Natural Selection

by Clare Edge

Genres: Young Adult; YA Social Themes

Synopsis

"It's been ages since I devoured a book this quickly!"--Karen M. McManus, #1 New York Times bestselling author of One of Us Is Lying

Three girls bond in unsettling ways when a grizzly starts picking off known abusers in their secluded mountain town in this dark and twisty novel.

When it comes to boys and bears, always choose the bear.

The girls of Riverside are raised to grin and bear it. Until three of them can’t anymore.

Megan Lawless (aka Outlaw): Riverside born and raised. Lettered in volleyball, basketball, and track. HATES Kevin Johnson, but tolerates him for her best friend, Megan.

Megan Deloria: Outlaw’s ride or die. Riverside royalty and soon to be valedictorian. Shoo-in for the homecoming crown alongside her boyfriend, Kevin.

Meghan Bach (aka Bee): Moved to Riverside last year. Still the “new girl.” Pulls tarot cards daily. Just wants to forget what happened last summer at that party with Kevin.

And then there’s Kevin Johnson: Riverside’s Golden Boy. Only scared of two things—the dark and bears. Soon, he’ll be scared of three more.

Because Megan, Megan, and Meghan are done with Kevin, and they’re about to teach everyone in their tiny rural town the new natural order: Predator, meet prey.

Release date: August 25, 2026

Publisher: Delacorte Press

Print pages: 352

Sample

1

Outlaw

I freeze, shower-­damp skin prickling with alarm as I try to make sense of the familiar figure kneeling on the locker room dryer. One of his hands grips the cabinet door with white knuckles while the other is shoved down the front of his green sweats.

“What the hell are you doing?” My voice bounces off the cinder block walls as Kevin’s head snaps around.

The second he clocks me, he drops to the ground, slamming the cabinet shut. But I saw him. His face was shoved into the open cabinet where we keep the detergent and dryer sheets and bleach and shit. Now he’s playing it off like nothing’s wrong. He leans against the washer, cool as a cucumber. He crosses one leg over the other, running the hand that was just on his junk through his light brown curls, quirking his mouth in a smile. The same smile I’ve seen him use on Megan a thousand times. The smile that always fools her. But it doesn’t fool me. Never has.

“Good practice?” Kevin asks, acting like I didn’t catch him doing . . . what, exactly? I’m not sure, but it was definitely sketchy. And his hand was definitely down his pants for more than just a quick itch. His eyes scan down my body, and I should feel self-­conscious. I’m wrapped in nothing but a towel, alone with my best friend’s boyfriend. But I’m basically the only girl in this town immune to his crooked smile, square jaw, and all-­American-­boy schtick. I’ve never been more grateful for that than in this moment.

“What were you doing?” I repeat, ignoring his eyes lingering on my thighs. I’m tall—­the dinky little locker room towel barely covers my bush—­but I know all Kevin Johnson’s tricks and I won’t fall for a single one of them.

“Just helping out with some laundry.” He steps toward me. We’re the same height, which he absolutely hates. It’s hard to claim you’re six-­one when the five-­eleven girl whipping your ass at beer pong can look you straight in the eye across the table.

“Bullshit,” I say. I go to push past him but pause when I realize I’m going to have to press my mostly naked body against him to get by. I’ve never noticed how small this room is—­a single industrial washer and dryer, side by side. Hell, it’s smaller than our basement laundry room at home. And it suddenly feels all the more claustrophobic with Kevin’s wide shoulders filling the doorway. But my curiosity is going to win this battle. As as I squeeze by, my towel catches on one of the door hinges and is pulled aside, revealing most of my bare ass.

Kevin whistles. “Damn, Outlaw.” He shakes his head appreciatively as if he’s paid me some kind of compliment. He’s such a tool. I don’t understand what Megan sees in him.

“Seriously, Megan,” he says, “just chill, okay?”

And no one calls me Megan. Megan is my best friend. ­Kevin’s girlfriend. I’m Outlaw. And my long-­abandoned first name out of Kevin’s mouth is what tips me off that something is really fucking wrong. When I turn back to him, he seems to fill the doorway and his eyes dart between my face and the cabinet.

“Chill about what?” I ask.

A muscle in his jaw twitches. I’ve always assumed I could take Kevin Johnson in a fight, if it came to it. We’re both athletes, have been our whole lives. Plus, he blew out his knee last football season and is still riding the bench a year later. But as I watch the knuckles on his hand pale as he grips the forest-­green doorframe, I’m less certain we’re as evenly matched as I’d hoped.

I tear my eyes from his and turn to the dryer—­to the cabinet he doesn’t want me looking in. That’s when I feel his hand close on my bare shoulder, his fingers digging into my collarbone. He spins me to face him.

