An excerpt from River’s Rowan from Eden’s perspective. You can pre-order this book from here

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Jake grins lopsidedly at me, arching his brows. “It’ll be fun. I promise.”

“But it’s—it’s a party.” I can’t help that my nose scrunches up like a rat’s when I say the word. Parties, for me, are like sour drops: you’re not supposed to eat them.

“Brielle’s going.” Jake’s trying to bribe me, but I roll my eyes.

“Of course Brielle’s going. It’s at River’s house. Her boyfriend?”

Jake laughs, reaches over and pats my knee. Casually, he leans over and nudges me. “Come on, elf, you need to lighten up. School will always be here. You can go back to studying tomorrow. Give yourself one night. Think of it as an experiment.”

“An experiment?” I raise my eyebrows skeptically.

“Yes,” his blue eyes start to shine. “That’s it, think of this,” he wags his finger back and forth between us. “As a social experiment. Write about it. Vanderbilt will love it.”

“You’re incorrigible.”

“Whatever that means. Sounds delicious.”

My face flushes and he laughs. “Say you’ll come.”

“I’m not going to do anything.”

He tips his head. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, if you’re trying to…. if you want…. If you think I’m going to… I don’t want to hook-up.”

He smiles. “Is that what you think I want?”

“Is it?”

“No.”

“What do you want?”

“I want you to come to the campfire.”

“I won’t drink, either. I really don’t want to have fun.”

He chuckles, lifts a shoulder. “So sit next to me at the campfire and just be there. Do something different. I promise it won’t hurt you. And I won’t ask for a thing. Not even a goodnight kiss, Eden.”

“You’re a football player,” I frown. “And a cute one, too, with the blue eyes and–” I wave at him. “why are you going to so much trouble to hang out with me?”

“You think I’m cute?” He’s smiling because he knows he’s cute. Everybody in school knows he’s cute. Everybody in the city knows he’s cute. He’s the quarter-back.

I roll my eyes. “Your ego does not need me to answer that.”

He laughs. “We can be friends. Let’s start there. Okay? But to do that, you’re going to need to spend time with me. Right?”

I sigh. “You promise nothing’ll happen, because I’m terrible at saying no. Terrible. Awful. But I’ll hate you if –“

He reaches out and puts a finger against my mouth. “You’ve quite clearly, abundantly, said no already. It’s heard. We’ll go to the campfire, laugh, talk, have fun with friends. I might drink a beer or two, who knows, you’ll drink — what is it you drink, milk?” he teases again. I groan, and slap his hand away from me, but I can’t stop the smile that tugs on my lips. “Anyway, afterwards, I’ll bring you home and you can go right back to studying for some crazy science class and I’ll go back to failing mine.” He holds out a cocked pinky. “Pinky promise.”

I’m coming to the campfire. With Jake.

WHAT?

What do I WEAR???? OMG, Brielle, SOS.

Be there in 10. Want to hear all about it.

Think of it as a social experiment. That wasn’t a half-bad idea, actually. If I think of this campfire event as an experiment, then I can possibly get through it alive. See, I’ve never really been on a date, or a party or anything remotely like either. It’s not because I’ve not been asked. I have. I’m not completely an outcast. I do hang with Brielle and she knows how to have fun and she’s friends with the in crowd, her boyfriend is on the football team. So, I’ve been invited, even as just an afterthought, to some events. But I haven’t actually gone to any. Because, goals, friends, goals. I have to get into Vanderbilt. To do that, I have to be top of my class and to do that I have to make literal straight As my entire high school career. When one is trying to do that, one does not have time for friends or a social life. Sacrifices for the greater good. My family, my dad, specifically, has taught me that those sacrifices are ones I want to make.

But….

When Jake smiles at me, my heartrate goes up. I don’t know why, it just does. Thoughts scatter from my brain. I guess there’s no harm in going one night where there are other people around, where Brielle will be there, and enjoying the late October air. It might be nice to have a break from reading the textbooks. So, I’ll form a hypothesis: my hypothesis is that I will be the only teenage girl there who does not drink and that is an interesting hypothesis, so I’ll test it.

