Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

LAKE

365 bobas left until we both die … (the same day)

There’s an empty space in the driveway waiting for us when we pull up to the house. Most of the family parks their cars up and down both sides of the quiet suburban street. Well, except for my Uncle Rob. He parks on the front lawn which drives my dad absolutely nuts.

Maria edges close to my mother’s SUV, turning off the ignition and then sitting in companionable silence with me while I gather my courage together. As hard as it was for me to find out that I’m destined to die, it’s going to be even harder on my family.

“I don’t know if I can do this,” I tell Maria, turning to look at her. She gives me a sympathetic look and a gentle squeeze on my shoulder, but she doesn’t say anything. Because she knows that I can do this. That I will do this.

I am going to do this.

We climb out into a balmy late-August afternoon, my feet dragging on the pavement as I make my way around the car and up the front walk. The only blessing in all of this is that Joules isn’t here yet.

The front door is unlocked as it always is. I can’t remember a time when we ever locked our door. Even when we’re not home, we leave it open. Maybe not the safest practice in the world, but nothing ever happens around here.

Maria trails behind me as we walk in, pausing in the foyer and turning as a pair to study the vast array of aunts, uncles, and cousins gathered in the living room, seated around the dining table, covering leftover casseroles in the kitchen.

I feel like I’ve shown up to one of Tam’s stadium concerts, but not as a fan, as a performer. Dancing in my underwear in front of seventy-thousand people.

“Do you want some of this tortilla casserole before I put it away?” my mom calls out when she sees us lingering there. Guess Joules didn’t tell her about my accident yet. More importantly, he didn’t call ahead to tell anyone that I’ve been matched.

Standing here like this, I feel as if they should be able to see it. They would, if my hoodie sleeve wasn’t covering my wrist. I take another sip of my boba, but it’s all gone. I stare forlornly at the empty cup. I should’ve gotten two.

“Not hungry,” I murmur belatedly, but my mother has already moved on, slipping the glass dish into the fridge as my aunt berates her and claims she never got last week’s dish back. My mother retorts with her favorite argument about my great-grandmother’s mixing bowls, and I tune it all out.

My dad and my uncles are seated side by side on the long sofa directly opposite the TV, perched on the edge, waiting with bated breath to see if the Razorbacks new quarterback is any good.

“Hey, um.” I clear my throat and raise my chin. Maria continues to slouch beside me, trying to make herself look small. She knows how bad this is going to go. Nobody here is over missing Joe. Nobody here has forgotten what happens when the curse has its way with our family. “I have something to—”

My Uncle Rob whoops loudly, leaping off the sofa to yell and throw his arms in the air. My Uncle Peter joins him, and the two of them hug over whatever just happened in the game. They’re not even remotely listening to me.

With a sigh, I lift my phone up and scroll over to YouTube, picking one of Tam’s most popular videos at random. I hit play. I hit stream. The video appears on the TV, obliterating the game in its final moments.

In less than five seconds, red and white football uniforms have been replaced by … Tam.

I swallow past a strange creak in my throat, but I don’t let myself look at the screen. I don’t want to see him right now. I know what he looks like anyway. You’d have to live on Mars not to know about Tam Eyre.

I’m a dead woman. I’m six feet under already. There is no coming back from this.

“What the hell …?” My dad is dicking around with the remote, but it’s low on batteries, and sometimes it takes three or four tries to get the push of a button to register. We’d have changed them out already, but we lost the back of the remote a long time ago, and it’s all wrapped up with black duct tape.

My dad and my uncles all turn to look at me. My grandmother sets her book down on the surface of the table. My mom and my aunts pause their bickering for a brief moment.

Everyone is looking at me because they know I’m in control of the game.

“I have …” My courage fails me. I briefly close my eyes and think of Joules. If he gets home before I’ve told the truth, he’ll do it in the harshest, most eviscerating way possible. I open my eyes again. “I was matched today.”

You could hear a pin drop in that room.

It’s so quiet that the silence is loud.

“To … someone in Eureka Springs?” my mom says brightly, hope lighting up the rounded softness of her features. She looks like an angel; sometimes it’s hard to remember that she was in the military. I inherited both my looks and my personality from her: cute in the face but take-no-shit in the soul. We’ve got big eyes and long lashes and whiplash tongues. Nobody ever sasses my mama. “Someone you know?”

