1st 5 Pages November Workshop- Koste Rev 1

Name: Danielle Koste
Genre: YA Comtemporary
Title: EXTRACURRICULARS 

AFTER

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The C.O. told me I had a visitor.

I didn’t have “visitors”. Mom could only make the trip out the first week of every month, and my sister never bothered. Not even once. 

I couldn’t blame her.

There were only two kinds of people who showed up on weekdays: the journalists, hungry for an exposé, or the “fans,” hormonal teens who only knew their sweet suburbs and deep-web gore porn, hoping to come face to face with the felon they romanticized. 

I stopped meeting with them all ages ago.

Their fascination with me—with us—was more disturbing than anything we did. I remembered Jay saying once, America loved its violence almost as much as its apple pie. I’m not sure I quite understood at the time, how much love two gangly, teenage boys from Washington could get with a couple of 9mms.

I’d want to see this one, the C.O. said, and I didn’t understand until my cuffs were off and I was ushered into the visitation room. A chill passed my skin, like I’d seen a ghost, because that’s what it was like, seeing her again after the lifetime that was the last eighteen months.

“You look well.”

I stifled the sarcasm prison had groomed into me. Nobody looked well in here, but she was a polite girl, nearly grown into a polite woman. 

“Emma?”

Her name was foreign on my tongue. Like I hadn't said it in decades. She hardly even looked like the same person. Her hair reached only her shoulders, darker and cooler than the warm caramel I remembered. Her face, more narrow and angular without the baby fat in her cheeks. I almost didn't recognize her, and maybe that was the point.

She finally looked at me, her forest green eyes a confirmation, along with the desperation and grief hiding in them. 

Right where I'd left it.

When I stared too long, she turned her gaze back down to the table between us. “I’m sorry I didn't tell you I was coming. I knew you wouldn't agree.” 

I didn’t bother arguing. She was right; I wouldn’t have. 

But now, I was curious. “Why are you here?”

She hesitated, painted lips parting slightly with an attempted answer. She chose against it, pressing her mouth into a straight line and retrieved the purse at her feet instead. From inside, she collected a manila envelope, placing it on the table between us.

My fingers knew the smooth card of these envelopes too well. Signed police reports, witness statements, guilty pleads: justice wrapped neatly in a crisp buff jacket. The facts. The truth everyone needed. The feeling of opening a folder and seeing my past, my actions, my fate, written out clean and concise in Times New Roman had become so familiar that I was surprised with what I found instead. 

Photographs. Glossy eight by tens stacked in a neat pile, freshly printed and still smelling of wet ink. 

“They’re from school,” she said, but I didn’t need her explanation. I recognized the first photo immediately: A before-Emma, red-cheeked from the borrowed rum, gold shining in her eyes from the sparklers. The next picture, a before-me, hiding behind an orange cast on my wrist, a heart she’d penned decorating the plaster near my hand. 

A different truth. A truth nobody was interested in hearing.

“These are great,” I lied, continuing through the pile of familiar faces, skipping quickly over one of Jay, fingers aimed at the camera like a gun and a grin teasing the side of his mouth. They were great, but they left my mouth dry. These snapshots of people I’d tried desperately to forget. People now six feet under. 

“A production company contacted me, they want to buy them for a documentary they’re making.” She filled the air again as I neared the end of the pile. A photo from prom, where I was swimming in a too-big tux and she snuck a kiss onto my cheek. “They… They offered a lot of money.”

I closed the envelope before looking at the last photograph. I could guess which one it was. I remembered the snap of her camera shutters, vivid as a gunshot. 

“You should sell them.” I hated that I knew how much a photograph of me was worth. She could afford that fine arts university she’d wanted to attend. If she even ended up going. I considered asking but decided against it. It wasn't my place to know anymore.

She nodded, considering my response, but as she took the folder back, she offered an alternative. “Actually… I wanted to use them.” Pausing, she fended off something that glossed her eyes. It lingered when she continued, her voice wavering. “I wanted to write a book. About school. About you, and me, and…” 

I sat back in my chair, fighting another chill that passed me. “Oh.”

“It’s why I came. I want to talk about what happened. And before too. I thought… Maybe it could give us some closure.” She let her hands wring in her lap with the admission, only looking at me again when I took too long responding. On a whisper, she begged, so quiet I would’ve thought I wasn’t supposed to hear if she hadn’t said my name. “Please, Sam. I need to know why...”

A thick mass swelled in my throat. I hadn’t talked to anyone about it. Not the cops. Not my lawyer. Not a soul. For eighteen months. And now she was asking me to speak. No. She was asking me for closure.

I wanted to tell her she’d never have closure. I wanted tell her that we’d robbed her of such peace, when she went to school the day she wasn't supposed to. I wanted to tell her I was sorry. That the thing inside her still keeping her awake at night, tossing and turning, it would never sleep again. I knew, because I never slept either.

I couldn’t bear disappointing her all over again, though.

“Where should I start?”

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BEFORE

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CHAPTER 1

I’d like to say that I woke to the pings of incoming messages on my phone, but the truth was, I hadn’t slept a wink. I’d been too wrapped up in my spiraling anxiety to spend the night on anything other than my insomnia. The first day back to school tended to do that to me, and senior year was clearly no exception. 

I fished around blindly for my phone when a fourth unanswered message arrived, finding the cord and following it under my pillow. The bright white of the screen burned my tired eyes when I unlocked it. I buried my face into the musty mattress again, squinting with one eye to read.

[you up yet?]

[Saaaaaaaammmmm]

[rise and shine]

[?????]

I fought a groan, tapping a response with only my thumb.

[skip?]

An ellipsis pulsed across the screen.

[dont pussy out on me]

[be there in 10]

I allowed myself a final sigh before giving into Jay’s guilting, fending off the instinct to curl up and fester away in my sheets. It wouldn’t even take long. With summer lingering well past its Washington due date, it still felt like early August despite creeping into September. 

Rot season, my mother called it.

I smelled like I’d already started decaying. Rummaging through the clothes on my floor, I found my jeans and a tee-shirt that didn’t smell of death, then swayed like a zombie down the hall to the bathroom.