I’d never done anything so stupid in my whole life.

Dilapidated neighborhoods along Warren Avenue slipped past my periphery, as I stared through the window of the cramped Prius. Even if I worked up the nerve to have the driver pull over and let me out, I’d be standing on Warren freakin’ Avenue, smack in the shit side of Detroit. I might’ve sported a more urban look than my yuppie peers from the suburbs, but I’d never blend in with the prostitutes and street thugs, even if I tried.

I was trapped, and hell if I didn’t know what trapped felt like.

Two hours ago, I’d been the true me. The intelligent, non-reckless me, who’d survived eight years in my father’s suffocating chokehold, only to blow it all in one stupid decision. A couple hours out of the cage, and I’d already torn my wings. I could feel his words beating against my skull: You won’t make it one year in that city. Within two hours, I’d probably proven him right.

I blamed it on what I liked to call deferential vulnerability. Sort of like peer pressure, but more academic. My version included highly persuasive variables, like moving to one of the most dangerous cities in the world by myself, and rooming with an eccentric art major, instead of the levelheaded law student my father would’ve preferred. I’d been granted permission to live off campus, too—the perk of being a ruthless prick’s daughter. Having defended some of the most loathed criminals in the city, my father carried just about the same notoriety as Kwame Kilpatrick, which meant he was rarely challenged by anyone—not even the dean.

No wonder my mom had skipped town with me when I was a baby. And had she not died unexpectedly, she’d have probably sent me to grow up in a convent, over having me return back to his iron fist.

Personally, I’d have preferred to live on campus, but my father had insisted otherwise. Not because he gave a shit about me—he just didn’t want his daughter seen going in and out of what he considered a lowly living environment. After all, what would the public think of him as a father?

Much to his dismay, I’d stumbled upon an ad for a roommate, and ended up at the Brittany. Nowhere near as luxurious as he’d have expected, but only about a mile from campus, and being the doting prick that he was, he’d refused to pay for my housing since I’d opted for the less opulent side of town. Which meant I’d need to find a job. Soon.

“Why so quiet, Kutchie?” My new roommate, Bea, peered around the passenger seat in front of me. Her eyelids had already fallen into a basset hound droop with whatever pills she’d popped just moments before we’d taken off, and the slight slur in her voice sent a little shock of panic to the back of my neck, a distress signal to my brain. Almost like a sixth sense that invariably told me something bad would happen at some point in the night.

At least she wasn’t the one driving.

At first meeting, I’d pinned her as different, sure. Although her shoulder-length jet black hair, shaved on one side, and chunky black glasses, mirrored my own unconventional style, the piercings in the bridge of her nose, her nostrils, and both cheeks set her apart. Bright red lipstick lured my eyes away from the mole at the corner of her mouth, and the tats she sported climbed up her neck to behind her ears. The bone necklace she’d paired with a ruffled red steampunk cardigan my grandma would’ve borrowed gave her a nerdy glamour-goth look. Typical inner city art student, like any other I’d anticipated meeting on campus. I admired her strangeness, having come from a prep school filled with sycophant yuppies in bland navy blue and khaki uniforms, where having any unique traits was quickly smothered in shame.

I hadn’t pegged her as a pill popper, though, and I sure as hell didn’t think she’d be dumb enough to wash them down with a pint of Jack.

Then again, I’d only met her two hours before.

“Kutscher.” I corrected my last name, swallowing back the nervous wobble in my throat.

“Right, right.” She snorted a laugh and tapped the driver, who I’d also just met.

Simone. Her girlfriend. Though Bea insisted that she, herself, was actually bisexual and willing to fuck a guy if he happened to be hot enough—another bit of personal information two hours managed to buy me. Like Bea, Simone also majored in art. Not that it took a genius to figure that out. With her long, silvery gray braids, and the paint-spattered bibs she wore, along with Bea’s flamboyant style, the two of them looked like characters off a kids TV show.

Simone passed Bea the cigarette she’d just puffed on and cranked up the Rage Against The Machine song droning in the background.

Beside me sat a dude I couldn’t bring myself to look at, mostly because he hadn’t stopped staring at me since we’d left the dorm, eyes hooded as he swayed in his seat. Like the sole rider of his own Tilt-A-Whirl. Probably high as a giraffe’s ass right then. His brain seemed to have gone satellite after two shots of Jack, and he’d acted like I’d become his source of gravity since then. Bea and Simone had introduced him, but I couldn’t remember his name. I was too busy wondering what the hell I’d gotten myself into.

Years of living cooped up in a soul-sucking hell made a girl a little antsy for some fun, so when the two of them had suggested a party? Well, I was all in. Who better to trust than the chick I’d be living with for the next year, right?

Which went back to my feelings of being trapped. In spite of having learned her sexual and food preferences, along with why she’d opted to live with me instead of her girlfriend, I hadn’t bothered to gather whether, or not, my new roommate was the kind of person to take advantage of my newfound freedom.

“You could be a model,” the kid beside me garbled, interrupting my thoughts. A cloud of warm whiskey breath hit me before the slap of his next words: “If you didn’t have that scar. D’jou know ‘at?”

