Ember X (Death Collectors) - By Jessica Sorensen Page 0,5
she calls out. “You always run away from guys. If you keep it up, you’re going to end up a lonely old spinster.”
“Which is just what I want.” I pause when I reach the curtain. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess we’re going to a party.”
Her mood suddenly boosts and she grins impishly. “What gave it away?”
I eye her outfit and count down on my fingers. “Four things: leather shorts, pink high heels, knee high socks, and a sparkling top.”
She sticks out her hip and pops up her foot, striking a pose. “Come on, admit it, I look hot.”
“You look like a slut.”
She tosses a pillow at me and I catch it and throw it back at her. “Watch that dirty mouth of yours, Death Girl,” she says, dropping the pillow onto the bed. “I don’t look like a slut. I look like someone who needs to get laid. That’s all.”
“Same difference.” Laughing, I duck through the curtain into my closet. Immediately, my lips sink to a frown. Parties equal lots of people and lots of people mean lots of death omens. But I have to go with Raven to protect her from herself because she tends to get reckless.
“So whose party are we going to tonight?” I slip my plaid pajama bottoms off and tug on my faded jeans.
“Remy’s,” Raven replies, and I can hear her delving through my jewelry drawer.
Pulling a face, I slip on a fitted black shirt. “Doesn’t she live all the way up by the lake?” I ask, putting my boots on.
She pokes her head inside the closet. “Don’t be such a downer, Em. For once can’t you let loose and have some fun?” She moves back as I step into my room.
“I’m not being a downer.” I collect my car keys from the dresser, clip on my maroon pendant necklace, and set the feather in the jewelry drawer. “I just hate driving my car all the way up there. It gets such crappy gas mileage. And there’s just so many people at Remy’s parties.”
She pouts out her lip and bats her eyelashes at me. “Pretty please, Em. Can’t we go have fun like two normal college girls?”
The term college is pushing it. We go to the Star Hollow Community College since neither of our parents could afford anything else. We have to get grants each semester, buy our books used and rent them when we can, and we live at home. Most of the classes are taught by Professors who don’t know more than my high school teachers did and sometimes I wonder why I’m going to college at all.
Acutally I do. One day I hope to get the hell out of this shithole town I live in, away from my mom, my brother, my home, all full of painful memories.
I force a smile. “We always go to parties.”
She pokes my arm playfully. “But you never have fun, so just for the night, can’t you try?”
Sighing, I nod my head. “All right, I’ll try, but it’s kind of hard to have fun when people look at you like you might murder them.”
“No one still blames you for your dad’s death. The cops even said there was no way it could be you—that’s why they dropped the charges.”
“Actually, they didn’t say that. They just didn’t have enough evidence to push the investigation further.”
“Yeah, but no one thinks you really killed him,” she reassures me.
“Everyone in this town does,” I disagree. “They think that’s why I disappeared for a week—that I was on the run from the cops.”
“Well, maybe if you’d tell someone where you were…” She waits, but my lips stayed sealed and they’ll stay sealed until the day I die. She rolls her eyes and crooks her pinkie finger in front of her. “No one thinks you’re a killer. Now swear on it that you’ll have fun.”
“Fine,” I grimace and hook my pinkie to hers. “I swear I’ll try to have fun.”
She tightens her pinkie. “Not try—will.”
“I promise I will have fun,” I say with a frown.
She jumps up and down, clapping her hands animatedly as I fasten my studded bracelet to my wrist, then we head out the door.
“And remember what happens if you go back on your word,” she says, skipping down the stairs, swinging her arms.
“Yeah, yeah, the bad karma will catch up with me,” I say, lacing my boot up as I hop down the last step. Raven is very big on karma, but karma