Pulse

Chapter 1

Lucie

My brother had the worst music taste ever known to man, and I spoke the truth. While people often deemed him a hip hop listener—you know, the kind of guy into Drake or Lil Wayne—Dempsey actually preferred slow country guitar riffs, a little bit of cringey RNB here and there. The main idea was this: car rides with Dempsey were hell.

He had some slow, crooning RNB song on full blast on the car radio, and I leaned my head against the window, trying my hardest not to pull open the door, tumble from the moving car, and end it all. Don't get me wrong; my brother and I were best friends, just not when it came to music.

I trained my eyes on the blurred lights of San Francisco, townhouse after townhouse passing us by. The roads sloped steeply, an urban rollercoaster.

"Lulu."

The sound of my name startled me a little, enough to make me notice that Dempsey had turned the radio off. There was only the whir of the truck then, the beeping of car horns and the muffled voices of pedestrians. We passed by a cafe alive with music and dancing, the beat thumping along with my heart.

I rolled the window down as I centered myself away from it, letting the wind from the nearby bay play with my shoulder-length curls, which had actually decided to cooperate with me tonight. "Yeah?"

"Do I have to go over party safety with you again?" Dempsey asked me, casting me a skeptical look. His dark eyebrows were risen, the red light we'd stopped at catching in the darkness of his irises, the dark ebony brown we'd both inherited from Mom and Dad. "You know not to take a drink from anyone else, to call if anyone does anything to you, to run like crazy if police shows up, and oh—"

"Don't do drugs," I finished for him, playing at a fray in my burgundy sweater, which I'd last-minute thrown on over a skirt when Jiya had called me. Jiya was awful at planning ahead of time; she'd known about this party since Monday, but had neglected to tell me until a few hours before it started. That left me struggling to pull on my boots and get out the door on time, slamming myself in Dempsey's truck and buckling up for this less-than-bearable car ride. "I know. Unlike someone here, I'm popular and I have friends. This is not my first party."

Dempsey made a face to show his disdain for the comment. "I have friends," he said quietly.

"You mean the friends that are spending their last few days of spring break traveling places without you? Come on, Dempsey."

"Maybe I just wanted to spend my spring break with my family," he said, then pulled his truck to a stop in front of Caden Gibbs's house, the address Jiya had texted me. The house was like most around here—narrow and not far from other houses like it, a gothic style set in pastel brick. There was virtually no lawn, only the front steps leading to the door. Lights moved beyond the windows, the music's steady beat pouring out into the otherwise peaceful night.

Dempsey unlocked the passenger side door with the click of a button, tapping mindlessly on the dash with his knuckles. "Be safe, Lucie," he said, dropping a wink at me as I got out of the car, the brisk wind from the bay wrapping me in its tendrils as soon as I got outside.

Behind the car window, Dempsey was an ominous shadow, waving at me from the dark. He was gone along with the car in the next few moments, only the faint noise of an engine roaring left to remind me of his presence.

Turning, I ran a few hands through my hair to detangle the knots, sighing as I climbed the front stoop. I knocked, though there was really no need, since the guy that opened the door wasn't even Caden and he didn't stick around to greet me. I practically let myself in, the quiet solitude of the night hour sucked away by booming speakers and the loud voices of reckless teenagers trying to be heard.