“Thanks.” I shot him a quick glance and turned back to the window. “You could be somebody’s hot date, if you didn’t smell like fried pickles from the local watering hole. Asshole,” I muttered.

Instinct begged me to thumb the deformed, imperfect skin that stretched from my ear to my chin, but he wasn’t the first to tell me that. I’d grown up in a school where perfection was bred, and plastic surgeons were on speed dial. Having a scar that extended ear to jaw and down my neck ensured that I’d never land a cozy spot on the cheerleading squad. Not that I wanted to. Didn’t matter that my father had more money than the homecoming court, or that I could’ve easily attended any one of the Ivy League colleges they pined after. Guess my scar had always made me inferior, though somehow I thought attending a public university smack in the city would’ve made it less of a marvel.

Hadn’t taken long after graduation for me to fully embrace my fuck it all attitude, adding ombre blue streaks to my boring blond hair and burning my school uniform as a show of just how much I’d given a shit about fitting in. So, as much as the guy’s comment should’ve hurt, I really just wished he’d breathe in the other direction.

“How’d it happen?”

No filter. Truly. And his breath seriously came with its own proof. I felt sickly drunk just having to breathe it in.

“A skiing accident.” The same lie I’d told most of my high school classmates, except that I didn’t ski, and it wasn’t an accident. Just sounded better than telling them a psychopathic lunatic out to teach my father a lesson about karma had decided to use me as a human cutting board. Less questions that way. Because the last thing I wanted was to field anymore of the guy’s shameless interrogations.

“Oh, that’s too bad. See, modeling agents, they go through hundreds of photos a day and can be really harsh—”

“I’m truly not interested in modeling,” I cut in. “It’s like … not even in my galaxy of ambition.”

He biccuped—burped and hiccupped—the wet gurgle making me nervous that he’d puke all over my lap, as his head swayed back in my direction. “Love your hair. Like … fuckin’ blue ribbons hanging off your head.”

How poetic.

Sighing, I stared back out of my window and wished he’d pass out already.

“Hey, Jack Kerouac used to stay at the Hotel Savarine,” Bea said. She passed the cig back to Simone, and a blast of cool September air, mingled with the sour sulfur scent of the city, hit my face as she rolled the window down and made a piss-poor effort to blow out the smoke. “Pretty rad, huh?”

Again, deferential vulnerability. As a suburbanite, I’d had no idea until after we’d left the dorm, that the place we were headed was an abandoned hotel about eight miles east of the college. And why would I give a shit that Jack Kerouac had once stayed there? In his lifetime, the place likely hadn’t been a rundown hellhole, teeming with homeless junkies and kids looking to get blitzed out of their minds.

I’d somehow imagined Bea’s idea of fun to be an underground coffee house, where all the art majors cheered on slam poetry, and that the only hangover I’d suffer would come from sipping espresso past nine o’clock at night.

I should’ve known better.

“So … there aren’t, like, any gangs hanging out, right?” I hated sounding like a naive white girl whose every fourth word was ‘like’, but the fear was real. It was Detroit, after all. Even the suburban kids knew there were places in the city we didn’t belong, where we’d stick out like chopped tuna in a pool of pitiless sharks.

“I cannot guarantee that you won’t run into a gang member at this party, no. But I can, without a doubt, guarantee you’re going to have a fucking blast, so relax freshie. You’re in good hands with Bea.”

In an hour-long conversation, about ninety percent of which was about her, I’d found out that Bea was a fifth year fine arts student, working as an apprentice for some bigwig artist who’d been contracted by the city to design a massive mural made of thousands of small tiles. She hailed from the suburbs, too, but the significantly less posh Hazeltucky side of town. Which meant the abandoned building scene was probably the norm for her.

A silver object flashed in my periphery, and I glanced up to find a flask shoved in my face. Behind it, Bea offered a wink.

“Calm your nerves. You look pale.” Her slur waned between sharp and slurrier, making it hard to tell how deep into her high she’d fallen.

I shook my head, gently pushing the flask away. “No thanks. Not a fan of whiskey.” More like, not a fan of giving up my wits when the stupid decisions were stacking up.

But I wasn’t a total idiot, in spite of my brain telling me so. I’d heard enough stories about girls getting trashed at college parties, and guys doing things to them, posting it on social media. Much as I’d have loved to muddy the preening and pruning my father had put into his little garden of lies for the public, I didn’t need to martyr my innocence to do it.

“We’ll have to harden you up, freshie. You haven’t lived the collegiate life until you’ve had your head buried in a nasty toilet, puking your guts out.”

So much for slam poetry and coffee houses.

Simone turned the Prius into an empty grass lot behind a boarded up brick building, just off Jefferson, where dozens of vehicles had packed in together.

