Legendborn (Legendborn, #1)

by Tracy Deonn

A CAROLINA FIRST-YEAR sprints through the darkness and launches himself off the cliff into the moonlit night. His shout sends sleepy birds flying overhead. The sound echoes against the rock face that borders the Eno Quarry. Flashlights track his flailing body, all windmilling arms and kicking legs, until he hits the water with a cracking splash. At the cliff line above, thirty college students cheer and whoop, their joy weaving through the pine trees.

Like a constellation in motion, cone-shaped beams of light roam the lake’s surface. Collective breath, held. All eyes, searching. Waiting. Then, the boy erupts from the water with a roar, and the crowd explodes. Cliff jumping is the perfect formula for Southern-white-boy fun: rural recklessness, a pocket flashlight’s worth of precaution, and a dare. I can’t look away. Each run draws my own feet an inch closer to the edge. Each leap into nothingness, each hovering moment before the fall, calls to a spark of wild yearning inside my chest. I press that yearning down. Seal it closed. Board it up. “Lucky he didn’t break his damn legs,” Alice mutters in her soft twang. She scoffs, peering over the edge to watch the grinning jumper grasp protruding rocks and exposed vines to climb the rock face. Her straight, coal-black hair lies plastered to her temple. The warm, sticky palm of late-August humidity presses down on our skin. My curls are already up in a puff, as far away from the back of my neck as possible, so I hand her the extra elastic band from my wrist. She takes it wordlessly and gathers her hair in a ponytail. “I read about this quarry on the way here.

She fixes me with a glare. “I’m insulted by your weak conversational deflection. That’s not best-friend behavior. You’re fired.” Alice wants to major in sociology, then maybe go into law. She’s been interrogating me since we were ten.

I roll my eyes. “You’ve best-friend fired me fifty times since we were kids and yet you keep rehiring me. This job sucks. HR is a nightmare.”

“And yet you keep coming back. Evidence, if circumstantial, that you enjoy the work.” I shrug. “Pay is good.” “You know why I don’t like th...

break the law our first night on campus, but after dinner an opportunity had presented itself in the shape of Charlotte Simpson, a girl we knew from Bentonville High. Charlotte popped her head into our dorm room before we’d even fini...

years of EC, Charlotte had officially enrolled as a Carolina undergraduate this year and, apparently, she’d turned party girl somewhere in the interim. During the day, the Eno River State Park is open for hiking, camping, and kayaking, but if you sneak in after the gates close like all the kids here have, it’s probably-to-definitely trespassing. Not something I’d nor...

It’s tradition for some juniors and seniors to host a party at the Quarry. Also tradition? First-year students jumping off the edge of the cliffs into the mineral-rich lake at its center. The park straddles Orange and Durham Counties and sits north of I-85, about twenty-five minutes away from Carolina’s campus. Charlotte drove us here in her old silver Jeep, and the enti...

“You don’t like this because it’s”—I drop my voice into a dramatic whisper—“against the rules?” Alice’s dark eyes burn behind her glasses. “Gettin’ caught off campus at night is an automatic expulsion from EC.” “Hold up. Charlotte said a bunch of students do it every year.” Another jumper sprints through the woods. A deeper splash. Cheers. Alice juts her chin toward the other students. “That’s them. Tell me why you want to be here?” Because I can’t just sit in our room right now. Because ever since my mother died, there’s a version of me inside that wants to break things and scream. I lift a shoulder. “Because what better way to begin our adventure than with a pinch of rebellion?” She does not look

amused. “Did someone say rebellion?” Charlotte’s boots crunch through the leaves and pine needles. The sharp sound stands out from the droning background of crickets and the low bass thump pulsing our way from the party’s speakers. She comes to a stop next to me and brushes her auburn ponytail away

“Aren’t you pre-med or something, Charlotte?” I ask. “How are you this smart and this bad an influence?” “It’s college,” Charlotte says with a shrug. “ ‘Smart but a bad influence’ describes like half the student body.” “Char?” A male voice calls out from behind a raggedy holly. Charlotte’s face breaks into a wide smile even before she turns around to see the tall red-haired boy walking toward us. He holds a red Solo cup in one hand and a flashlight in the other. “Hey, babe,” Charlotte purrs, and greets him with a giggling kiss. “Char?” I mouth to a grimacing Alice. When they separate, Charlotte waves us over. “Babe, these are new EC kids from back home. Bree and Alice.” She curls around the boy’s arm like a koala. “This is my boyfriend, y’all. Evan Cooper.”

