Chapter 1“Have you ever tried to stab something with a chef’s knife?”
Pausing the slasher movie we’re watching, I glance at my best friend and toss another fish-shaped cheddar cracker in my mouth.
Taylor sits against the tufted headboard of my bed, a pillow clutched against her chest. Her eyes flit to me. “Um . . . have . . . you?”
I nod. “That pumpkin last Halloween. Remember, Mom left the carving knife at my aunt’s? It was impossible.” I swing my fist through the air in a stabbing motion. “The tip doesn’t pierce anything. It’s not even sharp.”
Taylor snorts. “Sometimes you frighten me.” She tucks a lock of her fire engine–red hair behind her ear, then submerges her hand in the bowl of similarly red fish beside her. Her black-painted nails swim through the sea of candy like piranhas.
If anyone else said that to me, it would hurt. But it’s a badge of honor from my best friend. Being scared is her favorite extracurricular activity. The girl dreams of falling in love with a ghost (or other supernatural entity—she’s not picky) someday. “I’m just saying that a chef’s knife is not a good weapon to murder people with.”
“What is, then?” Taylor’s left eyebrow arches.
“My cousin says, if you’re using kitchen utensils, it should be a slicing knife. But you use the blade, not the point.”
Taylor decapitates a fish with her teeth, then uses the body to take pretend notes. She mimes ending the last word with a flourish. “Use slicing knife to do murders. Noted.”
“Bobby’s a sous chef. He knows about this stuff.”
“Amity, it’s a movie. About a guy who keeps coming back to life after being blown up, set on fire, shot until he looks like Swiss cheese, and catapulted into space. I don’t think they’re going for realism.”
I shrug. “All I’m saying is that if they
tried, it might actually be scary.”
“Someday, Callaway, I’m going to find something that freaks you out.” Taylor thrusts her hand into the air. “This is now my mission.”
“Best of luck, Prescott,” I deadpan.
When I was five, there was a three-day span when I refused to go in my room at night because I was convinced a monster was waiting in my closet. My father kept telling me to stop being dramatic and that monsters weren’t real, but it was my mom who proved it to me. We geared up with flashlights and wore whatever outfit made us feel bravest (mine was my oversized Queen Elizabeth I T-shirt that I’d stolen from the back of her closet, hers was her favorite navy-blue suit), and then we investigated the closet together, eventually discovering that the “monster” was a family of mice that had made a cozy home in the wall. That night taught me that even the scariest things can be disempowered if you just understand what they are.
I reach for more fish crackers, then organize them into rows of two on my palm. “You know, I think this is the first time we’ve ever broken the snack tradition.”
Since we started our Friday night sleepovers in sixth grade, Taylor and I have always created a menu that matches the theme of the movie. Tonight Taylor was supposed to finally experience
Jaws, so we had sushi for dinner with Phish Food ice cream for dessert, and we’d gathered up every aquatic-shaped snack we could think of. Only the movie was no longer streaming for free, though Taylor could have sworn otherwise. And neither of us was spending any of our money on a ridiculous killer shark, so he got replaced by some summer camp murder spree Taylor’s girlfriend Nadya promised was the best in the franchise. (It’s true, but the bar is like, so low it’s in Earth’s core.)
“There’s a lake,” Taylor counters, waving at the screen, where the killer is still frozen mid-burst from the water’s placid surface.
“But no fish.”
Holding up a finger for me to wait a second, Taylor shimmies off the bed. She rummages through the top drawer of my desk for a moment, then she’s taping candy fish to the lower half of my flatscreen TV so it looks like they’re swimming in the lake, unperturbed by the murderous undead man introducing chaos (and corpses) into their ecosystem.
“Perfect. All is now right with the world.”
Taylor flops down next to me, a satisfied grin pulling at her round cheeks, and we resume the movie with our new homemade fish filter.
