, she was quiet, kind of a loner. People say she was going to be valedictorian of her class, until she went missing.”

Goosebumps rise on my skin, and I wish I could blame it on the breeze blowing, but the night is still. “What happened to her?”

Juliet crosses her leg over the other. “The town sent out a search party for her every day for a month, and no one was able to find her. There aren’t a lot of places to hide in Blackmore, so it turned into this huge mystery around town. Finally, the state sent the FBI in to do a sweep with K-9s and shit, and they ended up finding her body out in the far edge of the cemetery – where all the old ass crypts are. She was in a shallow grave, completely naked, her body mutilated. They said she was cut all over, and her neck still had a rope around it from where she was strangled.”

I start to feel a little sick, and a chill runs down my spine. I picture the scene that Juliet is describing, but instead it’s my body in a shallow grave, bleeding and dead. I clear my throat. “Did they ever find who did it?”

“Yeah, they arrested someone who she went to school with – a student. They found his DNA inside of her, like he raped her before he killed her.” She sits up, pinching the end of the joint until the ember falls off and rolls down the shingles. “He pleaded innocent from the very first day, said it was just a bad coincidence since he had hooked up with her prior to her going missing, but no one believed him. He went down for it, pretty sure he’s still in prison.”

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