Author’s note: Thanks for reading! Please vote, comment and like! Truly, Madly, Deadly is the first of my YA thrillers published with Sourcebooks – coming soon in January is See Jayne Run. All of my books are available in print and digital from any major retailer.
If you like the book, PLEASE run over and vote for it as Teen Choice's Book of the Year -- vote here: http://www.teenreads.com/2014-teen-choice-book-of-the-year-nominees
Copyright © 2013 by Hannah Jayne
“What?” Sawyer stomped an imaginary brake on her side of the car and turned her full body to face Chloe. “What do you mean?”
Chloe’s eyes started to moisten again and she took her hands off the wheel, pressing her palms over her eyes. “Maggie’s mom called my mom. They found her tonight.”
“Chloe!” Sawyer gripped the wheel and pulled the car back into their lane as a big rig horn wailed next to them.
“I hated her, but I can’t believe she—she—”
Chloe sniffed, and Sawyer felt the same lump growing in her throat. “She committed suicide?”
They drove in silence for a beat before Chloe turned off the highway, down a forested off ramp that Sawyer recognized as the one nearest Maggie’s house. They drove down a long, windy street that was bathed in a starlit darkness until the angry slashes of emergency lights gashed the darkness, orange, red, and blue cutting through the Buick’s windshield as they veered to a stop.
“Oh my God,” Sawyer breathed.
The cul de sac was littered with cars—some Sawyer recognized from the student parking lot at Hawthorne, most she didn’t know—and police and emergency vehicles with open doors, officers and paramedics staggered around with notepads or listening to squawking shoulder radios. An officer stepped in front of a shard of yellow headlight, and Sawyer clicked off her seat belt, launching herself out of the car. She barely heard Chloe calling in the background.
“Stephen?”
Officer Stephen Haas stopped in midstride. He smiled when he saw Sawyer, but she could see that the grin held no joy, was wooden, meant to be offered to strangers and mourners in such situations.
“What are you doing here, Sawyer?”
Sawyer’s eyes cut to Maggie’s house ablaze with lights and then back to Stephen. “Maggie was my…” She pressed the word out over her teeth, reminding herself that it had been true, once, “My friend. What happened?”
Stephen swallowed slowly, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he raked a hand through his hair. He dropped his voice and Sawyer stepped closer to him. “There’s nothing official yet, but off the record”—he touched Sawyer kindly on the shoulder, an almost fatherly gesture—“I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but your friend Maggie killed herself tonight.”
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Truly, Madly, Deadly
Teen FictionThey Said It Was An Accident... Sawyer Dodd is a star athlete, a straight-A student, and the envy of every other girl who wants to date Kevin Anderson. When Kevin dies in a tragic car crash, Sawyer is stunned. Then she opens her locker to find a not...
