Nightfall (Devil's Night, #4)

by Penelope Douglas

“Homecoming Night, a girl from Falcon’s Well—one of our rivals—showed up at our high school dance. Alone and wearing a pink dress of lace and tulle. The twinkle lights above the dance floor glittered across her hair and bare shoulders as she walked in, and no one could take their eyes off her. She was so nervous, knowing she didn’t belong there.” He paused, turning his head and holding my eyes. “Feeling like a mouse in a snake pit. She kept holding her stomach like she was going to throw up or something. But she was pretty. So pretty. He couldn’t take his eyes off of her.” McClanahan. I looked off, past the Ferris wheel and toward Cold Point, seeing her in my head. The strapless pink dress that poofed out the way dresses in the fifties did, while young men wore suits. “They say she came to cause trouble,” he told me, his soft, low voice drifting into my ear. “That the rival team sent her to sow discord. They say she taunted our whole team. Tried to get them to do things to her that night so she could play the victim the next day.” Why was he telling me this? “No one knows how they knew where to find the body, or if she even screamed, but she was found through the morning fog hours later, broken on the jagged rocks below,” he said, “her pink dress stained red and the waves plastering her hair to the stones as her dead eyes stared up at the cliff above. The last thing she saw was the person who pushed her.” I tried to lick my lips, but my mouth was too dry.