I’m five-eight—tall enough that I might pass for a college student—and Black. Blessed with my mother’s cheekbones and curves and my father’s full mouth. I’d pulled on old jeans and a tee. Shy isn’t really my thing. Evan’s eyes widen when they take me in. “You’re the girl whose mom died, right? Bree Matthews?” A trickle of pain inside, and my wall snaps into place. Death creates an alternate universe, but after three months, I have the tools to live in it. Charlotte jabs Evan in the ribs with her elbow, sending him daggers with her eyes. “What?” He puts his hands up. “That’s what you sai—”

My wall works two ways: it hides the things I need to hide and helps me show the things I need to show. Particularly useful with the Sorry for Your Loss crowd. In my mind’s eye, the wall’s reinforced now. Stronger than wood, iron, steel. It has to be, because I know what comes next: Charlotte and Evan will unleash the predictable stream of words everyone says when they realize they’re talking to the Girl Whose Mom Died. It’s like Comforting Grieving People Bingo, except when all the squares get covered, everyone loses.

“I can’t imagine,” Charlotte murmurs, and that’s another square covered on the bingo board. They can imagine it; they just wouldn’t want to. Some truths only tragedy can teach. The first one I learned is that when people acknowledge your pain, they want your pain to acknowledge them back. They need to witness it in real time, or

else you’re not doing your part. Charlotte’s hungry blue eyes search for my tears, my quivering lower lip, but my wall is up, so she won’t get either. Evan’s eager gaze hunts for my grief and suffering, but when I jut my chin out in defiance, he averts his eyes. Good.

hits bingo. People lose things when they have a mental lapse. Then they find that thing again from the lost place. But my mother isn’t lost. She’s gone.

Before-Bree is gone, too, even though I pretend that she’s not.

After-Bree came into being the day after my mom died. I went to sleep that night and when I woke up, she was there. After-Bree was there during the funeral. After-Bree was there when our neighbors knoc...

After-Bree was with me when the visiting mourners finally went home. Even though I can only recall hazy snippets from the hospital—trauma-related memory loss, according to my father’s weird, preachy grief book—I have After-Bree. She’s the un...

Bree looks almost like me. Tall, athletic, warm brown skin, broader-than-I-want shoulders. But where my dark, tight curls are usually pulled up on top of my head, After-Bree...

Containing her is a full-time job. Alice doesn’t know about After-Bree. Nobody does. Not even my dad. Especially not my dad. Alice clears her throat, the sound breaking like a wave against my thoughts. How long did I zone out? A minute? Two? I focus on the three of them, face blank, wall up. Evan gets antsy in the silence and blurts out, “By the way, your hair is totally badass!”

I know without looking that the curls springing out of my puff are wide-awake, reaching toward the sky in the night’s humidity. I bristle, because his tone is the one that feels less like a compliment and more like he’s happened upon a fun oddity—and that fun oddity is Black me with my Black hair. Wonderful.

Alice shoots me a sympathetic glance that Evan misses entirely, because of course he does. “I think we’re done here. Can we go?” Charlotte pouts. “Half an hour more, I promise. I wanna check out the party.” “Yeah! Y’all come watch...

She stomps back. “I’ll wait with you.” “No, that’s okay. You go ahead.” She scrutinizes me, torn between taking me at my word or pushing further. “Watch, not jump?” “Watch, not jump.” “Matty.” Her childhood nickname for me—Matty, short for my last name—twists at something deep in my chest. Old memories have been doing that lately, even the ones that aren’t about her, and I sort of hate it. My vision goes fuzzy with the threat of tears, and I have to blink Alice’s features into focus—pale

Always a but.” Something hard slips into her voice. “But if she were here, I don’t think she’d want you to… to…” “To what?” “To become some other person.” I kick at a pebble. “I need to be alone for a minute. Enjoy the party. I’ll be there soon.” She eyes me as if gauging my mood. “ ‘I hate tiny parties—they force one into constant exertion.’ ” I squint, searching my memories for the familiar words. “Did you—did you just Jane Austen me?”

Her dark eyes twinkle. “Who’s the literary nerd? The quoter or the one who recognizes the quote?” “Wait.” I shake my head in amusement. “Did you just Star Wars me?”

“Nah.” She grins. “I New Hope’d you.” “Y’all comin’?” Charlotte’s disembodied voice shoots back through the woods like an arrow. Alice’s eyes still hold a pinch of worry, but she squeezes my hand before walking away. Once I c...

Hey, kiddo, you and Alice get set...

I know you’re our Brave Bree who was ready to escape Bentonville, but don’t forget us little people back home. Make your mom proud. Call when you can. Love, Dad.

I shove my phone back into my pocket. I had been ready to escape Bentonville, but not because I was brave. At first I’d wanted to stay home. It seemed right, after everything. But months of living under the same roof

Our grief is for the same person, but our grief is not the same. It’s like those bar magnets in physics class; you can push the matching poles together, but they don’t want to touch. I can’t touch my dad’s grief. Don’t really want to. I...

A foot over, the earth falls away below my feet and the lake stretches out wide, reflecting the sky and the stars and the possibilities of night. From here, I can see what the jumpers were working with: whatever cleaved the dirt and rocks to form the quarry had dug at a thirty-degree angle. To clear the face entirely, one has to run fast and leap far. No hesitation allowed.