I almost laugh, but I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t want to hurt anyone in my family. I look at the toes of my shoes instead. Green sneakers with white hearts that I wore to go hiking with my friend, Ella, at Lake Leatherwood. Hah. Wow. I was so happy this morning. How is life allowed to do that? Flip your entire world upside-down between one breath and the next.

Wouldn’t that have been nice, if I’d been matched with some guy in Eureka Springs? A passing hiker perhaps, one with a ready smile and a hiking stick in hand. A cashier at the art shop downtown. A waiter at the restaurant I visited for lunch.

My head lifts up, eyes darting to the TV screen.

“Sweet Honey” is the name of the song that’s playing. I’ve never heard it before now, not intentionally anyway. Tam’s music plays all the time at department stores and clubs and cafés, but I never pay much attention to it. Not that it’s bad. It’s just … not my thing?

I turn guilty eyes back to my poor mother.

I don’t have to say anything at all. She collapses into her sister’s arms. Into the arms of Joe’s mother. My aunt is staring at me like I’m the walking dead, brown eyes wide in a bloodless face. My dad rushes into the kitchen to help them both out, mouth pursed, eyes dark. He’s the gruffest, wildest country boy around, but he’s also a giant cinnamon roll.

“Not with somebody from Eureka Springs,” I whisper, voice cracking. Maria puts her arms around my waist, so much shorter than me that the position is an easy one for her to take. When she offers me her half-finished milk tea, I take it and drink deep.

“Who?” my Uncle Rob demands. He’s my mother’s brother, matched at sixteen to a cute girl at the convenience store on the corner near his work. They broke the curse in less than three months.

I want to cry, but I don’t.

I stare my uncle down because it’s easier to look at him than it is to watch my parents fall apart, to see my aunt leaning heavily against the refrigerator door. Joe’s picture is right there beside her face, his memory trapped inside of a magnet. I don’t think about the day that photo was taken, when me and Joules and Joe went to the escape room together.

My breath rattles out in a messy exhale.

I use my empty boba cup to point at the screen where Tam is dancing, dressed head to toe in white, his backup dancers decked out in blue to blend in with the background.

“Him.” I choke on the word as my youngest cousin, Lynn, gasps and slaps both of her hands over her mouth. We look at each other as she slumps into one of the oak dining chairs.

“Him?” her mother, my other aunt, Mandy, whispers, looking between me and the screen. “Tam Eyre? Tam? Tam Eyre? Tam Eyre?” She repeats his name so many times that I feel dizzy. “No, Lake. Stop it. This isn’t funny.”

“I know it isn’t funny!” I shout back, dropping my empty boba cup to the floor. I’ll pick it up later. Or maybe I don’t even care. I shove the milk tea back into Maria’s hands and step forward, pushing my red Razorback sweater up my arm to reveal my wrist. I flash it to the gathered crowd of Frost family members. I’m panting now, shaking all over. “I was matched to Tam, the pop star. Tam, the darling of the international music community. Tam, the up-and-coming actor. Tam, the man with four-hundred-million Instagram followers.”

“I don’t understand,” my mom says, looking at my dad for clarification. “He’s … a singer?”

“He’s a male Taylor Swift,” my cousin Lynn murmurs. “Bigger than Taylor Swift. He’s bigger than BTS. He’s bigger than—” At my mom’s confused look, Lynn switches tactics. “He’s bigger than Dolly Parton.”

My mother makes this sound, this awful choking sound that I will never forget. It’s similar to the sound my Aunt Lisa made on Joe’s last day, when he ran over to his Match’s house and tried for a Hail Mary. The sound she made again when he returned home wearing a distant smile, glazed eyes, and a bright red curse mark. The sound she made at eleven-twenty-two p.m. when—

I drop my arm by my side and steal the milk tea back from Maria again. Point made. I sip on it and stare at the floor. Nobody talks. Not my Uncle Peter who talks too much. Not Grandma Frost whose family line is the source of this stupid curse. Not even my cousin Lynn who loves Tam so much that she had his song lyrics tattooed onto her right wrist.

“I …” My voice quavers, and I think of my Aunt Clara who prepaid her own funeral expenses two weeks after she was matched. She knew that getting a senator to notice her was unlikely to happen. She was right. I think of my Uncle Jack who, after finding out his Match was a famous newscaster, made a bucket list and spent the year living his life to the fullest. Is that the route I want to go? Joules would never allow it.

“We … let’s all take some time to process this,” my dad grumbles roughly, putting his hand on the back of his head. “We’ll hold a family meeting, and then we’ll get started right away. How can we get tickets to this guy’s concert?”

