Chapter 1

My name is Frankie Miller, and before we begin, I'd like to make one thing clear.

THE PINK RAZOR WAS MINE.

Nobody remembers any of that anymore. Years from now, nobody is going to talk about how my older brother, Felix, stole the razor from my bathroom or how I was the innocent victim in this entire situation. Those details have somehow been lost to history.

What people remember is me running out of a bathroom looking half-feral, waving a pink razor over my head like a weapon and screaming at my brother at the top of my lungs.

Unfortunately, they are not wrong.

Saturday mornings in the Miller house were usually predictable. Mom made pancakes. Dad drank coffee and scrolled through the news. Felix found creative ways to irritate me.

It was practically a family tradition.

That morning started with me hiding in the bathroom, enjoying what should have been ten uninterrupted minutes of peace.

Then Felix started yelling -_-

"Frankie!"

I ignored him.

"Frankie!"

Experience had taught me that answering Felix immediately only encouraged him.

The third time, he pounded on my bathroom door hard enough to shake the mirror.

"Frankie, are you alive in there?"

"No."

"Cool. Can I have your room then?"

I considered throwing something at the door. Instead, I turned the shower on and hoped he'd disappear.

He didn't.

Sometimes I wondered if my parents had accidentally brought home the wrong baby from the hospital.

"You've been in there forever."

"It's been ten minutes."

"It's been forty."

"It hasn't, just GO AWAY."

The silence that followed should have worried me. Whenever Felix became quiet, he was either asleep or plotting.

A minute later I discovered it was the second option.

I reached toward the shelf where I always kept my pink razor and frowned when my hand met empty air. For a second I thought I'd put it somewhere else. I checked beside the sink, then inside the cabinet, then in the drawer. By the time I'd searched every possible location, there was only one explanation left.

My brother had stolen it. AGAIN.

"FELIX!"

A laugh echoed from downstairs. The laugh of a criminal. I knew it. That idiot had taken it again.

Now, before you judge me, I should explain that Felix and I shared almost everything. Food mysteriously disappeared from each other's plates, chargers changed ownership depending on who grabbed them first, and the television remote was treated like a prize in an ongoing competition. At various points, I'd probably shared my dignity too. But there were limits.

The pink razor was one of them.

Not because it was expensive or particularly special. In fact, it was a perfectly ordinary razor. The problem was that it had become a matter of principle. I had asked Felix repeatedly, clearly, and with increasing levels of frustration not to use it. It was one of the very few things in the house that belonged exclusively to me. Unfortunately, Felix treated personal boundaries the way some people treated speed limits: he was aware they existed, but he had no intention of following them.

I yanked open the bathroom door and stormed into the hallway.

My hair was still dry because I hadn't showered yet. I was wearing a sleeveless pajama top and a pair of Felix's basketball shorts because they were comfortable and because stealing his clothes was one of my favorite hobbies.

As far as I was concerned, the rules were pretty simple. When I took something that belonged to Felix, it was completely justified. When he took something that belonged to me, it was a crime. The double standard didn't bother me at all, and that was simply how our relationship worked.

"FELIX MILLER!"

My voice echoed through the house. Felix was standing by the living room sofa.

Perfect.

A target.

"You used my razor again!"

He immediately pointed at me. "Good morning to you too."

"I told you the pink one is mine."

"You have two pink ones."

"That's not the point, don't you know what boundaries mean?"

Mom didn't even flinch, She was standing in the kitchen flipping pancakes. "I told both of you to not fight before breakfast atleast."

"He started it."

Felix grinned. "No, you started it when you came into existence."

I raised the razor threateningly.

Mom sighed. The sigh of a woman who had spent eighteen years questioning her life choices.

Then something strange happened. Felix's grin faltered for a second as his eyes shifted to something behind me. Before I could turn around to see what had caught his attention, he started making weird faces. At first, I thought he was trying not to laugh. Then I thought he was choking. Then I briefly considered whether he might actually be having some sort of medical emergency.

I frowned. "What are you doing?"

Instead of answering, he blinked rapidly and moved his head in a way that made absolutely no sense.

Honestly, that idiot looked possessed.

"Mom."

"Yes?"

"I think Felix is having a medical emergency."

"No, he's not."

"Then why does he look like that?"

Before anyone could answer, I threw the razor at Felix. I wasn't trying to hurt him; I just wanted to make a point. The throw was more dramatic than dangerous, and he caught it dramatically against his chest and immediately collapsed onto the carpet.

"My final moments have arrived, Tell my family I loved them," he announced.

I rolled my eyes so hard they almost got stuck.

"Uh um...."

A male voice spoke from somewhere behind the sofa.

The sound immediately caught my attention. It wasn't Felix. It wasn't my dad. It wasn't a neighbor stopping by. The moment I recognized the voice, my stomach dropped.

Slowly, very slowly, I turned toward the sofa. And there he was.

NOEL CARTER.

He stood up from the other side, looking just as surprised as I felt. Apparently, he'd been sitting there the entire time. Which meant he'd witnessed every second of my argument with Felix, including the yelling, the razor, and whatever I was doing with my life at that moment.

For one horrifying second, neither of us said a word. We just stared at each other while the full weight of the situation crashed down on me.

Noel looked exactly the way he always did, which was deeply unfair. It was barely nine in the morning, yet he somehow looked calm, put together, and annoyingly handsome, as if mornings simply worked differently for him than they did for the rest of us.

I, meanwhile, looked like a raccoon that had recently escaped a dumpster fire. This was exactly how I'd always hoped my crush would see me...

Not dressed like a normal human being, not looking cute but in the middle of a full-blown argument over a pink razor. Some girls got romantic meet-cutes. I got whatever this was!

Noel's gaze travelled from the oversized basketball shorts I'd stolen from Felix to my sleeveless pajama top, then to my hair, which resembled a failed science experiment.

Then landed on the pink razor lying beside Felix's supposedly dead body.

Then he looked at me.

Our eyes met, and for some reason that made me want to disappear immediately. If there had been a hole in the floor, I would have climbed into it without hesitation and stayed there until graduation. Possibly longer.

For a long moment, neither of us said anything. We just stared at each other while I desperately wished for a way to disappear. Then my survival instincts took over.

Unfortunately, my survival instincts were idiots.

"AHHHHHHHHHHH!" :(

The scream burst out before I could stop it.

To my horror, Noel screamed too.

"AHHHHHHH!"

Felix sprang back to life, and before I could process what was happening, he shouted too.

"AHHHHHHHHHH!"

The grin spreading across his face was the grin of a man who had just discovered unlimited entertainment.

Mom set down her spatula. "Why is everyone screaming?"

Nobody answered. Mostly because we were still screaming.

I spun around and ran upstairs so fast I nearly missed a step.

The bathroom door slammed shut behind me, and I immediately locked it. Then, just to be safe, I locked it again.

A few seconds later, I slid down to the floor and buried my face in my hands.

Noel Carter.

My brother's best friend.

My completely secret crush.

Had just witnessed the worst moment of my entire existence.

Outside the door, I could hear Felix laughing. Not a normal laugh. This was the kind of loud, uncontrollable laughter that suggested he had just been handed enough material to tease me for the rest of our lives.

I closed my eyes and groaned. Somewhere beneath the embarrassment, humiliation, and overwhelming urge to move to another country and start over with a new identity, a terrible feeling settled in my stomach.

And for reasons I couldn't explain, I was suddenly very sure this disaster wasn't over.

Not even close....