Body Count

by Codie Crowley

Genres: YA Mysteries & Thrillers; YA Horror

Synopsis

Three wishes. One prom queen celebrating at the Jersey Shore. And one monster who will keep killing until her wishes are paid for.
From the virally popular author of Here Lies a Vengeful Bitch, a queer feminist YA horror/slasher novel perfect for fans of You're Not Supposed to Die Tonight.
Seven years ago, Sundae Valentine made a deal with a monster she met at the bottom of a motel pool. She didn't know the wishes he offered had a price—or that the third wish, the one she still hasn't made, will cost her life.
Back then, she barely escaped Wildwood alive. Now, the cheerleaders and football players are headed to the Jersey Shore for prom weekend—leaving Sundae no choice but to return to the scene of her sun-bleached nightmares.
Sundae tries to forget, throwing herself into the rides on the pier, the tequila-fueled dance parties, and the guitar-strumming girl she can't quite look away from. She hopes the beast has forgotten, too.
But there are eyes like silver coins watching from the shadows, and teeth like a rusty saw glinting in the light of the boardwalk. Because Sundae still owes a debt. And whatever it takes, whoever he has to kill, this time the monster's determined to collect.

Release date: May 5, 2026

Publisher: Disney Hyperion Digital

Print pages: 300

Sample

ONEJULY 2019

The first time Sundae saw the man who lives in the pool, she was afraid of him.

It wasn’t totally his fault. She was afraid to begin with.

It was her ninth night at the Coral Cove Motel, and Sundae couldn’t sleep. She stared at the stripe of light on the ceiling, the way it perfectly lined up with a crack in the plaster to form an upside-down P when she closed her left eye. She thrashed her sunburned legs until she’d kicked that weird Styrofoam blanket down to the foot of the bed. She even covered her face with a pillow, but she couldn’t smother herself to sleep.

Because every time she closed her eyes, she couldn’t help feeling like she might wake up back in her room at home. In the house where her father lived, the house she and her mother had run from with only the bags they could carry, all the way to this little motel on this little island that seemed as far away from her father’s fists as possible.

Nobody knew their real names. When she was waiting tables at the Coral Cabana, the greasy motel bar facing the boardwalk, Mom wore a name tag that said Liv on her pink uniform, even though her name was actually Danielle. And everyone thought Sundae was named Aquamarine, like the mermaid in her favorite movie, because her mom had let her pick any name she wanted.

Mom promised he wouldn’t find them here.

But the fact that they’d really gotten away was settling on Sundae like a healing wound, and on that ninth night at the Coral Cove Motel, it was a searingly itchy scab that kept her writhing and sweating and wide awake in bed.

Her mom had no such trouble. Exhausted from yet another double shift, Mom was dead asleep with the TV blaring, open-mouth snoring to the rhythm of “Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now).” Her mom, like, literally always did that and nobody ever believed Sundae about it.

So just to prove to herself that things really were different now, Sundae slid out of bed and shuffled across the stained pink carpet. Carefully, quietly, she unlocked the door and twisted the handle.

Back in the house where her father lived, Sundae never would have left her bedroom at night, no matter how thirsty or hungry she was, not even if her bladder was so full she could scream. But when she stepped out onto the motel’s second-floor balcony, nothing met her except the cool night breeze blowing off the ocean. She propped the door open with the loop of the latch and listened to her mom’s snores through the crack in the door, making sure she was still asleep.

Then she wandered down the balcony, to the ice machine, because if there was no one around to yell at her for leaving her room, then there was no one around to call her greedy for treating herself to a midnight snack.

One of Sundae’s favorite things about the motel was the ice machine. Nestled into a dark alcove conveniently located just six doors down from their room, the humming steel hull was filled with some of the best ice Sundae had ever munched in her life. It made the kind of ice with a hole in the center, like a little empty ice cannoli, and Sundae could have as much as she wanted for free.

Sundae wasn’t sure what time it was when she left the room, but it must have been pretty late because the balcony that wrapped around the motel’s second floor—usually bustling with sunbaked vacationers—was totally empty. So was the courtyard below, and the pool that gleamed in the center like a bright blue crown jewel.

And as much as she liked the ice, the pool was definitely her most favorite thing about Coral Cove.