“Seriously, Outlaw.” Now we’re back to my nickname. He smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes, and his grip stays tight on my shoulder. My mouth goes dry, and I can feel myself shaking, holding my towel in place. Barely. We might be the same height, and I might be strong, but the look in Kevin’s eyes makes me feel small, weak, and vulnerable. But you’re not, I remind myself fiercely as I shove him off me. You’re the captain of the fucking volleyball team. UM, MSU, and Utah State are fighting over you. Kevin must sense the shift in my thoughts, because the vicious, satisfied gleam in his eyes falters for just a moment, and I look back up at the cabinet.

“Think fast!” Kevin yells, and grabs the bottom of my towel, yanking it free from my body. Then he disappears into the boys’ locker room, my towel still clutched in his hand.

I stand there. Frozen. Naked. Torn between rushing after him and teaching him a fucking lesson (even if it means barging into the boys’ locker room stark-­ass naked), retreating back to the girls’ locker room (like he clearly thought I would), or finding out what the hell he was doing with his head in the supply cabinet before he can cover his tracks.

I want to know what he’s trying to hide more than I need to pummel his smug-­ass face or cover up my own literal ass, so I pull one of the practice jerseys off a nearby stack of clean shirts and tug it over my head, and before I can lose my nerve, I climb up onto the dryer.

The metal’s cold on my shins. So much for Kevin helping with the laundry—­this thing hasn’t been on in hours. Before I can open the cabinet, my eyes lock on a faded and familiar MISSING poster taped to it. Cally Coleman. I’ve seen the poster hundreds, probably thousands, of times. But something about the hope in her eyes hits different as I kneel on the cold metal, half naked. And I realize I’m the same age she was when she dis­appeared. Fuck, she was younger than me when that picture was taken. If she’s still alive, she’d be in her early twenties now.

I shiver at the thought as I pull open the cabinet and peer inside. At first, all I see is the expected cleaning supplies, but then I notice a weird glow. There’s light coming from the back of the cabinet. I climb onto my feet and push the dusty boxes aside, fully shoving my head into the small space. Then I hear it: running water. A wisp of steam warms my cheeks.

As I adjust my position (horrifically aware that my ass is fully at eye level if anyone were to come into the room), I realize exactly what this is. It’s a peephole. Into the girls’ showers.

I close the cabinet door with shaking hands and leap off the dryer. Two thoughts collide in my mind as I rush back to the girls’ locker room.

One: Kevin Johnson was watching the volleyball team shower.

And two: How the fuck am I going to tell Megan?



2

Bee

The stiff brown paper towel shreds against my bare stomach as I wipe the last of the sticky red goop away. A month into my second year at this absolute joke of a school and I’m ready to give up and beg my mom to homeschool me. Sure, she absolutely doesn’t have time for that. And yes, this particular impulse to hide in my room and not come out until graduation could be mostly the cherry slushy massacre that just literally put a damper on my already shitty mood. But now I’m missing the audition for the musical, my shirt and sweater are absolutely soaked, and the only thing I have to wear home is my freaking bright green RAVENS PRIDE gym T-shirt.

Kill.

Me.

Now.

It’s not like I wanted to actually be in the musical anyway. I was mostly just auditioning for something to do. That’s how Keely and Avery and I met last year. How we became friends. How we became a coven. But now my only two friends are gone—­graduated and living their best lives at college while I’m stuck in this postage-­stamp-­sized nightmare-­fuel backwoods excuse for a town, pulling tarot cards for myself like a freak.

I thought the longer I was here, the more it might feel like home. Which is hilarious. I’m pretty sure anyone who wasn’t born here is considered an outsider forever. Me and Riverside were doomed from the beginning. I’m not a jock. My mom’s a liberal and divorced (gasp). And we’re from “the big city.” I’ll never get over how funny it is that people in this town think of Seattle as metropolitan and fancy.

So maybe the whole slushy-­drenching is for the best. Maybe it’s the universe reminding me that the more I keep my head down and get through the next two and a half years, the better off I’ll be. High school is something you endure, anyway, not something sane people actually enjoy. People who like high school are freaking psychopaths. I know people get judgy about the woo-woo witchy teen goths, but honestly, we’re absolute normies compared to the weirdos who truly believe these are the best years of our lives.

I fling the disintegrating clump of the world’s least absorbent material into the trash can and it has the audacity to splat onto the flaps of the lid and not even fall in. Even the cleaning supplies are mocking me. I rinse my hands in the freezing water, and as I glance into the mirror, I notice there’s residual slushy in my hair. This just keeps getting better and better.

I splash some water on my face and try to scrub the congealed sugary syrup from my forehead. I partially succeed, but not before a solid portion of it drips into my eye. I’m still blinking furiously, vision swimming, when I hear a locker slam shut behind me, and a voice I recognize shouts, “Fuck!”