Chapter 1

In times of great stress, Molly Tompkins would close her eyes and flash back to conversations she’d had with her mother. Seated on a white wicker bench on the veranda of their small two-bedroom house, she would be fretting about which university to attend, while her mother affectionately ran her fingers through Molly’s’s mass of brown locks.

“You should count yourself lucky that you have all these options. Your father and I both struggled to be able to afford college. Times were tough, back in my day.”

As much as Molly disliked hearing stories that contained the phrase, ‘back in my day,’ the memories gave her comfort and reminded her that whatever stress she was feeling at the time would undoubtedly pass.

Her father was meek and mild, just like her mother. Both Frederick and Louise Tompkins had been teachers since before Molly was born. In addition to teaching at the local high school, they always took the time to teach their daughter the valuable life lessons they had learned over the course of their lives.

Flash forward to now, back to her time of great stress as she finishes up the last final exam of her junior year at the University of Texas where she is pushing toward a degree in Education. She shades in the circles for the multiple-choice questions, and just as she is quickly jotting in a response to the last short answer problem, the professor calls time. Molly exhales a long breath as though she’s been holding it the entire time, then gets up from her chair after turning her paper over on the desk.

“How’d you do?” Kyle Ackard asked as they exited the examination room.

Kyle had followed Molly her whole life—at least, that’s how it seemed. From kindergarten through high school graduation, to this university and even the same major—all of his decisions seemed to coincide directly with hers. Not that Molly minded, Kyle was the ‘boy next door’ type, though he’d had a crush on her since preschool. To his dismay, Molly wasn’t necessarily attracted to him in the way he wanted her to be. In fact, Molly hadn’t once even considered the possibility of being more than friends with him.

“I think I did well!” she replied. “How about you?”

Kyle shrugged his shoulders, and ran a hand through his hair.

“Meh, it is what it is, I guess,” he laughed. “Where you headed now?”

“Back to my dorm I guess to wait for the final marks. Elodie wants to go out tonight to celebrate, but it’s so not my thing,” Molly told him.

“Molly, come on. You’ve been a total goody-two-shoes for as long as I can remember. You’ve never snuck out, or done even the slightest thing wrong. Hell, have you ever even said a curse word?”

He smiled, nudging her a bit.

“I just find it easier to have fun without the added excitement. That’s all.” She smiled at him. “Well, I should go. I need to stop at the cafeteria for some lunch on the way. Talk to you later, okay?” She waved him off, and he smiled and waved back, walking in the opposite direction.

Molly took her time walking back to the dormitory, thinking about how great it was to finally be done with her exams. To think, in just one more year, she’d be graduated with a teaching degree. Just like mom and dad, she thought to herself. When she first applied to University, her parents were encouraging her to work toward a degree in law. Convinced that Molly could make an incredible income as a lawyer, it was all they ever drilled into her through high school. Upon arriving, however, Molly soon realized that she wanted to be a teacher like her parents. The pride and honor of enriching the minds of children felt like payment enough. Sure, she knew her parents struggled, even with both of them working—but over the years, Molly had learned to live rather modestly. Money just wasn’t that important to her.

Although she and her parents disagreed on her intended major, they had mutual respect for each other’s opinions and remained very close. It was this strong bond and respect that kept Molly in check her whole life. It was because of this bond that she never acted out like most girls her age. All through junior high and high school she maintained straight A’s and held a full-time job at the local department store. She didn’t go to parties, she never drank or smoked cigarettes, and she never really had any steady or serious boyfriends. Molly was a good girl, and proud to be so.

“Hey Mols!” a voice called out from the window of her dorm room.

A bouncy, raven-haired girl was smiling and waving to signal Molly, her fair-skinned wrist nearly invisible under her woven bracelet. Yes, Molly was a prim and proper kind of girl—until she met Elodie Sherwood, that is.

“How did it go? Did ya pass?”

Molly smiled and waved.

“Probably,” she said as Elodie’s wavy hair blew in her face as a cool breeze broke the heat of the June sunshine.

“Woohoo!”

And with that, Elodie bounced back into the window. She and Molly met on their first day moving into dorms, at the start of their freshman year. They were total opposites—Molly arrived in a button up cardigan with a floor-length skirt, her hair in a tight bun, and Elodie wore a ratty Van Halen t-shirt and denim jeans that had more rips and tears than actual denim. Her hair was permanently wavy, and she wore woven bracelets all over her wrists. Molly was prim and proper, and Elodie’s attitude was all rock and roll. Regardless of their differences, the two instantly clicked and had been best friends ever since.

Molly loved Elodie like a really cool older sister, one that you’d follow around and imitate, even though the two were just a couple months of apart in age. It was Elodie that brought Molly to her first party, provided her first alcoholic drink, and even convinced her to try a puff of a marijuana joint. That was an experience Molly could have lived without, and as such, hadn’t touched it since. But, Elodie was always there for her, and in turn, she swore to always be there for Elodie.

Elodie had a very different upbringing from Molly. For starters, when she was just eight years old her mother was diagnosed with leukemia. After a harrowing battle, she died the next year leaving Elodie and her father, Walter, to fend for themselves. Unfortunately for Elodie, her father wasn’t exactly caught up with the times. He made his expectations of her perfectly clear—her only job now was to take care of the housework and meals, just as her mother had done. He refused college or university, and if not for protective services stepping in, he would have kept her home from school as well. The thing about Walter was that for years he had subjected Elodie’s mother to all kinds of emotional abuse—and that soon passed on to Elodie when her mother was gone.

