Prologue

LEAVENWORTH, KANSAS

“We don’t have to…” Ryan says in a whisper.

Alison doesn’t reply as she drives her father’s pristine BMW sedan down the dirt road, rocks kicking under the tires. She just gives Ryan a half smile and pulls into a secluded opening in the trees that the kids call Lovers’ Lane in some ironic tribute to teenage make-out spots in old horror movies.

She kills the headlights and they sit there in the dark, the only sound a rumble of thunder in the distance and the chirp of crickets.

Without a word, she reaches to the back seat and grabs the rucksack. It undoubtedly will have a blanket, bug spray… condoms.

Ryan follows her outside to their favorite spot under a large oak tree, the same place where they had their first kiss freshman year, which seems like a lifetime ago—a fog of prom and homecoming dances, football and basketball games, SAT prep courses and college applications. Ali shakes out the blanket and spreads it on the grass. It’s one of those summer nights filled with humidity and hope.

Ryan feels a tiny tremble in his hands, no, in his whole body. He’s been waiting for this night—aching for this night—for so long. Yet somehow he’s reluctant, weirdly hesitant.

That disappears when she leans in, kisses him, and electricity roars through every nerve.

Another rumble comes from the sky. The tree’s leaves rattle in the wind.

“I know we don’t have to,” she says in his ear, as she lowers them to the blanket.

Goose bumps rise on his neck and ripple down his arms, but Ali must sense he’s holding back. She pulls away. “Everything okay?”

Ryan examines her face, which is shrouded in shadows, but he can make out her elegant features—the wide-set eyes, angular jawline… those lips…

“It just feels like the end, not the beginning, of something,” he says. “A goodbye.”

She smiles. One of her exasperated smiles. “You’re gonna blow this for yourself, Dodge.”

He smiles back in the dark. It was Ali who’d come up with the nickname that will probably follow him the rest of his life. They first met in algebra class in ninth grade. She was the new kid in town. He was the star of the basketball team—a six-four freshman playing first-string varsity, for god’s sake—but she wasn’t impressed. He asked if he could copy her homework. It was both resourceful, since he doesn’t have a math brain, and a lazy effort at flirting.

Ali was having none of it: “Just because you can dodge around that basketball court doesn’t mean everything’s going to be handed to you.” And just like that, he was “Dodge.” And every November through March thereafter, the crowd would chant it from the bleachers:

Dodge… Dodge… Dodge…

Her voice breaks the thought. “It’s not goodbye, we’re just going to different colleges. We’ll make it.”

They both leave tomorrow. She’s headed to Bard to study art; he’s off to K-State to ride the bench. He’s a great shooting guard—but only Leavenworth, Kansas, great, not Division I great.

“Your parents made it,” she adds. She’s always been fascinated by his mom and dad, a couple since high school and still lusting after each other. Ryan once told Ali that for years he thought his father, a factory worker at the Great Western plant, had some type of medical training because whenever his mom had an ailment—a sore back, a stubbed toe, a paper cut—his dad would say, “I have the cure,” and his mother would blush, and giggle, and say, “You do, do you?” Ryan remembers the horror he felt in middle school when he realized what his father’s cure referred to.

A large raindrop lands on his cheek. Then another. Then there’s a flash in the sky.

“I think the gods are telling us something.” He starts to stand up, but she clutches his arm.

“Stay…”

He’s tempted, the blood running hot through his veins at the thought of her naked and dripping wet. But the image is shattered by a loud boom, followed by a jagged stroke of lightning less than fifty yards away.

It would be a good way to die, for sure, but even Ali is realizing that tonight is not meant to be.

As the rain comes down in torrents, they race back to the car. They’re both drenched, her vintage Bon Jovi concert tee clinging to her body. They’re laughing, a nervous laugh infused with disappointment—and relief, perhaps.

In the car’s overhead light, she’s so pretty with her hair matted, makeup running, that he leans over and kisses her.

Ali pulls him close and with yearning. She stops a moment. “You’re shivering,” she says.

“It’s from the rain,” he says, but it isn’t.

She then pulls her T-shirt over her head and says, “I have the cure.”

The next moments remain a haze.

A whoosh of the car door ripping open.

A scream.

A crushing blow to the head.

Then it’s morning.

Ryan is outside on the wet grass.

The car is gone.

And so is Ali.