Back home, Sundae had been the fastest on her swim team and one of the strongest swimmers in her division. When she and her mom ran away, she’d had to leave behind all the ribbons and trophies that proved it. (She wondered if her dad

 had already thrown them all in the trash. He always said it was vain and stupid to clutter her room with them, said they give out awards to anyone these days.) But back home, she could only swim at practice, or on the days when her mom got off work early enough to take her to the pool.

Here, she could swim whenever she wanted.

And every day since she’d come to Coral Cove, Sundae had spent as much time as she could in the pool. She rarely even changed out of her bathing suit, which annoyed her mom a little, but not enough that she stopped Sundae from wearing it to bed.

That night, as she stood on the balcony, crunching on an ice cannoli while she looked out at the motel courtyard, a breeze blew in that was strong enough to make the pool gate bounce and clang. It drew Sundae’s attention to the swinging gate—and to the hand-painted sign posted there.

CORAL COVE POOL RULES

No diving.

No running.

No glass.

DO NOT OPEN YOUR EYES UNDERWATER.

Before that moment, she’d never noticed it—but once she did, she couldn’t stop looking at it.

That last rule.

It just didn’t make any sense. Like, sure, chlorine burns, but why was that rule down at the bottom of the sign in bright red brushstrokes, screaming loud in all caps like it was the most important of them all?

And why did she feel like that rule was made to be broken?

Little drip-drips from the ice in her hand made a trail down the pink steel staircase as she descended to the courtyard. She stopped in front of the pool gate and stared at the sign while she popped another ice cannoli into her mouth. It wasn’t

 wasn’t a new sign—the wood was weather-worn and the paint feathered with cracks—so it seemed like this arbitrary eyes-closed rule had really stood the test of time.

She bumped the gate open and stepped through.

She brushed some beach sand off a wobbly side table and deposited her handful of ice on the frosted-glass top. She snapped the scrunchie off her wrist and twisted her blond hair into a topknot. She tapped her toe against the glittering surface of the water, testing the pool’s temperature.

And then she jumped in.

Cool turquoise swallowed her, and she sank into the deep end. When her toes scraped the slick tiles at the bottom of the pool, Sundae floated there like a music box ballerina.

She opened her eyes.

Marbled light snaked across the pool floor, the courtyard lamps refracted by the rippling water. Bubbles swirled around her like pearls. The water pressed against her ears, filling them with muffled swishes, gurgles, and glug-glugs as she bobbed in the undulating blue.

She looked out at the length of the pool before her, inclining gently all the way to the staircase at the shallow end. Without all the splashing kids and swimming vacationers, the pool seemed huge and hollow. Her toes poked at the aqua mosaic below, the ground slowly slipping away as she floated back toward the surface.

Maybe that rule really was there for no reason. Maybe the worst that would happen if you opened your eyes inside the pool at the Coral Cove Motel was a case of conjunctivitis.

But as the breath held in her chest began to thin, she heard something else in the muted murmur of splishes and glugs.

Something like…a growl.

And she realized: Ever since she’d opened her eyes, she’d just been suspended there, staring out at the length of pool ahead of her.

She never turned around to see what might be behind her.

Sundae kicked her legs and twisted in the water. At this end of the pool, the courtyard lights were just a distant glimmer. Sky blue faded to darkest night.

And as she floated there, lungs burning, she saw something in the shadowy deep.

It was his eyes that she noticed first. The way they shone like two silver coins, glinting in the murky dark. Shrouded by shadow, he crouched perfectly still in the corner of the deep end, like a spider in an eave. Between the ripples of water, she could make out his shape. The suit he wore, brown as tree bark. A crown of holly on his head, berries red as rubies.

And his mouth, when he smiled, full of pointed black teeth.

Everything that came after was a blur. Sundae screamed. She swallowed a bunch of pool water. She smashed her knee on the concrete pavers climbing out of the pool. She ran so fast across the courtyard and up the pink steel stairs that her feet hardly touched the ground, and when she made it back to room 257, she leapt into bed and yanked the musty comforter over her head.

She woke up the next morning to a damp chlorine-scented bed, the sheets streaked with bloodstains from her busted knee. Mom didn’t notice as she sleepwalked out the door in her pink Cabana miniskirt, and Sundae swiped fresh sheets off a housekeeping cart so she’d never find out.

