Chapter 1: The Backyard Escape
The bass from the house speakers wasn’t just sound; it was a physical force, a throbbing pressure in Leo’s teeth and behind his eyes. He stood pressed against a wall in the crowded kitchen, a red plastic cup of warm beer sweating in his hand, trying to make his body dissolve into the plaster. Everyone seemed to know how to occupy space—laughing too loud, throwing their heads back, touching each other’s arms with easy familiarity. He felt like a syntax error in a line of perfect code.
His friends had evaporated an hour ago, absorbed into the swirl. He was marooned.
That’s when he saw her for the first time, a slash of black and pale in the chaotic living room. She was perched on the arm of a stained couch, laughing at something a huge guy in a tank top was saying, but her eyes were scanning the room like she was bored. Her hair was the white of a monitor’s glare, chopped short and messy. A silver ring glinted in her nose. She wore a tight black leather top thing—a corset, his brain supplied unhelpfully—that showed off a riot of ink crawling up her arms and over her collarbones. She was tiny, a sparrow next to the gym-built guy, but she commanded the pocket of space around her. She sucked on a vape pen, blew the smoke out in a thin, deliberate stream, and her gaze slid over him without stopping. He looked away instantly, his face hot.
He couldn’t stop looking, though. Every few minutes, his eyes would drag back to her. He watched her push off the couch, weave through the crowd with a predatory grace he’d only seen in animals on documentaries, accept a shot from someone without breaking stride. She was a live wire in the centre of the room, and he felt like a piece of damp cardboard.
The noise reached a critical mass. A sudden, shrill peal of laughter from a girl next to him felt like a needle in his eardrum. That was it. He had to move or his skull would crack.
He shoved off the wall, abandoning his cup on a cluttered counter, and pushed through the bodies toward the back door. The humid night air hit him like a blessing, cooler, smelling of damp grass and distant rain. The backyard was a mess of shadows and discarded red cups, lit by a single string of bulb lights that flickered irregularly. The bass was muffled out here, a deeper, more tolerable thump in the ground. He took deep, shaking breaths, willing his heart to slow down.
“The zoo’s better from out here, right?”
The voice came from his left, smoky and amused. He jumped.
She was sitting on a broken garden bench half-submerged in overgrown ivy, one platform boot kicked up on a rotting wooden planter. The flickering light caught the angles of her face—sharp cheekbones, a pointed chin. She held a cigarette between her fingers, the ember a bright orange pupil in the dark.
It was her.
Leo’s mouth went completely dry. He just stared, his brain producing no words, only a high-pitched static.
She looked him up and down, a slow, appraising sweep that took in his baggy grey hoodie, his ill-fitting jeans, his probably-panicked expression. A faint smile played on her lips. Not a nice smile. A curious one.
“You,” she said, pointing the cigarette at him. “You were in the kitchen. Staring at the sink like it held the secrets of the universe.”
“I wasn’t—” he started, his voice a croak. He cleared his throat. “It was loud.”
“It’s designed to be,” she said, taking a drag. She exhaled up toward the night sky. “So people don’t have to talk. Or think.” She patted the space on the bench beside her. It was littered with old leaves. “C’mon. You look like you need a real vice.”
Hesitantly, he moved forward and sat, perching on the very edge, a good two feet of weathered wood between them. He could smell her now over the cigarette smoke—clove, and something chemical like sharpie, and underneath it, just sweat.
“I’m Abby.”
“Leo.”
“Engineering?”
“Comp Sci.”
She nodded as if that confirmed everything. “Figured. You’ve got the look. Pale from monitor burn. Eyes like you’re debugging your nightmares.” She tapped her temple. “I’m art. Sculpture, mostly. I like making big, ugly things that take up space and annoy people.”
He didn’t know what to say to that. He watched her trace a finger over the intricate web of tattoos on her forearm. A detailed moth, some thorny vines, a few lines of tiny, unreadable script.
“Why are you out here?” he finally managed.
She shrugged a thin shoulder. “Got bored. The guys in there… they’re all the same. They talk at you. They perform. It’s exhausting.” She turned her head, her dark-lined eyes fixing on him. “You’re not performing. You’re just… vibrating with misery. It’s refreshing.”
He felt exposed, like she’d peeled back his hoodie and read lines of faulty code written on his skin. “I’m not miserable.”
“Aren’t you?” She grinned, showing perfect white teeth. “You escaped a party full of theoretically fuckable people to sit in the dark with a stranger who probably scares you. That’s a specific kind of misery.” She took a last drag and stubbed the cigarette out on the bench, flicking the butt into the weeds. “Want one?”
“I don’t smoke.”
“Everyone smokes something,” she said, but she didn’t press it. She just sat back, studying him. The silence stretched, but it was different from the crushing silence inside. This one had texture. The buzz of insects, the distant laughter from the house.
“You’ve never kissed anyone, have you?”
Leo flinched as if she’d slapped him. Heat flooded his face, a burning wave from his chest to the roots of his hair. He was grateful for the terrible light. “That’s a… weird question.”
“It’s a simple one. Yes or no.”
He looked down at his hands, clenched in his lap. The truth was a lump of shame in his throat. He forced it out. “No.”
Abby didn’t laugh. She didn’t even look surprised. She just nodded slowly. “Thought so. You have that… untouched quality. Like a new textbook. All the spines are still tight.” She shifted on the bench, drawing her legs up under her. The movement made her leather creak. “The guys I usually end up with… they’re like used paperbacks. Dog-eared and full of stupid notes. Predictable.”
“Why are you telling me this?” His voice was barely a whisper.
“Because you’re not predictable. You’re out here. You’re quiet. You look at me like I’m a complex problem you can’t solve, not a conquest to unlock. It’s interesting.”
She leaned forward suddenly, closing the distance between them. He caught the full force of her scent, saw the flecks of darker grey in her irises, the chipped black polish on her short nails. His breath hitched.
“Do you want to kiss me?” she asked, her tone clinical, almost bored.
His mind short-circuited. Alerts flashed behind his eyes. System overload. No viable response protocol. He could only manage a jerky, aborted shrug.
“That’s not an answer,” she murmured. She was so close now. “It’s a yes or no question. You’re good at those, right? Binary.”
“I… I don’t know.” It was the most honest thing he’d said all night.
Her smile returned, softer this time. “Better.” She didn’t move away. “Most guys would have said yes instantly. They wouldn’t even mean it. They’d just say it because it’s what you’re supposed to say at a party when a girl with tattoos gets close. They’re all running the same script.” She reached out, and for a heart-stopping second he thought she would touch his face. Instead, she just picked a stray leaf from the shoulder of his hoodie. “You don’t have a script. That’s good.”
She leaned back, breaking the spell. The night air felt cold on the space where her warmth had been.
“I should probably go find my friends,” he said weakly, making no move to stand.
“Probably.” She stood up in one fluid motion, the platforms making her almost his height. She stretched, the tattoos on her side twisting. “Or,” she said, looking down at him, “you could not. The night’s boring. Let’s go make it weird.”
“Make it… how?”
“I know a place. Quieter. Weirder.” She held out a hand. It was a challenge, not an invitation.
He looked at her hand, then at her face, all pale angles and dark lines in the unstable light. Every logical part of him screamed to go back inside, to find his friends, to return to the predictable safety of his own silence. He’d escaped the noise, but this was a different kind of chaos—one that looked at him and saw something interesting.
His hand, when he lifted it, was steady.
He took hers. Her grip was surprisingly strong, her skin cool. She pulled him to his feet and didn’t let go, leading him away from the flickering lights, past the boundary of the yard, and into the deeper dark of the trees beyond.