What do they do at campfires? I asked Bri that earlier when she was helping me pick this outfit out. I don’t know, usually play games like Truth and Dare, roast marshmallows, stuff like that. She’s very excited that I’m going.

What do they do at bonfires? I texted Jake earlier.

He sent two kissey emojis back, followed by a heart emoji and two beer bottle emojis.

So he was no help.

By the time I see headlights pull into the driveway, my stomach is in knots. Mom calls for me and I run down the stairs. Mom smiles at me, tells me I look really nice and to have fun. When I open the door, Jake smiles politely and greets Mom and Dad, promises to drive safe and have me home on time and then asks if I’m ready. He’s got a blue Jeep and I can’t help the wave of excitement that washes through me. Even though I’m allowed to go, it feels like I’m doing something I shouldn’t be doing.

Jake’s taken the doors off the Jeep so the crisp October wind blows through my hair as we drive along the curvy roads. He keeps one hand on the gear shift, the other on the wheel; he’s got some upbeat country station playing on the radio. The curvy roads slowly get narrower as we farther and farther past the heart of town. Thick trees line either side of the road and a ditch stretches along my side. He isn’t going too fast, only about ten over the speed limit of fifty, but because the roads are windy, it feels fast. Instead of scaring me, though, I feel young and free. And, most surprising of all, I feel safe.

The Callaway mansion is well known.

It is huge.

It sprawls across acres upon acres. Golden light spills from the windows of the main house and there’s another car or two ahead of us that we follow around to the east of the house, to a big field, farther away from the mansion. A blaze can be seen and smoke billowing as we drive closer and park along the row of other cars. Up ahead, we can barely make out shadows of people. “Welcome to your first bonfire, Ms. Briggs.”

Jake puts a hand on the small of my back as we walk toward the group. He’s very outgoing and social as he greets everybody. I see Brielle, who’s cuddling up under a blanket with River, and wave. She waves back. I see the marshmallows and big tins of beer on ice and soda. I grab an ice water and, much to my surprise, so does Jake. When he catches me looking at him in surprise, he winks. Music is blaring from speakers I can’t see and I watch as River takes Brielle’s hand and helps her up into the back of a pickup truck. When they start dancing to the upbeat music, another couple jumps up into the back of the truck, dancing with them.

Jake, though, sits on a log and picks up a couple of sticks, pats a spot next to him and cocks his head. “Roast marshmallows with me?”

Relieved, I take a stick and join him.

I can do this.

He laughs at me when I barely scorch the marshmallow and then pulls his from the fire. It’s completely burnt and melting. When he uses his fingers to pull it off the stick, he says, “Open up, Eden,” and then puts the gooey thing in my mouth. It is delicious and my eyes widen. I lick my eyes. “Hm, that’s good.”

“Find a piece a chocolate, it’s even better.”

Soon, the dancers join us on the logs and someone quiets the music. Chatter undulates, picks up, dies down, picks up again and I’ve started to relax. There’s probably twenty kids here and, of the twenty, there’s maybe five or six who I haven’t seen drink anything… but that’s five or six more than I thought there’d be. I shiver from the air and Jake takes his jacket off. Lulled by the night so far, I let him drape it over me, and even slide a few inches closer to him.

I catch Brielle smile at me.

“Who knows a good ghost story or two?” River asks.

Hoots of laughter pick up and someone whose name I don’t know offers to go first. For the first time, I sense how dark it is. When did it get that dark? My heart tightens but I try to cling to the feeling of normalcy and safety. The boy stands in front of the fire. Sparks leap, transforming him into a shadow. As he starts talking his arms move, but he looks like a shadow, because he’s in front of the fire. My breath catches in my throat, fear clutches my stomach and my teeth start to grind.

He talks about a ghost chasing him, a giant of a woman named Huggin Molly, who will scream in his ear if she catches him.