For the next few nights, Sundae avoided the courtyard after dark, and whenever she passed the pool gate with its hand-painted sign—DO NOT OPEN YOUR EYES UNDERWATER—his sawtooth smile flashed inside her mind.

And, even during the day, when the sunlight would shine through the water like sea glass, Sundae refused to swim in the pool.

Instead, Sundae sat in the shady motel room, watching TV and filling in the pages of the marine-life coloring book her mom got her on the boardwalk, giving all the fish multicolored scales and glittery fins with her big box of crayons.

But after a few days of this, Sundae had colored every page of her book, and her mom had started to notice something was wrong.

Again and again, she asked Sundae why she wasn’t leaving the room, but no matter how many times her mom questioned her, Sundae didn’t tell her the truth. It wasn’t because she thought her mom wouldn’t believe her; it was because she didn’t want to be the reason they had to run again.

So, when her mom forced her to come to work with her instead of sitting in the room all day again, Sundae saw the man from the pool for a second time.

She didn’t notice him at first. Her mom sat her at the bar, and Sundae perched on the edge of the pink vinyl stool, smacking her flip-flop on its bamboo leg while she stared out at the pool through the window. She only turned around to face the bar when her mom brought her a plate of French toast and an icy strawberry milkshake.

She opened her mouth to say thanks, but her jaw dropped open instead.

There, over her mom’s shoulder, was the man from the pool.

Well, not physically, but his picture was hanging there inside an old wooden frame. He looked different because his teeth weren’t sharp and serrated and his eyes didn’t glow like mirror glass, but it was him. He was smiling in black-and-white, striking a merry pose with a guitar in his arms and a sprig of holly pinned to the lapel of his suit jacket.

And in big, looping script, the photo was signed with black ink: Holly Jolly.

“Baby? What’s wrong?” Sundae’s mom asked, glancing over her shoulder like she expected to see a different monster looming behind her. Seeing the fear in her mother’s eyes reminded Sundae why she’d never mentioned what she saw in the pool that night.

She shook her head quickly and reached for the frosty pink shake topped with a mountain of melting whipped cream.

“How’d you know I wanted strawberry?” she said, like the shock was just on account of a delightful surprise.

“You always want strawberry.” Her mom laughed, rolling her eyes and scrubbing her fingers against the top of Sundae’s head.

Then she wandered off to refill someone’s coffee, and Sundae went back to staring at the photo on the wall.

Behind the counter, Tony the bartender was polishing a glass with a rag and humming along to the old song playing over the speakers above the bar. Like Sundae and her mom, Tony lived at the motel, but he’d been there way longer—Sundae had no idea how long, but she thought if anyone might be able to explain what she’d seen, it was him.

She speared a bite of syrupy battered toast on her fork, glanced over her shoulder to make sure her mom wasn’t nearby, and then said, “Hey, Mr. Tony?”

“Yes, Little Mermaid?” he said, using the nickname he’d given her the first week at the motel, when he noticed how much time she spent in the water.

Sundae chomped on the French toast in her mouth and pointed her fork at the photo behind the bar. “Who is he?”

Tony looked surprised by the question, but then he laughed and leaned a hip against the bar between them. “He’s one of Wildwood’s best-kept secrets. Another bit of history they try to keep buried so it doesn’t scare off the tourists.” With a heavy thud, Tony set the shining glass down on the bar top and continued: “He went by the name Holly Jolly, and in the sixties he lived here at this very motel. See, back in the day, Wildwood was the doo-wop capital, and Holly Jolly was here looking for his big break. He got real close to it, too. He got a manager. He got a record deal. He got booked to headline at the Riptide. That gig should have been the start of his career. Instead, it was the end of his life.”

Sundae didn’t know what doo-wop was, but she was afraid if she asked too many questions Tony might realize she was too little to hear this story. She got the feeling that whatever was coming next was something she’d have to appear grown-up enough to hear. She nodded, swirling her straw through the pink slush in her glass as she listened.

“See, the Riptide was the place for doo-wop. It was like the Grand Ole Opry for crooners. And the night of Holly Jolly’s show there, his first record was hot off the press, and he was ready for stardom. But shortly after he took the stage, the whole place caught fire and the Riptide burned to the ground. Afterward, they could never figure out what started the fire, or why the whole place went up so quickly. But that wasn’t even the weirdest part. The weirdest thing was nobody tried to get out. They all just stood there and burned alive on the dance floor.”