I let my head fall against her shoulder. “Do you really have to go away to college?” I mumble. UC Santa Barbara is her dream school, and I’m thrilled for her that she got in, but I’m used to having her in my backyard (literally, our properties share a fence). I’ll be living at home, since I get free tuition at the college my mom teaches at, and working part-time as an assistant to the activities director at our local library. I could have gone to UCSB with Taylor, but it seemed like a bad life choice to shackle myself with student loans when I could get my degree for free. Plus, my mom’s school has a better history department and good connections to grad programs in library science and archives management, all of which I’ll need if I’m going to fulfill my dream of being an archivist.
“Dude, it’s hardly ‘away.’ ” Taylor throws some quotes around those words. “It’s not even a half hour’s drive. Besides, you’re going to be so busy being the next Indiana Jones that you’ll probably forget all about me.”
Taylor’s got this idea in her head that archivists and archaeologists are the same. “You don’t find rare manuscripts at dig sites,” I remind her for the four hundredth time. “Not usually, at least.”
Taylor shrugs. “Technicalities. I’m still getting you a fedora.” Her eyes narrow mischievously. “And a whip.”
I grab a crocheted Amelia Earhart from the shelf above my bed and toss her gently at Taylor’s head. She’s about the size of my palm, and entirely made of yarn and stuffing, so she’s the safest of projectiles. Amelia was my first “Great Women of History” crochet project freshman year of high school. She was for a class assignment, but I loved crocheting her so much that since then I’ve added about ten more (including, but not limited to, Harriet Tubman; Marie Curie; Frida Kahlo; and my two personal favorites, Queen Elizabeth I and Joan of Arc) to my collection. Taylor and my mom both think I should sell them online, but crocheting is something I do for me. To keep my hands—and thus my brain—busy when my thoughts get overwhelming.
“Don’t make Indy dirty.” I may not want to dig up bones and relics, but the man is still an icon. One of the hottest history nerds around. My mom finds it hilarious that I have posters of movies from her childhood up on my walls.
“I bet he knows how to use—” Jane Austen is my next missile. Taylor catches her easily, then raises her hands in surrender. “Sorry. It was too easy.”
Taylor and Nadya love to turn everything into an innuendo. I do my best to play along with the jokes, but half the time, I don’t really get them. I have less than zero experience with relationships and sex and all that, and I end up flushed and uncomfortable when they come up, making me feel like a weirdo all over again.
Dating just seems more trouble to me than it’s worth. Relationships need you to open up. You have to give people way too many targets. Too many places where they can wound you.
And too many people take every shot they can. I learned that the hard way.
Taylor beans me in the head with Jane. “I don’t even know why we’re talking about this. My mom said I only had to live in the dorms for the fall. Then we can get that apartment together and you’ll never be rid of me!” She lets out one of her loud laughs that sound like an audition for a cartoon villain.
“And until then, we’ve got the Great Taco Mile,” I add. For the next two weeks, Taylor and I will be breaking in the Jeep her aunt gave her by trying every taco within driving distance of our houses. We’re going to document the whole thing on social media. Taylor’s hoping that we’ll go viral and become the next big foodie influencers, but I’m just excited to eat nothing but my favorite food for almost fourteen days.
“Do you think the parents would let us have one overnight? There are so many good tacos in San Diego. I found four spots we absolutely have to check out, and they’re all right on the beach.” Taylor flashes me a wide grin. “We can get a tan while we stuff our faces.”
I glance down at the fair white skin of my thick thighs and calves, what little of it isn’t hidden beneath my bike shorts and the fish socks pulled up to my knees. I can never get a real tan, no matter how often I go to the beach. “She’s been wound super tight lately, but I can try asking my mom,” I say.
“Ask me what?”
Taylor and I scream at the same time, upending our bowls of snacks. A school of orange and red fish swim across my comforter and crunch beneath my palms as I spin toward the door. My heart rams against my ribs.
My mom lurks in the half-open doorway like a phantom (or creepy serial killer).
Copyright © 2026 by Jenny L. Howe. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