When she turned sixteen, the emotional abuse became physical, and one night when Elodie was acting out, Walter slapped her right across the face. It was at that point that she took all the money she could get her hands on and got herself an apartment in a different city, changing her name to Francine Dubois. She did everything she could to hide from her father. She enrolled herself in a high school, made decent grades and held onto a job to be able to afford her apartment. Once she turned eighteen, she realized that her father wasn’t even looking for her, so she changed her name back to Elodie Sherwood, and explained to her current high school why she had done all of it. They gladly transferred all of her grades under her true identity and forwarded her transcripts. The rest, as they say, is history.

As Molly walked into the dorm room, Elodie was dancing around to a song by Green Day, flailing her arms like she was playing air guitar. Laughing, Molly started nodding her head to the beat and joined in on the guitar playing.

“Hold up,” Elodie laughed, holding up her hands, signaling for Molly to stop. “You can’t look like a perfect little girl while jamming out to Green Day. Let that hair down!”

She reached her hand out to the bun on Molly’s head and pulled the elastic out, watching as the hair fell loosely down her back. Molly shook it out, and lifted her eyes to meet Elodie’s gaze.

“See what I mean? Drop dead gorgeous.”

“Says you!” Molly smirked, looking down at the modest outfit she was wearing.

It would be easy to assume she had just returned from church, or considering the shoes she wore, a nurse’s convention.

“I might be sexy to the Reverend’s son, but I certainly am not sexy to any of the guys around here.”

“Well, if you’d let me give you that makeover, you would see it. You have all the goods to be sexy,” Elodie smiled, crossing her arms and sizing Molly up from head to toe.

“Don’t talk about my goods,” Molly laughed, swatting Elodie on the arm. “I don’t need to look like a stripper to land myself a boyfriend, thank you very much.”

Elodie started making movements as if she were on a stripper pole.

“But we make such good money, and the bouncers don’t let them touch!”

She was joking of course, but Molly couldn’t help but think she might be just a bit serious.

“Anyway, I was thinking maybe we should celebrate tonight. Some guy dressed in grunge gave me a flyer for a dive bar called The Howl. We should check it out!”

She passed Molly the flyer and quickly put on her best puppy dog face in a plea to her friend. Molly checked out the flyer and as soon as she noticed the part of the city it was in, quickly pushed it back into Elodie’s hands.

“Nooo way. Not a chance. That’s in East Austin! I read in the paper that a guy got stabbed there last weekend. It’s literally the worst part of the city.”

Molly sat down at her desk and opened up her laptop.

“Come on, Mols! Live a little!” Elodie begged. “While we’re still young enough to live a little, without needing walkers and wheelchairs to get to the dance floor. We just finished our second to last year of university, and really, what have we done so far? Nada.”

Molly considered her friend’s request, but knew it was too dangerous. It was the kind of place where gang bangers go, or bikers. It was full of violence, alcohol and loud heavy metal music. She shook her head, no.

“Come on, let’s go get something to eat and we’ll find a less West Side Story way to celebrate.” Molly smiled, pulling Elodie by the arm right out the door.

When they walked into the cafeteria, they were met with the smell of grill grease and today’s meatloaf surprise—the surprise being that it was cooked yesterday as hamburgers. Arms linked, the two girls headed to the salad bar and picked up garden salads with ranch dressing. They paid with their meal cards and sat at a table by the window overlooking the courtyard. Elodie smirked, looking out the window at a couple sitting under a large oak tree, making out.

“Ugh, P.D.A. much?”

Molly looked in the same direction and her mouth dropped in disbelief as she recognized one of the people beneath the tree.

“That’s Greg Fieldman!” she exclaimed.

“Yeah, but that’s not Francy Wallace.”

Elodie laughed, almost choking on her salad.

“I wonder if she knows this is going on while she’s at work.”

She pulled out her cell phone and snapped a few close-up photos of the pair, and sent them to Francy in a text message.

“El, you shouldn’t be stirring the pot.”

Molly frowned, thinking only about what Francy would feel the minute she saw the photos.

“She deserves it—don’t you remember how she made out with Tom Garrett, even after I told her I liked him? She’s a sleaze-bag.”

Elodie shrugged it off, just as her phone beeped, indicating she’d received a text message. She checked it and frowned.

“Well damn. That’s too bad,” she said, as she passed Molly her phone so she could read the text message.

Old news biotch, we broke up last week.

“So, about tonight—plans?” Molly asked, as she deftly changed the topic.

Elodie snapped back to reality and began pleading once more.

“Please, can we go to that club? I promise I will never ask for anything ever again!” Elodie begged, pouting.

Molly took a bite of her salad to give herself more time to think about it. What’s the worst that could happen, she thought, a stabbing? She mused at all the things that could possibly go wrong, but saw the look in Elodie’s eyes. She desperately wanted to go and it was clear that she wouldn’t want to go alone.

“Fine—we’ll go. But if I get stabbed, drugged or worse, I’ll haunt you for the rest of your life. You’ll never sleep a wink, and my dying wish will be to be buried in that outfit you love so much,” Molly told her.

Elodie laughed.

“No worries darling, you’ll be just fine!”