With chills crawling up her spine, Sundae glanced at her mom across the Cabana, but she had her back to Sundae as she delivered an armful of hot plates stacked with pork-roll-egg-and-cheeses to the table nearest the boardwalk. And though she longed to meet her mom’s eyes, to find comfort in the steady blue of her gaze, she also desperately wanted to hear the end of Tony’s story.

Because when she looked back to him, it was clear he wasn’t done telling the tale of Holly Jolly.

Tony leaned in closer to Sundae over the bar and dropped his voice as he said, “All of them except for Holly Jolly. Somehow, he survived the fire at Riptide. There were folks that saw him walking along the boardwalk in his singed suit, looking like he’d just crawled out of hell. Then he came back here, to the Coral Cove, and he drowned himself in the pool.”

Sundae sucked in a tiny gasp. “He’s dead?”

“Mm-hmm. And his music died with him. His manager had taken all the records they’d pressed to the Riptide that night, and all of them were lost in the fire. The only thing left of him is that photo and a song on the old jukebox over there. But that thing hasn’t worked in ages.”

Sundae twisted on her stool to stare at the jukebox in the corner, which sat lifeless and caked with dust, its neon arch unlit. She turned back and looked at Holly Jolly’s smiling face in the picture on the wall, his eyes gleaming with bright excitement instead of vacant silver. “He survived the fire, though,” Sundae said. “He could have made new records. Why did he kill himself?”

Tony shrugged, straightening back up and swiping the glass he’d been wiping off the bar top. “That’s not really something I can tell ya, Little Mermaid,” he said. “I guess sometimes, if something bad enough happens to somebody, they’re never really gonna be okay again.”

Tony’s words made Sundae’s body go cold, like she’d just jumped into the deep end. Is that the truth? she wondered. Will Mom and me just…never be okay?

“Anyway,” Tony said, shrugging again. “People say that ever since he drowned out there, he’s haunted this motel.”

“Tony,” Sundae’s mom snapped, coming up behind Sundae with an empty drink tray. “What are you telling her?”

“It’s just a ghost story.” Tony laughed nervously.

“Why would you tell an eleven-year-old a story about a man drowning in the pool at the motel where she lives?”

“Come on, it’s no worse than what the kids see on their iPhones nowadays—”

“My daughter doesn’t have an iPhone, jackass.”

“Look, Liv, I’m sorry if I scared her—”

“I’m not scared,” Sundae said, blinking the glaze of tears out of her eyes. She elbowed the bar to spin on her stool and face her mom. “It’s okay, Mom. It doesn’t scare me.”

That wasn’t totally true. It did scare her.

But she needed to see the man in the pool again anyway. 

TWONOW

Sundae Valentine is glad she lived long enough to be crowned prom queen, even if it’s the last thing she’ll ever get to do.

“Holy shit,” she says, squeezed breathless by the arms around her waist. “We are literally going to die today.”

“Jesus, take the wheel!” Amber shrieks, throwing her hands up like the speeding Corolla they’re crammed into is a roller-coaster ride instead of a death trap.

“Jesus can take the wheel out of my cold dead hands,” Jackie says, long nails clacking against the top of the steering wheel as she casually dips into the next lane to pass a car that’s driving only twenty miles over the speed limit.

“Jacqueline, I do not want to die south of a triple-digit parkway exit,” Neelima says. Her arms, clamped tight around Sundae’s waist, squeeze hard enough to crush a kidney as the car swerves back into the left lane.

Crushing six cheerleaders into a two-door Corolla for a nearly three-hour drive sounded fine in theory, when nobody was taking into account the fact that they’d be short a seat belt and that Jacqueline Salgueiro sees speed limits as a dare. But now, with only her best friend’s arms anchoring her in place as they hurtle recklessly down the parkway, the joke Sundae made when they loaded into the car about sacrificing herself for the team is seeming kind of portentous.

Sundae leans forward and rests her elbows on the back of Jackie’s seat. “If you crash this car, they’re going to take our bodies to the morgue at”—she pauses to squint at the upcoming exit sign—“Little Egg Harbor. Like, that’s so embarrassing.”

“Oh my god, guys, we are literally driving to the end of civilization!” Francesca whines, her gum snapping in her mouth as she pushes it around her molars.

