chapter one

meghan

“They should’ve bulldozed this monstrosity when they had the chance.”

I wanted to tell my colleague and fellow reporter, Xander, he was exaggerating, but as we made our way up the crumbling steps of the once-abandoned Clark Elementary School, I knew he was right. Adjusting the box of office supplies on my hip, I reached for the railing to steady myself. “At least they painted over the graffiti.”

“I enjoyed that, actually.” Holding a heavy printer against his chest, Xander propped the front door to the school open for me with his foot. We were in the middle of moving all of our supplies, furniture, and every last scrap of paper from our old offices at the dedicated Woodvale Times building to the second floor of this old, dilapidated school. Our new home.

“I think the ‘fuck Enzo’ on the side of the gymnasium was my favorite,” Xander continued. “It raised so many questions. Like, who’s Enzo? And what did he do to earn such a declaration?”

“Maybe someone was just giving us a little snippet of their to-do list,” I suggested as we made our way down the pea-green painted hallway. “Like, ‘What was I supposed to do on Thursday? Oh, right, fuck Enzo .’”

This joke didn’t quite land with Xander, who just shook his head as his eyes scanned the dusty old trophy case. “I’m surprised they’re not sticking us down in the old art room in the basement. It’s like a windowless prison, and, if my memory serves me correctly, it smells like a sweaty ballsack.”

I didn’t know how to respond to that, so I didn’t. Adjusting the box in my arms, I turned around to face the open door to my right. You’d never guess this was an ancient school from the looks of the former library now. The room had been completely gutted and remodeled to accommodate WWTV and all their equipment. It looked just like an ordinary newsroom, with a curved anchor desk as its focal point. That was where my best friend, Jillian Taylor, sat every day to deliver Woodvale’s most exciting news, like the return of a missing cat, or highlights from the annual corn-shucking contest. And she was sitting there now, sipping a coffee while listening to her producer rattle on about something.

She spotted me at the same time, lifting her hand in a casual wave. I lifted my fingers from the box to awkwardly wave back. The only positive thing about the media merger we were in the middle of was that I’d get to see my best friend at work all the time.

And the worst part?

I’d have to encounter my ex on a daily basis.

“Explain to me how someone like you ever slept with a nerd like that,” Xander muttered behind me. We were both looking at Chase Monroe, who was untangling some cords off to the side of Jillian’s new desk. He was a TV news reporter, too, although his approach was a little more unconventional. As a field reporter, he preferred working alone, setting up his own stationary camera to report breaking news or human-interest stories. We ran into each other at events a few times a month, and that was already enough for me.

Chase lifted his head and glanced toward us peering at him through the newsroom doors. He adjusted his glasses and, like Jillian, gave us a polite wave before turning around and getting back to untangling the extension cord. His brown hair was unruly, like always, and he was wearing his usual uniform of a gray T-shirt and jeans. He only threw on a navy blazer when he was on camera.

Xander and I turned to make our way up the steps. “Surprised he’s not roaming these halls with his little buddy looking for g-g-g-ghooosts,” Xander mocked.

I rolled my eyes. Chase and his best friend were ghost hunters with a YouTube channel, and they had grandiose plans of becoming big-name influencers in the paranormal community. “You don’t always have to make fun of people, Xander.”

“Oh, but I do,” he said as we curved around the landing to go up the next set of stairs. “And your ex makes it too easy.”

If it weren’t for Xander’s incessant need to insult people at every given opportunity, he might have fewer enemies in this town. I was probably one of the few people in the community who could tolerate him, but only because I enjoyed commiserating with him sometimes.

In some ways, he was like my twin. We both had pale skin and jet-black hair—though my hair tended to verge more toward a deep brown hue if left to its natural state—and our choice in all-black attire was strikingly similar. We tried going out the previous summer, but we quickly discovered being too alike had its downsides. The chemistry was so lacking we both decided to never speak of it again.

Xander and I made our way to our new workspace, a classroom on the second floor. Unlike the WWTV space downstairs, our area still resembled the interior of a school. There was still a chalkboard along the wall and an old pencil sharpener by the door. Only instead of school desks, there were cubicles. When we walked in, our editor, Graham, was already seated at the head of the small conference table at the front of the room. He looked up from his iPad and raised his eyebrows at Xander, who dropped the heavy printer down onto the shelf along the wall with a loud thud.

“Where the hell have you two been?” Graham asked, tugging on the collar of his brown suede blazer. “And don’t say you stopped for coffee, because despite your incessant complaining, the coffee I make here is perfectly adequate.”

“Graham,” I said, putting the box of office supplies down on the table beside him. “We had to stop and give the old building a tearful good-bye. It was only right. Sorry it took us so long, Xander got especially choked up.”

Xander shook his head, but he didn’t call me out on my lies. “The difference between the coffee we drink and the coffee you make, Graham, is that I’ve never once taken a sip of a cold brew from Riverside and thought to myself, ‘Hmm, that was perfectly adequate .’”

Graham was known for making the weakest coffee on the planet. Some of the other staff members tolerated it, but Xander and I never touched the stuff. “Fine,” Graham said with a dramatic swipe up on his iPad. “Go ahead and get your fancy six-dollar drinks. I know how much both of you earn. I would accept the free coffee if I were you.”

I made a face at Graham before glancing over at Devonte, who was taping pictures of his family on his cubicle walls. Devonte was our part-time sportswriter who spent half of his time collecting and reselling rare sports memorabilia. He only kept this job for the insurance—a fact he wasn’t shy about admitting aloud.

I couldn’t see Byron in the cubicle beside Devonte’s, but I heard his cough echoing throughout the room. We were all sort of waiting for Byron to retire, but deep down we knew writing baby announcements and classified ads were his entire reason for existing. That and the egg salad sandwiches he brought every day for lunch.

“Now that we’re all here, let’s have our meeting,” Graham announced. Ignoring this, Xander headed toward the door to the hallway. Graham took notice. “Whenever you’re ready, of course. Don’t let my meeting interrupt your… whatever it is that you’re about to do.”

“Just gotta get my coffee from the car,” Xander said, making his way out the door.

“Oh, grab mine!” I called out before wincing at Graham.

He let out a heavy sigh. “You two are the reason behind my premature grays. You know that, right? I’m only forty, but look at my sideburns.” He motioned toward the salt-and-pepper hair above his ears, which I actually thought made him look distinguished—the same as the crow’s feet in the corners of his eyes. Jillian once told me she’d love to roll Graham up into a ball and stick him deep in her pocket, but she said weird, horny stuff like that all the time, so I didn’t think much of it. “If I had any sense, I’d fire you both.”

“Would you?” I asked, putting a hand on my hip. “I could use some time off.”

Graham didn’t laugh.Ribbing him was one of the few things that made this job enjoyable—I loved teasing him until his jaw clenched and those crow’s feet deepened just a little more. The truth was, if I didn’t have Xander and Graham to spar with, I probably would’ve lost my mind a long time ago. I needed to focus on that, and not on the fact my ex-boyfriend was lurking somewhere just beneath my feet.

The thought made me shiver.