Page 1 of Faking the Goal

CHAPTER 1

TAYLOR

Kirk's hands close around my throat. My nails catch the tendons in his wrist and I scratch, but all I get for my effort is the burning scrape of my skin against his. My head throbs from the inside out.

I kick, I buck, but his body is heavy, pinning me to the floor.

He says my name, sings it, actually, "Tay-looorr, Tay-loooorr," each syllable a wet slur. His breath is sour with cigarettes and Monster and something older—something that's been rotting in his chest for years.

I want to scream but the sound is cut off before it can even reach my tongue. All I can manage is a sticky gurgle. My eyes roll, searching for the window, the hallway, some escape hatch.

There's nothing.

Just the sterile ceiling tiles and the flicker of the overhead light, stuttering in time with my pulse.

"Kiiiiiirk—" It comes out like an airless balloon, limp and stupid.

I hear his voice over mine, as if he's got a microphone pressed to his tongue and I'm the audience, strapped and duct-taped to my seat.

"You're not getting away. No one's coming. You're mine. You're fucking mine, Taylor." He laughs then, a howl that rings off the cinderblock walls and rattles the door in its frame. His mouth is wide, his teeth enormous and coyote-sharp, lips stretched in a snarl that used to be a smile. The hollowness in his eyes eats everything else.

I try to wriggle one hand between his fingers and my neck, but he shifts, clamps down harder. The world shrinks to a tiny, airless knot behind my nose. The ceiling bends and stretches. My legs thrash, find no purchase. My hands start to fade—first the tips of my fingers, then my wrists.

A ringing creeps in around the edges. It gets louder and louder until it's all I can hear, drowning out Kirk's monologue, the stutter of the light, even the little voice that's supposed to comfort me when things get bad. I see the door, four feet away and wide open, and a wedge of hallway carpet beyond, brown and ugly and impossibly far.

No one comes. No one ever comes.

My vision pops and fuzzes, tunneling down to a single pinhole. I keep waiting for the grip to slacken, for the punchline, but all I get is more darkness. My legs give out, then my arms, then my chest. There is nothing but the floaty, distant pressure of his hands and the knowledge that I am going to die.

And then I wake up, gasping, clutching my own neck.

I shoot up, tangle in the sheets, and knock my phone to the floor. It lands face-down, but the screen lights up against the dull beige walls of my apartment. I snatch it up and glance at the time. It's one minute past two in the morning.

I sit there, panting, my heart doing a drum solo on the inside of my ribcage. My throat aches, and my hand flies to it automatically, fingers moving over the skin again and again until I'm satisfied there's nothing there. No bruises. No fingerprints. Just me, sitting alone in my bed trying to convince my body that none of it was real.

It takes a long time before I can convince my hands to let go of my own neck.

I look around the room. My comforter is twisted around my legs, yesterday's clothes are draped over the chair in the corner, and my camera bag sits beside the little desk shoved beneath the window. The faint glow from the streetlights outside slips through the blinds, cutting pale stripes across the bedroom walls.

I've lived in this apartment for almost two years now. It's nothing fancy, just a small one-bedroom close enough to campus that I can get there without wasting money on gas every day. The kitchen is tiny, the bathroom barely has enough counter space for my shit, and the living room is mostly occupied by a secondhand couch, a cheap coffee table, and a bookshelf I've somehow managed to cram with more manga than it was ever designed to hold.

But it's mine.

Cozy enough. Cheap enough that my bank account doesn't spontaneously combust every month. And after two years, familiar enough that I can navigate it half-asleep in the dark.

Which, right now, I have to.

I shove the sheets away and climb out of bed, my legs still shaky as I make my way through the dark bedroom and into the living room. I don't bother turning on the lights. I know every step from here to the kitchenette by memory, including exactly where to veer left so I don't slam my hip into the corner of the coffee table.

I reach the kitchen and grab a glass from the cabinet, filling it with ice-cold tap water and chugging until my stomach aches. Then I refill it just enough to splash some over my face and let the shock drag me the rest of the way out of the nightmare. Sometimes the cold helps. Sometimes it just makes the dream feel colder.

I stare at my reflection in the dark microwave door, eyes wide and red-rimmed, lips still working around the memory of Kirk's hands.

"It's just a dream," I whisper. "Just a fucking dream."

I wish I sounded more convincing.

I pad over to the window, squint through the blinds at the parking lot three stories down. It's empty except for a ratty Prius and a plastic tricycle tipped onto its side. In another life, I might have thought that was cute. Now I just check for headlights, or the silhouette of a man standing too still, waiting for me to trip up. There's no one, but I still check. It's routine.