The Wicked
: Prologue

My eyes linger on the clock on the dashboard inside my Maserati – 11:59pm. I don’t risk blinking; I don’t want to miss the moment it changes. I just keep my foot pressed tightly against the brake pedal, waiting for midnight. The minute I turn eighteen. The minute I go from being the bastard son of James Monroe to becoming a man.

My heart thrums peacefully in my chest even as anxiety licks up my spine, the blood in my body heating and my palms sweating.

My friends have a party planned tomorrow – I guess today – but this moment is mine. This fucking moment? I needed to be alone, out here on a deserted road on the west side of Luxington, in my favorite car, with the veins in my arms bulging out from under my skin from the strength I’m pouring into squeezing my steering wheel. I needed to finally taste adulthood by myself – release from the hardship of being my father’s kid, from the hand on the back of my neck that’s been holding me under water for the last eighteen fucking years. It feels like freedom is seconds away, even though I’ve been on my own for so long, this birthday makes it official.

I blink when my eyes start to water, then go right back to staring at the bright illumination of the clock.

The moment that it finally changes – when it’s finally midnight – I move my foot to the gas pedal, pushing it to the floor. My tires squeal as they burn against the road, the backend of my car fishtailing until the rubber gets a good grip on the asphalt. I look up at the road carelessly, sitting back in my seat with my arm extended to the steering wheel.

0 to 65 in five seconds.

80 in two more.

Then I’m nearing 100 as another two pass.

My heartbeat still doesn’t increase – no form of panic floods my system and the muscle in my chest continues to thrum peacefully. Even as the trees parallel to the road turn to a mess of blurry black, my heart rests comfortably.

120.

I flex my fingers, hoping adrenaline hits soon.

I want it – need it. To suffocate in fear, to feel something other than the constant buzz of anxiousness behind my eardrums and the inability to care about what happens.

I’ve played this game with myself since I was thirteen. That’s when my father fired the final staff still working in our household – that’s when I was truly alone in the concrete prison I call my home. I would sneak into the garage, pick a random, dusty sports car my father left rotting, then teach myself how to drive. The Maserati was always my favorite – so when I turned sixteen, I got one for myself. Well, daddy dearest paid the bill when it showed up in the mail at his penthouse in New York City. He didn’t say anything about the $200k price tag – probably wrote it off as a business expense, if I know my father at all.

When the car reaches 135 and I can hear the wind whistling painfully outside the windows, I growl in the back of my throat and grip the steering wheel so hard that the bones in my hand feel like they might snap.

Nothing – I feel fucking nothing.

140, nothing.

145, nothing.

I release my foot from the gas and rest it on the mat, letting the car zip down the empty street on its own, slowing a little bit with each new second. The engine hums and purrs, making my skin crawl and a knot form in my stomach that turns to nausea.

I can see the end of the road now, where it forks into two separate highways, coming at me fast since the car has only slowed to 80. I take a second and imagine what it might be like if I don’t slow down enough, if I didn’t stop at all. What if I crashed this massive, powerful, expensive piece of metal into the building sitting against the road?

Would I die quickly? Or would it be painful? Would it take me a minute to fade, watching the last eighteen years pass through my mind like in movies?

The thought makes my lips twitch with joy.

But then I see my mother’s face in my mind – her pale skin and freckled nose – and I slam my foot down on the brake pedal, knowing how disappointed she would be in me if I ended it this way.

My tires screech against the road, gripping the asphalt hard to get the vehicle to stop before it smashes into the building.

I manage to come to a complete standstill about three feet from the edge of the building, right in the grass next to a light pole.

“Fuck!” I yell, banging my fists against the steering wheel over and over.

Pussy. Can’t even fucking kill yourself.

My adrenaline still hasn’t appeared, my heart still beating normally in my chest like any other day, making me grow angrier and angrier. I pound my fists against the steering wheel until my knuckles split, screams pouring from my lips as blood coats the leather and my skin, then I shift my car into reverse and back out onto the street.

I feel nothing.