Stepping out of the car, I stared up at the ominous building that stood about ten stories high, reaching toward the moon above it. Something about it seemed sad. Lonely. Violated by decades of break-ins and vandalism, evident in the broken glass and gray blotches of chipped brick. Graffiti tattooed onto its skin, meant to deter passersby, spelled ‘Stay Out’, along with various symbols that I assumed were gang related. Even so, an inexplicable draw tugged at my feet, pulling me toward it. I wanted to see more of it, more of the destruction, more of its story. Like catching the tail end of a news report about some horrific murder, I wanted to know how it died. “How do we get inside?”

Simone led the way, flicking her cigarette into one of many patches of grass over the frost-cracked dirt. At a busted-out window, she hoisted herself up and into the small frame, with the same ease as if she’d done it a hundred times before, and disappeared inside.

“C’mon, Bloomfield, you’re next.” While making her dig at the city I’d come from, Bea jerked her head for me to follow.

I gripped the bricks as Simone had done, hoisting myself upward. “Don’t call me that.” I pushed the words out on a grunt as the windowless frame slammed into my stomach with a sharp thump. I’d spent eight years amongst the elitist rich, trying to hide the fact that I didn’t belong, contrary to my father insisting I did, which made me hate the association with a place from which I’d made a point to entirely dissociate myself.

The garbage-littered dirt floor caught my fall, a plume of moldy dust kicking up as my shoes hit the ground. A streak up my black tights marked a snag alongside my knee, ending just below my ripped up shorts. “Damn it,” I muttered, sliding the red flannel shirt off my shoulders, and tying it around my waist in an effort to hide it. Decked out in a beanie cap and Chucks, I could’ve been classified as hipster punk, a style my father detested and tried to smother with J.Crew sweaters and loafers.

Clothes I’d burned alongside my uniform.

I twisted to find Bea pushing through the window, teetering on its frame like a seesaw out of balance.

How the hell they planned to get Mister Whiskey Breath through the thing was a question I didn’t stick around to watch. Maybe his breath would carry him on a steaming cloud of Jack Daniels.

The incessant thump of bass reached my ears, a steady heartbeat that echoed inside the mostly hollow core of the building. Seemed strange to hear music while my eyes wandered the surrounding annihilation. Piles of splintered wood, rusted iron pipes and exposed wires, drywall crumbling over rotted studs. The rancid stench of mold and age crinkled my nose, as I followed Simone toward the sound. For a moment, my mind attempted to construct a scene, set in the early part of the century, when the place might’ve been a stately and respectable hotel. Nearly impossible to imagine. As I took in my surroundings, I found myself mentally snapshotting the details inside the building. The art buried beneath the destruction.

A faint breath of voices up ahead grew louder as we neared, until they filled the building’s lungs in a cacophony of conversation, none of which happened to be discernible over the music.

Through a rust-hinged doorway, we reached what appeared to be a courtyard encapsulated inside the four walls of the building, where bodies shuffled and crowded around strategically-placed kegs in buckets like ants on a fallen box of Cracker Jacks. A sea of red Solo cups littered the floor. Floodlights sliced through the surrounding darkness with an uneven light. A DJ had been set up at the south end of the wall—nothing fancy, or elaborate—just a computer with some speakers. At either side of the DJ booth stood two gables with busted out windows that, once upon a time, might’ve peered down into the lower level of the building.

I could see why the party planners had chosen the place. It was unsuspecting from the outside, completely unseen from the road.

“Let’s grab a drink!” Simone’s voice only just carried over the bass thumping against my ribs, but I followed after her, mostly because I didn’t know where else to go.

The crowd closed in on me as we weaved our way toward the kegs, and as the heat of the adjacent light beat down on my face, my instincts urged me to tuck my chin into the neck of my T-shirt. A half dozen surgeries over eight years couldn’t entirely hide the destruction of one split second that changed my life forever. I’d had to train myself not to hide the shit souvenir fate had given me as a token of my crap luck.

Fifty-three degrees of early September melted into the warmth of moving bodies, as I waited for Simone and Bea to fill their cups.

The crunch of plastic hit my chest, and the cold, wet slosh of beer saturated my favorite Nirvana tee. “Drink, freshie!”

I pushed the cup away, scrambling to wick the sour beer from the front of my shirt with my sleeve. “No thanks!”

More liquid seeped into the cotton, as she adamantly held the cup to my chest, until I had no choice but to take it. Although, holding something kept me from smacking her for soaking my shirt, so there was that.

A tall guy sidled up beside Simone, and she hugged him like they knew each other well. “Dax! How goes, my brotha’ from another motha’?”

The guy sported a dark, short crop, olive skin, and a tight pinch of his brows that made him look pissed off. Blowing smoke from his vape off to the side, he squeezed her tighter, then planted a kiss at the top of her head.

“Where’s your drink?” she asked, holding up her cup to him.

The beefy-looking male pushed away her proffered drink, eyes scanning over top of me, as if looking for someone. “I’m here on business, not pleasure.”

“Ah, then, tell me about some Hedonic.” She lifted up onto her tiptoes and whispered something into his ear, to which he shook his head.

“Nah. I don’t do that. Stay away from that shit.”