“Relax, Fresca, it’s just the end of New Jersey.” Jackie sighs, exhaling a vape cloud that fills the coupe with matcha-scented smoke.

“So? The only thing south of here is, like, the south,” Francesca says. “I don’t understand why we’re not doing Seaside. You guys know my dad seriously, like, owns half of Seaside. We could have gotten into Karma, no problem. Everyone knows who I am there.”

“As appealing as Sleazeside sounds, you know why we’re going to Wildwood, Frez,” Tasha says. She stretches across the back seat to snag Jackie’s phone off the center console and thumb through her Spotify to choose a song. “Unless you want to do prom weekend without the football team, we don’t really have a choice.”

Sundae folds her arms over Neelima’s, fingers curling and gripping at Neeli’s forearms. It’s not because of Jackie’s driving. It’s because every time she remembers where they’re going, she has to grit her teeth against the scream caught in her throat.

She remembers how she first heard about it: She had been leaning toward the mirror affixed to the door of her locker, swiping glimmering pink gloss on her lips while Neeli performed a dramatic reading of the texts her ex had sent her the night before. Suddenly, the hall was filled with shouts and hoots, four football players thundering past as they bellowed—

“WILDWOOD, baby!”

“Wild-WOOOOOD!”

“Wildwood! Wildwood! Wildwood!”

Still bent toward her mirror, Sundae watched them go by in the reflection. They were pushing, shoving, stirring the crowd in the hall into a frenzy of excitement, but Sundae felt tension winding up her spine. Cold doused her like a dive into glass-blue water. Goose bumps crept up her arms, raising the golden hair dusting her skin. Neeli’s phone chimed in her hand. At the same time, Sundae’s phone buzzed

 inside her purse.

“Neeli?” Sundae whispered while she watched the shock on her best friend’s features as she opened the message on her phone.

“It’s Harper,” Neeli said. “He rented rooms for the whole team at some motel in Wildwood.”

“What motel in Wildwood?” Sundae asked.

Neeli looked up from her phone, meeting Sundae’s eyes. “Not that motel.”

Amber broke through the crowd, breathless with her tawny shag tousled like she’d been brawling her way over to them. Her long arm looped behind Sundae’s back as she said, “Fuck, are you okay?”

Sundae nodded, but her hands were shaking so badly that she nearly snapped the wand of her lip gloss trying to put the cap back on. Amber pulled Sundae against her chest as Neeli vowed revenge on the Union Tigers’ star quarterback.

“He’s not gonna get away with this. I’m going to kick Harper McCall’s balls so far up his ass he’ll only be able to jizz out of his belly button for the rest of his life. I’m going to break his kneecaps. I’m going to set his fucking BMW on fire.”

And Neeli wasn’t the only one who was pissed. Following the announcement that Harper McCall had chosen Wildwood as the destination for Union High’s post-prom weekend, all the cheerleaders were ready to jettison their prom dates and go somewhere else—Point Pleasant or Seaside or even Cape May—anywhere but Wildwood.

They would do that for her, of course. Even though partying on the Shore after prom is an indelible Jersey tradition and all of them had dreamed of that sun-soaked last hurrah all senior year. Even though the cheerleaders choosing a different destination from the football team could fracture the entire school population, throwing the party circuit into chaos.

But it wouldn’t be fair. No one else should have to suffer for what Sundae had done.

So at first, she just said she wouldn’t go. That they should all have fun in Wildwood and she’d stay home and catch up on The Bachelor and eat her weight in weed gummies. But it became clear pretty quickly that if she wasn’t going, they weren’t going.

So here she is now. Going to Wildwood.

Her mom isn’t happy about it, but Sundae knew she wouldn’t be. Sundae waited to tell her until they were snuggled up under a fleecy blanket, watching a cheesy Hallmark Christmas romance despite the fact that it was nearly June. When Mom had almost polished off her second glass of wine, Sundae finally turned to her and said, “I’m going to Wildwood for prom weekend.”

Unfortunately, she’d said it right as Mom was taking another sip, and she ended up spitting her Franzia cabernet all over the new white area rug.

Like Neeli, Mom seemed ready for war at first. Sundae had to talk her out of calling Harper McCall’s dad and telling him off for allowing his son to book the rooms in Wildwood. She even offered to pay for everything if the cheerleaders picked a different shore town. But Sundae knew her mom couldn’t actually afford that, and after a few tense talks, Sundae finally convinced her that everything would be fine.

