BURN THE GIRLS - Chapter 1

November 1st, 1966

Constance stood in the backyard, the fall sun warming the exposed skin of her face and hands. She was tired most afternoons around this time, but that day she felt a bit more sluggish than usual, her post-Halloween fog in full effect.

Constance was a steadily aging eighteen-year-old and keeping up with her twelve-year-old sister, Abigail, during the previous night’s Halloween trek through their Aunt Jenny’s neighborhood had taken more out of her than it should have. She knew her age was the furthest thing from the root cause of her exhaustion, but it felt like the adult thing to think. That, and the lie was sometimes easier to believe than the truth.

The truth was, she hadn’t slept well since they’d arrived at their new home several weeks prior. Her mother, Delilah, seemed energized by the new home, and Abigail appeared happier than ever. That all checked out to Constance. She never could find motivation or happiness in the same places as her surrounding family.

Her new school was the worst. She’d spent her childhood and teen years building a small but tight group of friends in her neighborhood and schools. Now, entering her senior year, her mother had ripped her from that familiar place and dropped her into a rundown school of backcountry degenerates.

She was restless and itching to finish high school in the late spring and move on with her life. She wasn’t sure she’d survive living on the outskirts of the county until then. Constance longed to be in the city, to fall in with the pulse of the urban shuffle. Here, she found nothing but seasonal allergies, her sister’s unbound imagination, and her mother’s droning infatuation with honoring a “family legacy.”

Speak of the devil.