I’d only heard of the newest date rape drug on a special news report, and from what little I’d gathered about its crazy side effects, I couldn’t imagine why the hell she’d want anything to do with it.

An arm snaked around my neck and had my muscles straining, as a guy with a stubbled beard and thick ear gauges slid between Bea and me. His tongue glided across her cheek, and she chuckled, offering him a kiss on the lips. When his brown eyes landed on me, chin jutting toward me with the same intent, I looked away.

“Hey, who brought Scarface?” He snorted a laugh that was cut short when Bea slammed her elbow into his ribs.

“Disengage asshole mode. This is my new roommate. Show some respect.”

Not even her chiding could shield me from the feeling that all eyes had shifted onto me. Even the one named Dax interrupted his watchful scan with a quick downward glance my way. Not that I was anywhere near as sensitive about it as I’d been in high school, but I had an aversion to pricks, and the one beside me had met my prick quota for the night.

I threw the guy’s arm off my shoulders and stepped back, mentally dogging him in some impressive 8 Mile-esque string of insults that’d have made Eminem proud.

Dax slammed his hand into the asshole’s chest, kicking him back a step. “Get the fuck outta here, shithead.”

“Dude, I’m just fuckin’ with her.” Asshole turned to me and tipped his head, offering his palm. “I’m sorry. I’m Theo. You forgive me?”

“I said get the fuck out of here, Theo,” Dax warned, his arm sliding from Simone’s shoulders as he stepped forward.

Tail tucked, the guy walked off, dragging a stumbling Bea behind him through the crowd with her cup to her face. Sorry, she mouthed over her shoulder with an upturned brow, before disappearing into a sea of drunks.

“Don’t mind him. Kid’s a fucking socialtard.” Dax’s voice croaked as he blew another plume of smoke off to the side.

“No kidding.” Must’ve been something in the water. My scars had thickened my skin over the years, though it didn’t lesson the disappointment of finding that college was no different from high school. Guess I figured I’d finally find my tribe of misfits, like me. Turned out, the misfits were assholes, too.

His gaze lifted past mine and I followed the path of his stare to the entrance of the courtyard, where, beyond the crowd, a figure stood in the shadows. The outline of a drawn-up hoodie was all I could make out in the dim light, and Dax stepped around me, grabbing my shoulders.

“Excuse me, I have to go talk to someone.” The scent of his cologne trailed after him, as he made his way toward the entrance.

“I fucking love when she runs off with the first dick that swings her way.” Simone chugged back the cup of beer, the harsh glug banging out a pissed off admission that Bea wasn’t exclusive with her. “Then Dax ditches me. Fun night ahead. I can fucking feel it.”

“How do you know him?” I watched Dax approach the hooded figure, the way they exchanged a brotherly handshake, and how the two of them rivaled in height. After a minute of waiting for Simone to answer, I spun around to find someone else had taken her place—a brunette with a disapproving expression stamped across her face as she filled her red cup.

Choking back a surprised gasp, I trailed my gaze over the crowd, catching sight of those gray braids in the back corner, where Simone stood amid a group of women huddled around a trashcan bonfire.

Complete strangers filtered in around me, as I remained in proximity to the beer. They swarmed, bumping into me in all their eagerness to get to the alcohol, and another splash of my drink saturated the front of my shirt.

“Damn it!” I bopped back and forth like a bumper car, snapping my head back and forth to find both Bea and the guy she took off with were nowhere in sight.

The tightness in my chest clinched my lungs and the claustrophobic sensation from before closed in around me, smashing me into a tiny suffocating box. I’d always had a hard time in crowds, particularly the larger ones.

“Hey, wanna fin’ a quiet corner some’ere?” The kid who’d sat in the backseat with me stumbled backward, his half-mast eyes and slurred vocab telling me he’d become fifty shades of shitfaced.

I needed air. Quickly, judging by the way my periphery shrank and vertigo settled over me. I must’ve looked drunk myself as I weaved through the crowd, searching for an out while trying to block out the unbidden memory flashing through my head.

Pounding against the roof. The scent of gasoline burning my nose. A tight throb in my lungs.

Through a door-less entrance, the cool air hit my skin, lifting the smog filling my lungs and the visuals seeping in from the fringes. As I took three deep breaths, the empty space allowed me to settle my head, setting the world upright again.

I hated crowds, but more than that, I hated being ditched in the middle of a bunch of strangers, inside an abandoned building, in an unfamiliar neighborhood.

Why the hell did I think going out would be fun?

A stairwell ahead beckoned, almost calling to me with its enticing curve into the darkness above, and I set the red cup down at the foot of it, before ascending the crumbled concrete. Perhaps higher up, I’d get a better view of where my roommate had wandered off.

With each step up, the air grew thinner, easier to breathe, while the sounds faded below me. As visibility dimmed to darkness, I shoved my hands into my pocket, fishing out my apartment keys that held a small can of pepper spray and a mini flashlight, which I switched on. A halo of light cut through the blackness, illuminating about three stair lengths ahead of me, as I continued to climb.