And everything should be fine. The Coral Cove Motel isn’t even standing anymore—she’d looked it up for the first time in years and seen that the pink motel and its lit-up palm trees had been totally torn down, paved over to make way for a Dave & Buster’s, of all things.

Whatever door he crawled out of is now closed for good. Besides, even if he could come back, Sundae knows the rules. They’re what saved her life seven years ago.

He can’t do anything to her. She’s safe.

But as they fly down the parkway, Sundae holds tight to Neeli’s arms around her waist. While Tasha picks a Beyoncé song that gets all the girls dancing in their seats, Sundae tries not to blink, lest she see a razor-tooth smile emerging from the dark behind her eyelids.

“Sun,” Neelima murmurs, resting her chin on the curve of Sundae’s shoulder to speak close to her ear. “You okay?”

“I’m fine,” Sundae lies. “I just see my life flash before my eyes every time Jack switches lanes.” She leans forward, grasping Jackie’s headrest to steady herself as the car swerves erratically. “Jacqueline, can we make a pit stop? I have to empty my bladder so I don’t piss myself when I die.”

“Oh my god, you’re all so dramatic,” Jackie says, rolling her eyes as she cuts across three lanes to catch the rest area.

When the Corolla careens to a halt and lands crooked in a parking space near the entrance, Sundae jerks the door handle and slides out of Neeli’s lap. It feels a little better to have her jelly sandals on solid ground, but the reality of what she’s gotten herself into seems to chase her all the way into the rest stop.

The building smells like congealed pizza and bleach. Sundae’s glittery blue sandals smack on the sticky tile. When she hits the bathroom door with both elbows, it swings open to a row of empty stalls and a barren line of sinks.

Stealing the moment of solitude, Sundae shoves her hands under the automatic faucet and cups a palmful of water. She slurps the water from her hands as if she’s only nauseous on account of a hangover and not pure gut-twisting dread.

After she’s swallowed a few mouthfuls of questionable rest-stop-faucet water, she grips the counter with both hands and leans toward her reflection. Long blond hair falls over her shoulders, tickling the bare skin exposed by her crop top. Eye to eye with herself, she whispers, “This is prom weekend, bitch. Get your shit together.”

It’ll probably be easier once she’s had a few tequila shots.

Sundae dries her hands on her denim cutoffs and heads into one of the stalls. She takes her phone from her back pocket and glances at the notifications—comments on her prom pictures, tag notifications from everyone else posting theirs, likes, and story reactions—and then she places her phone on the toilet-paper dispenser for safekeeping.

The restroom door swings open as Sundae sits down to pee. She figures it’s probably one of the girls. But after a second or two, something starts to feel…off.

Sundae narrows her eyes at the crack in the door of her stall. Whoever just entered the bathroom is now prowling slowly down the row of empty stalls. Sundae reaches for the toilet paper and tears off a handful just as the prowler reaches her. A tall dark figure passes the crack in the door and then stops in front of her stall.

Sundae feels her pulse spike when they don’t move on down the line.

Now she knows something is off.

Sundae tugs up her shorts and fastens them. The thunderous suck from the toilet’s automatic flush makes her jump. She reaches for her phone, still eyeing the crack in the door—but whoever is there is waiting just out of sight.

And then he says her name, and she knows who has found her here.

“Sundae?”

“Jesus fuck,” she breathes, falling against the stall door. She unlocks the latch and throws it open, stepping through to face the prowler himself. “What are you doing in here?”

Luke Panagos, the Union Tigers’ best linebacker, glances around nervously, as if angry women are going to burst from the stalls to tear him to shreds. He says to Sundae, “Sorry, I—I saw you run in here and you looked freaked the fuck out and I just—Are you okay?”

Sundae sighs, breezing past Luke to wash her hands at the sink. “I’m fine. I just really had to pee.” She flicks her eyes up to watch him in the mirror’s reflection and asks, “Are you following me or something?”

“Isn’t Jackie driving?” Luke says.

Sundae rips off some paper towel and says, “Yeah.”

“So you think we’d be able to keep up with her?” It’s a valid point. Sundae nods, and Luke continues, “Nah, we stopped for breakfast. I needed some hash browns to soak up last night’s Fireball before I punish my guts again. Our confluence is purely kismet.”