“Come on, Eden, wake up, we have to go, hurry.” Mom would shake me awake, having already packed my things. Not just some of them, but everything I could take with me. Whatever she didn’t have time to pack would be left behind. In the dead of night, we’d take off. Running. Running away from our lives.

Tears popping into my eyes, panic gripping my heart, I stood abruptly, causing a couple of people to look at me, but I didn’t notice them. I just started walking. I had to get away. I couldn’t hear anymore stories about ghosts. “Ghosts aren’t real, ghosts aren’t real,” I mumble to myself repeatedly as I walk further and further away from the group. Only I don’t know where I’m at and it’s really dark. The only place I know to go is to the Jeep. I’m glad the doors are off and I just slide back into the seat. I bend over, put my head between my knees and start rocking.

When someone touches me, I jerk.

“Hey, hey,” Brielle’s voice makes me look up. Her eyes are worried. She reaches out and I hug her. She pats my back. “Jake’s real worried back there. He jumped up to come after you, but I told him to sit down. What’s up?”

“I can’t hear the ghost stories. I… we ran from ghosts. All the time, Brielle. In the dead of night, it was, get up, Eden, get up and I didn’t know why. In the back of the car, I’d stare out the window, but I couldn’t see anything except the dark sky. All around me was silence and darkness. I’d ask where we were going and nobody could tell me because they didn’t know; it was like Russian Roulette. We would drive until we ran out of gas or we got too tired to go anymore. I knew we were running from the police but I couldn’t see them, so they were like invisible bad guys, they were like ghosts chasing us at night, making us leave everything.”

This is what you’re made for. This is what little girls’ bodies are made for.

I squeeze my eyes shut and shake my head viciously. No. No. I need the light to be turned on. Light, I need it to be bright. “Brielle, I need light, I need light now. Please.” My voice cracks. She must see it in my face because she nods. “Okay. Okay. Hang on. I’ll get River to let us go inside, I’ll tell him we need to go the bathroom or something. Hang on.”

“No, no, I want to go home. I want to go home now.”

“You want me to get Jake?”

I hesitate but then nod. I need to go home.

“Okay. Okay, I’ll get Jake. You’ll be okay.”

I watch her go, fear turning to panic. I put my head between my knees again, and try to breathe through my mouth. “Ghosts are not real. Ghosts are not real.”

The sound of sirens rings in my ears and I whimper, not knowing if it’s real or not. I start rocking back and forth, wishing it was light, thinking of ghosts and what chases you in the darkness. When I hear footsteps, I jerk up so fast and my eyes collide with Jakes, then skitter away. He must think…

“Hey, there,” his voice is soft as he slides into the driver’s seat. “Heard you were ready to go.”

I nod, trying hard to hold back tears, looking to the side, away from him so he won’t see the tears and fear in my eyes. I just need it not to be dark. When I start shaking, I pull my arms closer to my sides and burrow my head down.

“I’ll take you home, but I bought you something.”

I turn my face to him and see a roasted marshmallow. I take a shaky breath and take it from him, licking the gooiness from around my lips. He smiles, cranking the Jeep. “From now on, I’m going to call you grasshopper, not elf.”

“Grass-grasshopper?”

“Yeah. Grasshopper. What? My little scientist can’t connect the dots already? That’s alright, I’ll help her out this one time, to prove I’m not completely science illiterate. Did you know that a grasshopper who is scared will start eating large amounts of –“

“Carbohydrate–“

“Rich plants,” we finish simultaneously. He adds, “Kind of like some humans who get scared might like an extra dose of sweets to help them through it?”

Warmth spreads through my entire being. For a long time I stare at him and then confess, “I don’t like ghosts and I really don’t like the dark.”

He nods, pulls his hand from the gear shift, and threads his fingers through mine. I don’t know why, but I let him. Squeezing lightly, he pulls out of River’s driveway and onto the road and says softly, “Got it, grasshopper.”