At least ten minutes must’ve passed when I finally reached the top of the stairs. An old steel door sat precariously hanging from its hinges, and I stepped around it, wincing at the streak of fire across my back. “Ouch! Shit!” I reached back to palpate the gritty surface of a nail-head sticking out of the frame behind me. “Great. I’ll probably have tetanus,” I muttered, walking out onto the gravelly bed of the roof, the pain of my scratch quickly forgotten for the colorful lights that greeted me.

Tall scaffolding sat empty, where, I guessed, the sign at the top of the building once stood. Nothing but the rusted steel still carried the remnants of its name. Ahead of me, Jefferson Avenue stretched on, and I rounded the rooftop’s perimeter, the center of which opened to the buildings foramen like a hole in its skull, revealing the crowd below. Ugh. A nauseous sight, from where I sat almost a hundred feet above them, guarded only by a foot-high safety wall.

Backing away, I kept on, until I faced what I determined to be the south side of the building. I approached the parapet, and a lump caught in my throat when I peered into the seemingly endless stories that merged into a shrunken darkness below. Only the occasional flicker of metal told me I was looking down at the makeshift parking lot at the back of the building.

Winds whipped across my face, blowing my long locks into a tangled mess that I gathered to the side and tucked behind my ear. A tumultuous gathering of clouds moved across the moon, like dust kicked up from a stampede. It gave the night sky a sort of dark, turbulent backdrop against the city’s soft lights—very Gothamesque. My new home.

I dared myself to rest my elbows against the ledge, and stared out over the cars tooling along Jefferson, like the miniature villages I once saw at Bronner’s as a kid. Heights had always been a problem for me, coming in at a close second to my fear of confined spaces. Luckily, the edge of the building sat a little further back from the actual edge. Still, one wrong move would have me tumbling to my death—I’d just hit the second ledge along the way.

“You’re putting a lot of trust in that ledge.”

The deep foreign voice had me swinging around to find a figure standing in the doorway, his face hidden by the shadows. His hands disappeared into the pockets of his hoodie, which also covered his head. The same mysterious figure Dax had walked off toward earlier. Only, being up close somehow added on another foot to his height. Sort of like those selfies of distant mountains you could pinch with your fingers until you ended up smack in front of the monstrosities, realizing how insignificant you were in the world.

My fingers curled around the edge of the stone, my heart kicking up at his unexpected intrusion.

“These old buildings … they just crumble without warning sometimes.”

I glanced back at the stories below and stepped forward. “I’m sure this building’s survived more than me.” Jutting my chin toward the garbage lying around the ground, I barely took my gaze from him. “I’m obviously not the first.”

“You could be the last.”

It occurred to me how sequestered from the rest of the group I suddenly felt, when I heard the distant bass still thumping from the courtyard below. No one would ever hear me scream, if he happened to throw me over the edge, or rape me up here.

He stepped into the light, and the first thing I noticed were his eyes. Piercing blue and razor cut against the black hood that framed his pale face. Small tufts of his hair stuck out over his forehead, and the dark lines of his chiseled concave cheeks beckoned my eyes toward the sharp angles of his face, a strong, square jaw, and his classic Grecian nose. Magnificently beautiful. He belonged on a billboard, not hidden behind a hoodie with his ripped-up jeans, looking like some kind of street thug.

My jaw damn near creaked as I stared up at him in awe.

Tipping my head to hide what little he might see of my scar, I stepped backward again and tucked my hands into the loose pockets of my shorts. Flipped the safety of my pepper spray. Set my finger to the button. “Am I making you nervous, or something?”

Those eyes scanned down and back up, softening with amusement. “Am I making you nervous?” Standing well over six feet tall, he could’ve easily hoisted me over the edge of the building. So, yes, I supposed he was.

“Is that why you came up here? To try to scare me?”

“I wouldn’t have gone through the trouble of announcing my presence, if that were the case.” He lurched toward me, and I squeezed the canister in my hand, ready to douse his eyeballs with a horrific burn, but he just jumped up onto the scaffolding beside me.

I watched in both terror and wonderment, as he climbed higher and higher, his tall, but agile, body scaling the rusted metal like a panther against the gloomy gothic sky, until he nearly reached the top. A small pack clung to his back, as if hanging on to him for dear life. I knew how it felt. The mere sight of him teetering along the narrow steel coiled my stomach.

“You, um …. It really wouldn’t take much to slip, you know. I think it’s, like, one in three people stupid enough to climb those things end up falling to their deaths.” I prattled on with some nonexistent statistic I’d pulled out of my ass, but it really didn’t seem to have much effect on him. He still pulled himself one rung higher than the last.

“You think?” Feet skidding across the bar, he fell, catching himself on the lower rung, while the acids of the vending burrito I’d scarfed down earlier burned in my chest. His chuckle grated my spine, as he pulled himself back to a stand. “That would’ve spattered the brains, for sure.”

I clamped my eyes shut at the disgusting visual that planted in my head. “If you came up here for some crazy act of suicide, you could’ve at least had the courtesy to wait until I’d left,” I shouted up to him.