Sundae watches a grin pluck at the corners of Luke’s broad mouth. He thinks it’s cute to get all AP English on her, reminding her that he’s Not Like the Other Guys on his team. His boys are all meatheads and alpha-male wannabes, but Luke Panagos is the sensitive jock—he volunteers at an animal shelter, he had a poem featured in the school literary magazine, he has dreams of becoming an environmental lawyer and single-handedly destroying the companies that pollute the planet with his incredible oration skills.

But despite all of his idiosyncratic book smarts, he can’t seem to figure out why his fantasy about being the world’s White Male Savior makes Sundae gag instead of swoon.

The truth is, if Sundae made a ranked list of the things she likes about Luke Panagos, his mind wouldn’t even make the top five. It’d be a little more like this:

5)  All that thick black body hair that’s giving Brawny Man porn parody.

4)  The sweatpants he’s wearing that cling in all the right places.

3)  His warm honey eyes, framed by lush, ink-black lashes that flutter dreamily every time she touches him.

2)  That tall, broad linebacker frame she could climb like a tree.

1)  The way his thumb rubbed slow, languid circles on her clit while he fucked her.

Because all his sweet-boy posturing isn’t an attempt to get in her pants. He’s already done that—two months ago, in the laundry room at a house party. What Luke wants is to make Sundae his girlfriend, and that…well, that’s a dream even more outlandish than the one where he saves the world by suing Nestlé into bankruptcy.

He would, however, make a great diversion right about now.

Sundae turns to face him, hands resting on the counter behind her. The pose elongates her body, all the smooth tan leg exposed by her short cutoffs, the sparkling rhinestone that dangles from her navel piercing catching the light, her thin pink T-shirt stretching across her braless breasts. And of course he’s looking. His lashes flutter. Her glossy lips part in a smile.

“I don’t know about kismet, but I think you should kiss me,” she says.

It doesn’t take more than that. He steps forward. Her arms wind around his shoulders, her long nails dragging up his neck and into his hair. His mouth is on hers, tasting like whatever fruity energy drink he must have chugged on the ride.

His hands grip her waist and he lifts her up onto the counter. She hooks her legs behind his hips, crushing the crotch of his sweatpants against the seam of her shorts. She moans into his mouth, rolling her hips. Her nails scrape his scalp as she grabs fistfuls of soft black hair.

He dips his head into the crook of her neck and kisses a hot trail across her pulse while his hand pushes up her ribs. His thumb swipes her nipple

 through the thin cotton of her shirt, just below the flocked felt letters ironed across her chest: YOU WISH.

The door blasts open.

Amber’s snorting laugh echoes off the empty stalls. Jackie hoots, Francesca groans. Luke jerks away from Sundae, leaving her flushed on the counter, legs hanging limp as she grips the ledge between her thighs to keep from tipping forward.

“This is so depraved,” Tasha says appreciatively.

“Woooow,” Neeli jibes, coming in behind Tasha. “I can’t believe you’d try to get a head start on the Slut Cup like this.”

“Slut Cup?” Luke says.

“None of your business, turd,” Jackie assures him, hip bumping the counter as she leans into the mirror to adjust one of the butterfly clips adorning her hair.

“Yeah, get the fuck out of here,” Amber says, pointing at the door.

“Harper is out there looking mad lonely in the McDonald’s food court,” Tasha adds.

“I think he was crying into his Egg McMuffin,” says Neeli.

Sundae giggles at the mental image and hops off the counter. She turns her back on Luke, checking her reflection—her lips swollen from kisses and her hair tumbled to one side, her cheeks aglow with rosy flush.

“Uh—okay, see you later, Sundae,” Luke mumbles as he retreats to the door.

“Uh-huh,” Sundae returns.

“Get out,” Amber repeats, and Luke promptly obeys. Sundae giggles once he’s gone, Neeli joining in as she sidles up beside her.

“I wasn’t trying to cheat,” Sundae assures Neeli. Sundae has utmost respect for the rules of the Slut Cup, the secret competition where the cheerleader with the highest body count on prom weekend is awarded the Slut Crown. “It was just a warmup.”

“Sure, sure. A little dick pregame, so to speak.” Neeli nods.

Sundae smiles at Neeli’s reflection beside her own in the mirror. “Besides,” Sundae purrs, “it’s you bitches who are gonna need a head start.” ...