Campbell by C. S. Starr Page A

could affect her too.  
    The next morning, Lucy got up early and did something she hadn’t done in years. Smoking her grandfather’s pipe, once his most prized possession, had given her a great deal of pleasure when she was very young, especially right after she’d finally put him out of his misery, but now it felt a little unnecessary. This morning though, she wanted it. She wanted to feel that control she’d felt when she was young and lit it up for the first time. The heady tobacco made Lucy lightheaded, and she rocked on the creaky porch swing, repeating the mantra that had got her through the early days.  
    She was in charge. He wasn’t.  
    East wasn’t.
    Zoey wasn’t.  
    She was.  
    She breathed deeply and tried to remember what Cole felt like, how his presence calmed her, even when they were doing the most mundane things, like sitting on the porch. Her mind ran through all the familiar things she could remember about him; his smell, the way he pigeoned his toes when he’d sit, the awkward cowlick on the back of his head that she was constantly flattening.  
    The sun rose in the east, an important constant. Lucy curled up, bringing her legs up on the porch swing, and watched the light grow, as it inched over the horizon. She’d always fancied herself a morning person.  
    Despite what should have been a lack of distractions, she barely heard the steps on the porch behind her before she felt a searing pain in the back of her head before everything went black.

    ***

    Tal hadn’t woken early. The bottle of wine he’d consumed with Juan late into the night to top off the one he’d finished with Zoey had seen to that.  
    He known, every minute that he’d spent doing everything but proper sex with Zoey, that it had been a terrible idea. He started to wonder if he wasn’t harboring some serious masochistic tendencies. Maybe he needed a healthy dose of guilt to accompany his orgasms. Maybe, despite his best attempts to be as normal as possible, he’d become more fucked up than most. That night, he’d gotten drunk to pretend that wasn’t true.  
    When Tal eventually woke up, it wasn’t on his own. He opened his eyes to see a ski-mask-covered face looking down on him, and a great deal of pressure on his torso, from said ski-masked face sitting on him. Ski-mask was a big guy. Tal felt like he was being crushed.  
    He also felt wet, as if someone had poured something on him. Something sticky; thicker than water.  
    “What the fuck?” he rasped, as he tried to move.
    “You’re Tal Bauman?” The ski-mask asked in a gravelly voice.
    Had Tal had the foresight to say no, he would have, but he’d been caught entirely off guard.
    “Yeah, and who the fuck are you?” He replied, struggling to get free, realizing he was covered in blood. Juan’s blood, from the look of the still glassy eyes in the face of the cold person beside him. Tal found himself panicking and tried with all his might to move the mass on top of him, but to no avail. The ski-mask simply smiled at his efforts.
    “I’m East,” he replied coldly, as he pulled out a syringe and stabbed him in the neck. “And you picked the wrong time to come to Campbell.”

Chapter 7

    October 2001
    Los Angeles, California

    Leah, Tal, and Rachel looked numbly at Tal’s brother Rob as he shivered on the couch. At fifteen, he was a tall kid, broad from years of rugby, which he much preferred to the academic ventures, unlike his siblings who were both lankier.
    “I think it’s just a cold,” he chattered, wrapping the blanket around himself tightly. “I feel okay.”
    Tal wasn’t sure if Rob was broken and in denial from all the death, or just too empty to care about himself anymore.
    “I’ll get you some tea,” Leah said, smiling bravely at her cousin. “Rach, you want to turn up the heat a bit?”
    She nodded, scampering off to play with the thermostat.  
    Tal kept his distance from Rob, opting to sit across the room in his mom’s