My dad turns to look at the screen as the first video comes to an end, and another one takes its place. Tam is wearing a leather jacket with no shirt underneath. My father’s eyes narrow to slits as he runs a hand over the stubble on his chin.

“Bigger than … Dolly Parton?” my mom repeats, staring at the table’s surface before lifting wounded eyes to mine. “Bigger than Madonna?” I nod. “Than Beyoncé?” I nod again. My mother shoves up to her feet and comes around the table toward me, intending, I think, to give me a hug.

The front door opens on my left just as the milk tea slides from my trembling fingers. My brother, Joules, catches it, and takes a sip before I even fully register that he’s standing there. When I look over, his cranky face is scrunched in disgust.

“Rose? Gross. This isn’t what you normally order.”

My eyes fill with tears because … he’s Joules. He’s my big brother, and we both sat there the night Joe died, and our cousin’s face went cold at age twenty-three just like I’ll be, and then Joules did CPR, and the paramedics came and—

I throw myself into Joules’ arms, and he gathers me up, the coldness of the milk tea cup pressing into my back as he holds me.

“In early November, this Tam guy will start selling concert tickets for his world tour. We need to tap into the family emergency fund; it isn’t going to be cheap. And we need everyone on-hand to buy the tickets. It’s going to be a bloodbath.” Joules takes over the situation right away, like always.

“I’ll get my friends on it,” Lynn says, standing up from her chair. The other Frost family members—like Uncle Peter and Grandma Frost and Maria’s mom, Daphne—mill absently behind her, unsure what to do. Everybody here is thinking about Joe, I’ll bet. He was matched with a local barista, and look how that turned out.

She didn’t love him, and they both died. Same day. Same time. To the second, the exact moment they met three-hundred-and-sixty-five and one-fourth days later. One single rotation of Earth around the sun.

“My entire social circle consists of die-hard Tambourines,” Lynn continues, gesturing around the room like anyone but maybe her, me, and my Aunt Mandy know what that means. As in, Lynn and her friends (and probably my aunt) are all members of Tam’s official fan club. There’s a yearly membership fee, and a savage obsession with the man who … is supposedly my soulmate?

I groan and sag boneless-ly against Joules. He holds me in place easily enough.

My mother wraps her arms around Joules and me both, offering up a strong squeeze that belies her gentle appearance. Devon Frost served as a military police officer for four years before Joules was born.

For several minutes, nobody speaks. My brother, my mom, and I just stand there hugging until my dad comes over to stand beside us. I can hear my Aunt Lisa sobbing in the background, my grandmother doing her best to soothe her eldest daughter.

We separate, and I reach up to run my sweatshirt sleeve across my eyes. Joules offers Maria’s milk tea to me again, and I take it. Our gazes meet. He’s blue-eyed and dark-haired and pale-skinned. I’m the brown-eyed little sister with colored hair and too many freckles. We look nothing alike, but hey, our 23andMe tests promise we are, in fact, related. I pretended to be disappointed that neither Joules nor I was a changeling or something, but really, I was glad.

My brother has my back. Somehow, it feels like with him here, I might be able to do this.

I’m not going to tell him that though.

“I think I’ll go up to my room for a little bit,” I say, my words halting and strange. It’s only been a handful of hours since I found out that I was doomed to death-by-pop-star. I crashed into a field, met a cow, apologized to a farmer, and now I’d really like to be alone.

“You do whatever you need to do, honey,” my mom tells me, exchanging a look with Dad. I give him a quick hug and retreat up the stairs.

I’m supposed to graduate from the University of Arkansas in May. I’m supposed to move out and get my own place with Maria and Lynn. I’m supposed to have a life.

Instead … I have a curse.

I disappear into the third-floor attic room and shut the door behind me.

My laptop peers back at me from its place on my desk, and I exhale.

I’ve got some stalking—err, research—to do on Tam Eyre.

I’m sitting on the floor in front of my desk. We had to cut the legs off to get it to fit against the wall in my bedroom. The ceiling slopes dramatically on either side, leaving a narrow, somewhat useless space along either wall. This was my solution: buy an old desk, chop the wooden legs off, paint it. I’m comfortable on my floor cushion until Joules crashes into my bedroom like a lightning strike.

“Alright,” he says, taking up the entire doorway. “Here’s the plan.”

“Drink as much boba as I can before I die?” I joke, not bothering to look his way. Now that I’ve started researching Tam, my confidence is … dwindling.

