Corinna “Corey” Nguyen’s life seems perfectly average for a closeted bisexual whiz kid with her eyes on college and a budding romance with her friend Kate. Sixteen years old and navigating senior year with her tight-knit group of best friends through crushes, breakups, and pregnancy scares, Corey mistakenly believes that running for valedictorian, choosing the right college, and coming out of the closet are the biggest things she has to worry about.
That is, until prom night, when she’s left alone and in shock, hiding inside a diner bathroom, the only witness to a multiple homicide.
With graduation looming and all eyes on her, the pressure is on for Corey to identify the killer and ensure the crime that has changed her life forever will not go unpunished.
Bang! He kicked the first stall door in. Bang, the second.
I held my breath, my toes curling against the toilet seat -- one hand over my mouth and nose, the other against the wall, steadying my awkward position as I balanced precariously above the water in a crouch.
My heart was racing. It was beating so hard and so loudly in my ears that I was sure he could hear it.
Bang! Bang!
When he kicked each door open, the whole structure shuddered. In between each kick, his footsteps were loud and heavy; he was wearing some kind of work boots. When he kicked in the door of the stall next to mine, the flimsy divider vibrated so violently that one of my shoes slipped from the toilet paper dispenser and fell --
-- into my hand, flung out on reflex. I caught the shoe by the ridiculously high heel, almost falling off the toilet to do so. I took a breath -- couldn’t help it -- and slammed my eyes shut so hard I could see a nebula of swirling colors on the inside of my eyelids.
Oh God oh God oh God oh God, my brain screamed in the thundering silence. My lungs burned, my eyes filled with terrified tears, and my thighs shuddered from the effort of holding myself absolutely still in such a strange way. My foot was slipping, sweaty against the toilet seat.
I heard his footsteps leaving. Leaving. I didn’t breathe until the huge metal door to the bathroom slammed shut behind him. A hush fell.
The first real breath I took was a sob -- a broken, desperate noise as my stocking foot finally slipped into the toilet, getting soaked almost to the knee. The splash of cold water up my calf shocked me into moving, and I tumbled off the toilet and against the locked stall door, feeling hot tears spill over my cheeks.
I choked on every breath, the panic attack finally taking over. A nightmare seen through the cracked door: Kate’s sparkly high-heeled shoe covered in blood; Ricky’s limp arm hanging over the table; Jake’s pale face, his lips forming the word, “Please,” voice cracking. He didn’t even have a chance to close his eyes before the shooter pulled the trigger, point blank.
It played over and over in my head like a surreal nightmare, the worst dream I’d ever had, worse even than all the nightmares that had come after we’d all watched The Ring when we were ten. We hadn’t been supposed to watch it -- my mother had said no -- but we’d done it anyway, and we had all been so scared that night. We made a pile of pillows and blankets in the middle of the living room and slept in a tangle wrapped so tight you almost couldn’t tell whose limbs were whose. I’d woken up with Jessa’s foot on my face the next morning.
With my eyes still closed and my teeth pressed together so hard that my jaw ached, I prayed for the first time in my life. I prayed that I was about to wake up with Jessa’s foot on my face, with a penis drawn on my forehead in washable marker, with Kate’s face buried in my stomach and Ricky wheezing in my ear. This can’t be happening, I thought hysterically. Please, God, don’t let this be happening.
The seconds ticked by in an eerie, unnatural silence broken only by my rapid heartbeat. After what felt like an eternity, I finally let go of my high heel and heard it clatter to the floor, too loud. I opened my eyes. This wasn’t a nightmare. This was real.
