After the Sirens

Subscribe to our newsletter for title recommendations, giveaways and discounts reserved only for subscribers.Join here. Copyright © 2023 by Assemble Content LLCE-book Published in 2023 by Blackstone PublishingCover design by Blackstone PublishingAll rights reserved. This book or any portionthereof may not be reproduced or used in any mannerwhatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotationsin a book review.The characters and events in this book are fictitious.Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidentaland not intended by the author.Trade e-book ISBN 978-1-6650-6846-8Library e-book ISBN 978-1-6650-6845-1Young Adult Fiction / GeneralBlackstone Publishing31 Mistletoe Rd.Ashland, OR 97520www.BlackstonePublishing.com 1She wouldn’t cry. Not somewhere this gross.She stared at the gearshift vibrating on the floor between them. Its numbers and weird fork. Its witches’ symbol.“What are you looking at, Banville? You can’t count to five? Can’t count to two? Let’s go for two, shall we? Two would be a miracle.” Coach MacLaurie wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. The windshield on his side of the truck was speckled with dried spit. “You get it into second gear, Banville, I’ll take back half of everything I ever said about the Yankees.”Shut up shut up shut up. First. Find first. Left, up. Left, up. Left and up. Clutch down and—“Get out.” Coach swung out the passenger’s door and stomped across the front of the truck like an arthritic gorilla. Cate would have given anything to find first gear at that exact moment and smear him all over the parking lot.“Get out!” Coach reached through the window and opened the driver’s door from the inside. Cate’s hands shook trying to get the seat belt off, and he grinned at her. His lips were wet. Cate couldn’t do anything about her face and didn’t try. She was sure he got this look from women all the time. She went to step out and he yelled, “The parking brake, Banville! Christ alive, she’s trying to kill us all.”Cate got out of the truck and tried to will Coach Slime to leave her alone.Go away, go away, go away.Coach lurched up into the truck and took off without bothering to shut the driver’s side door. Cate cursed herself for flinching as he whipped past. Her heart was pounding. What an asshole. She swallowed. Or tried to. Her mouth was dry. Adrenaline. Fight or flight. Useless since she couldn’t fight or flee. That was high school in a nutshell: the subversion of basic human instinct.She watched as her nemesis (the truck, not the coach, though he’d make that list too) veered around the blacktop behind the school. A 1993 Ford Bronco, once white, now the color of a gas station toilet. Maroon cloth seats harboring entire ecosystems, moist and yeasty. A roiling stench inside that could not be named. A vehicular symbol of everything that had gone wrong with her day. Her year. Her life.Not to be dramatic.Was it that her new school couldn’t afford a normal car with a normal, automatic transmission and possibly airbags? No. No, it was not. It was that Coach MacLaurie believed in stress as a teaching tool. Like the Navy SEALs he was never a part of but claimed to feel a deep, personal connection with whenever he saw them on TV, he believed that stress motivated. Forced people onto greater heights. Promoted self-discovery. If his students could drive this vehicle under these conditions, they could, Coach reckoned, handle their father’s Nissan Rogue on I-95. He had made this speech before class. He had used the word reckoned.The Bronco bounced over a curb and came to a stop on the dirt path leading up a hill to the practice fields. Cate, feeling her heart settle and her tongue unstick from the roof of her mouth, looked back at the rest of the class. There they stood. Watching dully. Like cattle. Freshman cattle. Cate was a senior. The only one.The cattle were on the move. They shuffled toward Coach and the Bronco. No one talked. No one looked at Cate.“Today, Banville. We’re all waiting on you.”No one was waiting. Prick. Why wouldn’t they look at her?Cate stopped as far from the Bronco as she thought she could get away with. Pick on someone else. She wasn’t the only person in this damn—Coach popped open the back of the truck. A rickety dog crumpled out and lay down behind the truck with a sigh.“Atta boy, Hollis. That’s a good dog right there. Banville, why do you want to kill my dog?”She looked at the dog. It was already snoring, rubbery jowls draped on the pavement.“You got about four, four and a half feet there before you kill my dog. No incentive to find first out there in a wide-open parking lot on flat ground. Stakes. You see? Hollis. Hollis is going to motivate you to find first gear.”You crazy son of a—“It’s just a little hill, Banville. Itty bitty. She’ll roll backward real slow, I promise. You’ll have at least two whole seconds to get her down in gear before you crush my sweet Hollis boy there to death. All right, get in.”Coach got in the passenger’s seat. Cate looked back at the freshmen. Rise up, freshmen! No one moved. Hollis sighed heavily and capsized over onto his side. Slightly closer to the rear tires of the truck. Cate’s tongue stuck back to the roof of her mouth.She was not supposed to be here. She was supposed to be in AP Calculus where she belonged. But nothing had gone right since . . . well, it had been a while. Not since she moved to Miami for sure. Not since her parents got divorced. The divorce led directly to the Bronco. In fewer steps than you might think.Her mother had gone off the deep end the minute the papers were signed and, totally overcompensating, applied for a doctoral program at the University of Miami. Cate didn’t panic. Not right away. Her father wasn’t going anywhere. He’d never