Thomas Lachlan Eyre. The whole world knows him simply as Tam. Twenty-six years old. Turns twenty-seven in July. Six-foot-two. Strawberry blond hair that looks fake to me but that he claims is real. The greenest eyes I’ve ever seen (probably colored contacts). Born in Los Angeles, California to his mother-turned-manager, Elena Eyre.

Hates watermelon (like how?). Loves ice skating. Is into ‘quote’ cute girls who know how to stay true to themselves. As if that even makes any sense.

And the worst part of all? He’s in a long-term relationship. I knew he was, vaguely. I’ve heard people talking about it. Ever since Tam hooked up with another mega pop star by the name of Kaycee Quinn, it’s been big news. But somehow, in my shock, I’d forgotten that.

I stare at it now, that little space on my screen beside his name that says Relationship Status? In an LTR. Heart emoji. Heart emoji. Heart emoji. Smiley face.

I want to scream.

“At least one boba per day,” I continue without looking at Joules. “I’m going to need it: this is never going to happen.”

“You’ve given up already?” he asks me, his voice like the stab of a knife in my back. I cringe, but he isn’t done. Joules storms into the room, slamming the door behind him. He falls into an effortless crouch on my left as I let my guilty eyes slide his way. He’s staring at me with that gaze of his, the one that undoes a person’s soul with a single glance. “Joe never gave up. Never.”

My brother is growling at me again. I put my face in my hands, resisting the urge to say something mean like, “You’re right. Joe never gave up and look what happened to him.” I don’t bring up Uncle Jack or Aunt Clara or any number of unlucky Frost family members. We have a family cemetery. Did I mention that? We bury our copious curse-dead family members on private property, tucked up in the woods beside the Hobbs State-Park Conservation Area.

Just … not Joe. That isn’t what he wanted. Instead, he opted for a process called natural organic reduction. The redbud tree in the backyard is the place I go when I need to talk to him.

“Tam isn’t just famous; he’s in a relationship.” I pause for dramatic effect, dropping my hands to my lap so that I can peer at Joules with weepy eyes. He softens immediately and then sits down cross-legged, waiting for me to continue. “With Kaycee freaking Quinn. She’s one of the only people on the planet who has more Instagram followers than Tam does.”

“I’ll take care of Kaycee Quinn,” Joules tells me, his words casting a dark spell over the room. I shiver at the implied menace and then shake my head, reaching my hands up to push my pastel green hair back from my face.

“You’re not killing anybody.” My words might not be a spell, but they’re firm. Absolute.

Joules offers a daring half-smile.

“It’s cute that you think I wouldn’t kill someone for you, but no. That’s not what I meant. I’m going to get Kaycee to fall in love with me.”

I roll my eyes.

“Do you hear yourself when you talk?” I ask, giving him a skeptical look. Joules just smiles a little wider at me. Leans in a little closer. Girls hover around him, and he knows it. It’s an insufferable trait, all of that knowing. “They’re in a relationship.”

“Yeah? And?” Joules reaches out and pushes the lid of my laptop closed, his finger right over the sticker that says Life Happens, Boba Helps. He’s the one who put it there, not me. I get gun-shy when it comes to committing to sticker placement. Joules just slaps them wherever. “When has that ever stopped anyone before?”

I give him a dark look as he sits back up, crossing his arms over his black hoodie.

“Please tell me you’ve never gone after someone in a relationship.”

Joules reaches out and flicks me in the forehead, and I frown at him, rubbing at the sore spot with my hand.

“Of course not. But my little sister’s life is on the line. What are you even trying to say? That I should let you die because of some celebrity hookup that’s probably more publicity stunt and less romance than social media would have you believe?” He scoffs and turns his head to the side, gazing out my window in the direction of our neighbor’s redbud tree. Thinking about Joe again. “Frankly, I don’t give a fuck if they’re head-over-heels for each other. This is your life, Lakelynn. We only get one of them.”

I don’t know how to respond to that. Instead, I watch as the sun finishes its descent and the pink blossoms of the tree disappear into the shadows of night. The Christmas lights I keep up year-round fill my room with a cozy glow, wrapping Joules and me in the soothing essence of home.

If … if I do die at the end of the year, at least I’ve always felt warm and safe, have always felt loved. It doesn’t seem so bad when I think about it that way.

When I remember how my cousin’s body went limp in my arms, it’s … yeah, it is bad. I can’t think my way out of this mess.