His elbows rested on the bar above his head, and he leaned forward, staring down at me. “I think most people vain enough to commit suicide like the idea of an audience.”

Asshole.

“That’s a misconception. Some people just want to disappear.” I peered over the edge of the building, once again struck with the image of him lying in a pool of brains. “Can you just come down? I really don’t need your blood on my hands. This night’s been shitty enough for me.”

“Yeah? Why’s that?”

“A series of unfortunate, stupid decisions.”

“Is that why you’re up here?”

“Touché,” I muttered. It probably was stupid of me to come to the roof of an abandoned building without telling anyone.

He scaled back down the scaffolding as if he’d done it a million times, and jumped from the last rung to land beside me. Not even breathless from the act. “You would know?”

“Know what?”

Stuffing his hands into his pockets, he backed away and shrugged. “About wanting to disappear.”

“I’m sure every teenager’s had a phase.” Mine’d come right after my mother had died and I was forced to live with my father.

He tipped his head, eyes roving up and down me, as if in appraisal. “You don’t seem the type.”

“Why’s that?”

As if the light hit just right, catching the scar at my chin, his eyes seemed drawn to that part of my face, flickering with the same curiosity I’d seen countless times before. In fact, I anticipated he’d ask the same question that’d plagued me for the last two years, so I didn’t even bother to hide the scar that time.

“What are you doing up here?” he asked instead. “Only two reasons people ever come up here. For a thrill, or to escape something.”

“Neither. I was just curious.”

“What are you curious about?”

I looked out over the city, then back to him, biting my cheek to hide a smile. “How long it would take for some asshole to find me up here and harass me.”

His lips twitched like he might smile, too, but he glanced away as if to squash it, before turning back. “You came with two girls, right? Braids and the vampire?”

“Maybe. Why?”

He jutted his chin toward me. “Think your ride’s leaving.”

Jolts of panic rippled down my spine, and I pivoted to see Simone and Bea shuffling to their car, the scant bit of moonlight catching the silver braids and that conspicuous red cardigan. Two extra silhouettes, presumably Theo, the guy Dax’d sent off, and the nosy backseat drunk stumbled after them. “Shit!” I leaned forward, fingers curling around the edge of the building. “Bea! Simone! Wait!” Jogging along the edge of the building, I attempted to get closer. “Wait! I’m up here!” Not even my hands waving in the air elicited so much as a glance back. “Bea! Simone! It’s Sera!”

The four of them piled into the Prius, and I spun around, searching for the stairs.

“Don’t think you’re going to catch them. By the time you make it through the crowd and back through the building, they’ll be a long ways down Jefferson.”

I lodged my fingers in my hair, my heart beating hard enough to punch through my ribs. “They’re my ride. What the hell am I going to do? Is there a bus, or something?”

“It’s two in the morning. If there is a bus, I imagine it’s packed with all kinds of shady ass characters.”

Lifting my phone from my pocket, I scrolled through names. “Damn them! I can’t call my dad. He’ll kill me,” I mumbled. “I’ll have to get an Uber, or something.”

“Or I can give you a ride.”

Something about the way he said the words tickled my spine. “I don’t even know you,” I answered, perhaps a bit too brusquely.

“You know the Uber driver?”

“No. But there’s a certain accountability. They …. They’re not supposed …. They could—”

He tipped his head, watching my fumbling with amusement. “We have some accountability between us, too.”

“How so?”

“You know Dax. Dax knows your friends.”

“None of whom know I’m up here with you.”

“That was pretty stupid of you.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out a pack of smokes, and when he offered me one, I declined. “Here’s the deal,” he said around his cancer stick. “You can take the bus. You can call some fuckin’ pansy ass Uber.” He flicked his Zippo, shielding the end of the cigarette with his cupped palms, and puffed it a few times, blowing the smoke off to the side like some kind of modern day James Dean. “Or you can say to hell with this suburban girl shit, and let me give you a ride.”

No lie, I actually thought about that for a minute.

But only a minute.

“Thanks, but I’ll take my chances with the pansy ass.” I stepped past him, noting the difference in size, and breathing in the heady notes of his cologne that hit the back of my throat. An intoxicating sweetness quickly stamped out by my frustration, as my hands burned with the urge to throttle my roommate’s neck.

With anger simmering in my stomach, I hustled down the dark stairwell, flashlight leading the way, certain that the stranger would pop out any minute and grab me.

My feet slowed. Halfway down the stairwell, I stopped. I was behaving as my father expected. In fact, I could almost hear him laughing at my panic, telling me that was what I got for choosing a Detroit school and hanging out with thugs and hoodlums, as he commonly referred to the art majors. He would’ve told me I couldn’t handle a city like Detroit. He did tell me that.

But I’d chosen it as my home. They weren’t thugs and hoodlums. They were my people, and even if I didn’t quite fit in with them, I was a part of them.

I strolled the rest of the way down, until I reached the lower level, and pulled up the Uber app on my phone.

A thunderous crack reverberated down my spine.

A collection of shouts and screams pierced through the music, which cut out with an abrupt scratch.