I imagine myself running like the moon is my finish line. Running like I can leave the anger and the shame and gossip behind. I can almost feel

the delicious burn in my muscles, the rush sweet and strong in my veins, as I sail over the cliff and into emptiness. Without warning, the roiling spark of After-Bree stretches up from my gut like a vine on fire, but this time I don’t shove her away. She unfurls behind my ribs, and the hot pressure of her is so powerful it feels like I could explode. Part of me wants to explode. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you.” A wry voice from behind startles me and sends a few birds, hidden in the canopy above, squawking into the sky. I hadn’t heard anyone approach through the underbrush, but a tall, dark-haired boy leans casually against a tree as if he’d been there the whole time; arms over his chest and black combat boots crossed at the ankles. The boy’s expression is lazy with disdain, like he can’t even be bothered to muster up a full dose of the stuff. “Forgive me for interrupting. It looked like you were about to jump off a cliff. Alone. In the dark,” he drawls. He is unsettlingly beautiful. His face is aristocratic and sharp, framed by high,...

doesn’t belong to a teenager—the cut of his jaw, the line of his ...

The boy who is both young and old lets me study him, but only for a moment. Then, he levels his tawny gaze in challenge. When our eyes meet, a stinging shock races through me, head to heels, leaving fear in i...

I

step to his right. Quick as a cat, he reaches for me, but I twist away before he gets a grip. His eyebrows lift, and the corner of his mouth twitches. “I haven’t seen you around before. Are you new?” “I’m leaving.” I turn, but the boy is beside me in two steps. “Do you know who I am?” “No.” “I’m Selwyn Kane.” His gaze sends tiny, invisible sparks of electricity dancing across my cheek. I flinch and throw my hand up between us like a shield.

Fingers, too hot, too strong, instantly close around my wrist. A tingling sensation shoots down to my elbow....

I don’t have an answer for him. Or myself. I try to yank away from him, but his hold is like iron. “Let go!” Selwyn’s eyes widen slightly, then narrow; he is not used to being shouted at. ...

Quiet!” he orders. Bright indignation flares in my chest, but his unusual eyes rake across my face. Snuff it right out. “Strange. I thought—” Suddenly, shouts break the night, but this time they’re not from the cliff jumpers. We both twist toward the forest and beyond it, to the party in the clearing. More yelling—and not the happy, drunk kind.

A low growl close by my ear. I jump when I realize the sound is coming from the demanding boy whose fingers are still locked around my wrist. As he stares into the trees, his mouth curves into a satisfied smile, exposing two canines that nearly touch his bottom lip. “Got you.” “Got who?” I demand.

By the time I stumble into the clearing, the party is chaos. Undergrads push against one another to run down the long narrow path toward the cars parked at the gravel lot. Beyond the trees, car engines growl to life in a rolling wave. Two guys struggle to lift the kegs and push them onto truck beds while a small crowd beside them tries to help “lighten” the barrels by drinking straight from the hose. Beside the fire, a circle of twenty kids cheer while holding Solo cups and cell phones high in the air. Whatever or whoever they’re looking at won’t be Alice. She’d try to find me, like I’m trying to find her. I reach for my phone, but there are no missed calls or texts. She’s got to be freaking out.

Alice!” I scan the crowd for her, for Charlotte’s ponytail and T-shirt, for Evan’s red hair, but they aren’t there. A half-naked,

naked, dripping-wet undergrad girl shoves past me. “Alice Chen!” Campfire smoke billows thick in the air; I can barely see anything. I push through sweat...

A tall blond girl scowls when I shout too close to her face, and I scowl back. She’s beautiful the way a well-maintained dagger is beautiful: sharp, shiny, and all angles. A bit prissy. Absolutely Alice’s type. Damnit, where is she— “Eve...

I glance up right as the Solo cup–carrying circle parts. It only takes a second to see the cause of the screams from earlier and the reason why someone might call the cops: a fight. A bad one. Four drunken, enormous boys are rolling and swinging in a pile on the ground. Probably football players right out of preseason and fueled by adrenaline, beer, and who knows what else....

There! There it is again. In the air above the boys, something is shimmering and dancing. A greenish-silver something that swoops, dives, and flickers in and out of transparency like a glitching hologram. The image pulls at a string of memory. The shimmer of light… and the very feeling of it, punches the breath right out of my lungs. I’ve seen this before, but I can’t remember where.…

I turn, gasping, to the student beside me, a wide-eyed boy in a Tar Heels T-shirt. “Do you see that?” “You mean the jackasses fighting over nothing?” He taps his phone. “Yeah, why do you think I’m filming?”

The boy searches the air; then his expression turns wry. “Been smokin’ something?” “Come on!” The blond girl pushes through the circle of spectators, standing between the fighters and the crowd with her hands on her hips. “Time to go!”