“Hey, what about Lucy?” I ask. Pretty sure that’s the name of Joules’ latest girlfriend. I don’t know her very well. He doesn’t let his girlfriends meet the family until he’s sure about them. He has never been sure. So, no, we’ve never met a single one. I only hear about them in passing.

“Right, Lucy,” he murmurs absently, reaching a hand into his hoodie pocket to withdraw his phone. When he starts to tap out a text, I lunge forward and try to steal his phone from him. He very casually lifts it up in the air and out of my reach. When I scramble to my feet to try to subdue him, he follows along and lifts it even higher.

“You cannot break up with a girl over text,” I grind out between my teeth, and Joules gives me a wry look.

“Do you really think so low of me? I was inviting her out to ice cream. I’ll buy her two scoops of bubblegum, thank her for her company, and let her know that it was never going to work out between us.”

I’m still perched on my tiptoes, trying to grab the phone, but Joules is the older brother. I’m the little sister. I am never getting a hold of that phone. I might be twenty-two, and he might be twenty-six, but nothing has changed.

With a scoff, I settle back onto my socked heels and turn away, padding across the old rug on my floor and settling on the edge of my bed. Joules follows me, putting one hand on the wrought iron footboard. That, too, has Christmas lights woven through it.

“How do you know it wouldn’t work out?” I ask absently, wondering how the universe knows that Tam and I will work out. Or rather, that we shouldwork out. I’ve heard from my family members who have beaten the curse that once you meet your Match, you know. Soulmates, they say. The curse might be insidious, but it knows, they tell me. Others say it’s all a load of crap-black-magic with stacked odds. I don’t know what to believe. “Fuck.”

I rarely curse, but there it is. Joules raises a brow.

“It would never work because she says I spend too much time with my family.”

“You do spend too much time with your family,” I grumble, but Joules ignores the statement.

“We are going to figure this out, Lake. I promise you that.” When I don’t look at him or even grunt in acknowledgement, he grits his teeth and stomps around to stand in front of me. Because of the shape of my room, he has to lean over to avoid smacking his head on the exposed wooden rafters. “If you die, Lake, that’s it for me. I won’t … I can’t go on without you. I barely survived losing Joe. You are not allowed to do this to me.”

He presses a gentle kiss to the top of my head, like he used to do when I was three and he was seven, and our parents would bundle us up on the couch under a pile of quilts.

“Get some sleep,” he continues when I don’t respond. I’m just staring at a tote bag that I borrowed from Lynn. It has Tam’s fan club logo on the side of it. #Tambourines – Cute, Confident & True to Ourselves. My mouth twitches. So cheesy. “And don’t stay up too late researching that guy. The internet never makes things better. The more you look into him, the worse it’ll seem.”

Joules waits for me to reply. When it becomes obvious that I’m not going to, he growls at me again and storms out of the room. He slams my door so hard that a string of lights unfurls from one of the rafters and slips down to the floor in a coil of green and white.

I flop back into my pillows and lift my phone up, ignoring Joules’ advice.

I pull up that “Sweet Honey” video again, my heart pounding strangely when Tam’s face appears on the screen. The very first thing he does when the camera zooms in is wink. And then he’s sliding his tongue across his lower lip and breaking into a dance that I wouldn’t be able to learn if I had ten years to practice. Why does he undulate his hips so much? Oh, and those abs. I could cry over those abs, but mostly because they’re likely to kill me.

Tam has a mouth made for smiling, this perfect pink pout that he knows just how to part for maximum effect. His eyes glitter beneath the pale red shadow on his lids, a faint scrub of dark liner around those sideways teardrop shapes. Perfectly green, like the rolling hills I saw on my way home today.

His skin is a swatch of fresh cream over slick, lean muscles, that strawberry hair tufting out beneath the white beanie he’s wearing in the video. “Sweet Honey” is right. What a name for a song. I can feel this low, soft heat in my belly, this strange sparkling in my chest that makes it difficult to swallow.

With a voice like an angel, the shoulders of a warrior, and cleverly seductive lyrics that have me shifting strangely on my bed … I feel like a dead woman walking.

Laughter peals from my throat, and I don’t stop it. I roll onto my side, clutching my phone against my chest and wishing I’d been matched with literally anyone else.

Does it get any worse than this?

What the hell would you do if you were matched with the world’s most famous pop star?

Prepare to die or fight like hell?

As much as I try to be practical, I know who I am on the inside, and there is only one possible choice for me.

I get up, snag a fresh pack of flashcards from my desk drawer, and get to work.

If I can earn a business degree, I can memorize everything in the world that there is to know about Tam Eyre.