What sounded like a train rolling through the building, all the footsteps pounding against the gravelly floor, kept me frozen in place. In complete horror, I watched the crowd disperse in a chaotic wave toward the non-boarded up windows and entrances.

Another crack, the sound unmistakable that time. Gunshots.

My blood ran cold, my whole body paralyzed.

Move! my head commanded, but all I could do was stare from the shadows, while bodies forced their way to the exits, squeezing through broken windows like rats in a flood. Climbing over each other to get away from whoever held the gun.

The screams grew louder.

Someone tipped over the trashcan, and fire caught the papers strewn about.

The DJ rushed over to stamp it out, catching his pants leg on fire. A second guy doused him with beer, putting out the flame.

Another trashcan toppled over, once again sending flames across the garbage littered ground.

Go. Get out.

I had no place to run, though. The crammed exits meant getting trampled alive. Or burned.

I was trapped.

Something gripped my elbow, and I swung around to see the guy from the rooftop standing over me. “C’mon. I know a way out.”

At another tug, I shook my head. “Up? Up is not a way out!”

“There’s a fire escape on the east wall.”

Fire escape. Made for fire. And escape. I pushed after him, trailing behind as we made our way back up toward the rooftop.

“Why do we have to go to the roof? Why not just catch the fire escape on one of the lower levels?”

He didn’t answer, and eventually, we pushed through the rusted door, back out onto the rooftop. Below us, the crowd trickled out of the building like bugs scampering out of a nest. I followed the stranger to the east side of the building, where we came to a stop in front of a narrow wall of bricks sticking up from the edge. A chimney, I guessed.

“Where’s the escape?”

“You’re looking at it.” After shrugging the pack from his back, he unzipped it and pulled out a skinny flashlight, tucking it between his teeth. Rising to his feet, he hoisted the pack over the top of the chimney, down which it tapped against the bricks, falling out of sight. Angling the flashlight over the building’s edge, he swept it across the lawn below, a circle of light cutting over the dark abyss. “There.” He pointed to the pack where it lay on the ground about a hundred feet down.

Sickness churned in my stomach as his plan crystalized in front of me. “No. No, no, no.”

“This building is nine stories. About ninety feet in the air. There used to be a storefront connected to it that they demolished after it caught fire a few years back. The chimney ends just below the second story. We’d drop, not even twenty feet.”

A nervous chuckle burst through my chest. “Unless we drop ninety feet from the top. I’m not doing this.”

“You wanna head back in with the gunman? Be my guest. I’ll see you on the other side.”

“Wait. I …. I’m afraid of …. It’s a tight squeeze in there. What if we get stuck?”

“We won’t.”

“How do you know? Haven’t you heard the Santa horror stories? Guys getting stuck in chimneys?”

His lips stretched into a crooked smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “This ain’t my first time. The masonry inside is shit. The mortar sticks out from the brick, so you can climb down. Easy. Like climbing stairs.”

“Then drop two stories.”

“Drop and roll. S’all you gotta do.”

“What are you? One of those parkour freaks?”

The distant sounds of sirens from the south side of the building filled my chest with warm and fuzzy blossoms of hope. “Police are here. We’ll be fine. No need to fall to our deaths.”

“Yeah. Because anyone’s permitted to break into a building and set it on fire. This is breaking and entering. And destruction of property.”

“We didn’t break in. We climbed through a window.”

“This building was recently purchased by some bigwig investor. Don’t think the new owner’s going to give a shit whether you broke in, or climbed in.” He raised a brow and spun toward the chimney, where he hoisted himself up over the bricks.

I rushed forward, peering into the dark tunnel closing in around him. His flashlight bounced off the walls, while he scooted his way down the brick. His movements were slow and tedious, but in seconds, I stared down at the top of his head, already about ten feet below me.

Tight pangs hit my chest, bullets of panic that mirrored my panting breaths, and a cold, nauseous sensation tickled my ribs. A sharp ping zapped my skull, and I relaxed my clenched jaw. I can’t get caught here. My father would yank my tuition money so fast, it’d make my head spin.

I pushed up to the chimney, just as he had, choking back the acids at the back of my throat as I stared down over the edge to the drop below.

“Don’t look down, just climb in, and keep your eyes focused on the bricks below your feet.” The guy called up from another twenty feet down, putting him thirty feet closer than I was to the ground.

Taking a few deep breaths, I clasped my eyes shut to center my head, and slid off the edge of the brick. My shoes skidded along the surface, and the darkness slipped in my periphery as I dropped, letting out a shriek. “Fuck!” Stomach balled into a knot, I caught my fall on a brick and hung from the edge, one foot against one wall, the other against the one behind me.

“Fuck!” I breathed out a second time, trembling to pull myself up. My arms wobbled like jelly, my muscles weak.

“It’s all right. You’re all right now. Just scoot yourself down slowly.”

“I can’t!” A sob broke in my chest, and a dry scratch in my throat burned as I pushed past the lump there. “I’m …. I’m afraid of tight spaces!”

“You’re gonna be okay. Bend your knees and push against the bricks.”

I shook my head, clutching onto the edge of the chimney, and closed my eyes, praying for those seconds just before I’d agreed to come to this shithole to return.

Never again. Please, God, I’ll never do anything stupid again.

“Let go. Just let go. You’re not going to fall. And if you do, I’ll catch your fall. C’mon.”

“Catch my fall?” The incredulous tone of my voice bounced off the soot-stained wall in front of me. “As we both tumble to our death, you mean?”

“Your alternative is sitting there all night. ‘S’at what you want?”

No. Hell, no. I wanted a nice warm bath with Epsom salts, and two ibuprofens to steal away the monster headache I’d worked up in all of my panic. Hand trembling, I let go and slapped my palm against the wall behind me, then pressed the other into the wall in front of me.

“Now walk down. Slowly.”

The confidence and command in his voice seemed to speak to my muscles more than my own, so I did as he instructed. Walking down the wall. Little steps at a time. Hoping not to die.

A sweat broke over my skin, my heart racing with every shift of my hands. My breaths arrived fast and broken. I didn’t even know how far down I’d climbed before the anxiety settled over me.

Rope biting into my wrists. Gasoline burning my nose. So cold, I can’t get warm.

“I can’t.” The words seeped past my clenched teeth, my jaw tight and aching. “I can’t do this.”

“You’re almost there, keep going.”

“You don’t …. You don’t understand. I can’t do this.”

“Only way out is down at this point. C’mon, we’ve got about forty feet to the drop.”

My eyelids shot open, and I snapped my head back, estimating the distance from the top. “Oh, God, I’ve only gone thirty feet?”

“Keep going.”

Keep going. Keep going. My muscles twitched at the sound of his voice, and I hated their sense of loyalty to his command over mine.

I scooted down, breathing in through my nose, out through my mouth. I tried not to think of the bricks slithering in around me. The scent of fire in my nose. The fact that my space seemed to be getting tighter. Or maybe it just felt that way. I kept moving, focusing on the wall ahead of me, and the placement of my feet below me.

“Okay, here’s where we drop. Use as much space as you can. Don’t just drop straight down. Roll once your toes hit the grass.”

The tone of his voice sounded like what I imagined a skydiving instructor might, right before pushing some poor sap out the door.

And yet, I’d never wanted to get out of a place so much in my life. I didn’t even care if I broke a leg trying.

His body dropped out below me, and I watched him do exactly as he’d directed—drop and roll. In one fluid movement, he swiped up his pack and stepped aside.

“It’s about fifteen feet. You can do this.”

I allowed my shaky hands to slide against the wall, and the second I pulled my feet in, my body fell through the air, crashing to the earth with a resounding pain that traveled up my shins, along my spine, and slammed into my sinuses. I tumbled to the side in an awkward roll, and lay there, staring up at the moon.

The stranger stepped into my view, his hand outstretched. “So you did it.”

In spite of the ache in my back, I allowed him to pull me up to a stand.

The echo of pain lingered in my ankle, knocking me back a step, but he yanked tight, and wrapped his hand around my waist to steady me.

“You need me to carry you?”

“No. This is humiliating enough. I’ll suffer the walk, thanks.”

We rounded the building—ungracefully hobbled, in my case—to find a fire truck, police cars, and a crowd of people corralled together.

Though, that didn’t shock me quite as much as seeing the long, sturdy-looking fire escape snaking down the side of the building.

“You said there wasn’t a fire escape! Why did you lie?”

He shot a glance over his shoulder, but kept on down the side street. “You said you couldn’t climb down the chimney. You lied, too.”

“I had no choice! I could’ve died up there!”

“Everyone has a choice. So, how does it feel?”

“How does what feel?” I hissed, and at a sharp throb along my shin, I winced.

“To conquer your fear.”

I paused, dumbfounded, and looked back to the building and the chimney I’d just climbed down. Ninety feet high inside a cramped space. Something I wouldn’t have willingly done, had someone paid me.

“Offer’s still there, if you want a ride home.” Twisting around to face me, he walked backwards, sliding a pair of gloves onto his hands. “Or you can wait for your Uber. Your choice.”

“I don’t even know your name.”

“Ty.”

“I’m Sera. As in Serafina.”

“Yeah, I know.”

Rearing back, I frowned, folding my arms as I followed after him. “Um. How?”

“Bea! Simone! It’s Sera! Wait for me!” His hands waved dramatically in the air, mocking me.

Biting the inside of my cheek stifled the urge to laugh. “Right.”

“So, Serafina. Named after the angels.” He came to a stop in front of a sleek black motorcycle hidden in the brush, and handed me a helmet he pulled from somewhere on the other side of it.

“What are you, a religion major?”

He smirked and looked past me for a moment, as if checking to make sure no one had followed us.

Paranoid, I checked, too, before shifting my attention back to the impressive machinery standing before me. “I’ve never been on a bike before.”

Lips screwed to a wry smile, he mounted the bike and jerked his head for me to get on behind him. “Well, this night just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it, Sera?”