Shatter (True Believers #4)
Author: Erin McCarthy

CHAPTER ONE

I hated living alone. I was never meant to live alone. And I don’t mean that in the pathetic way where I couldn’t be happy with myself unless someone was validating me with their company or whatever. I mean that I was just super social. I liked having people around me all the time. Conversation. Laughter. Growing up with three younger siblings, the house was loud all the time, and to me that was comfortable, homey, happiness. Some people, like my friend Rory, need alone time, and they can get lost in their private thoughts, a whole universe going on in there that no one else has a view to.

Not me. My thoughts for the most part came out through my mouth in a steady stream of talking and I loved that constant interaction with my friends.

But I had to move out of our roomie’s apartment because of what I had started calling RAN (Robin and Nathan and their drunken hookup), and into a crappy little studio that was dark and way too quiet. Maybe if I’d at least had a boyfriend to cozy up on my daybed with me, I could deal with flying solo in the housing situation. No boyfriend, though, because my ex Nathan had decided to be both mean and stupid and have sex with my friend Robin while we were still dating. Yeah. He so did that. She so did that. Even though she was seriously drunk and didn’t remember a thing, it had still been really hard for me to forgive her and impossible for me to forgive Nathan.

It was hard to be single in a world filled with perfect pairs. Salt and pepper. PB&J. Chili and hot dogs. Not to mention couples like Rory and Tyler. Jessica and Riley. Even Robin—who, drunk or not, had still ruined my relationship—even Robin had Phoenix. How unfair was that? She lived with her boyfriend, totally happy, while I was alone and for the first time ever in my entire life, miserable.

I didn’t do sad. Grumpy wasn’t me. I was usually optimistic, high-energy. Basically a cheerleader for life, always having a good time, always believing the best in people. So I wasn’t the most super-intelligent, highest-IQ chick in the room. I knew that. It didn’t matter, because I always liked everyone and I tried really hard to be nice. It took basically something awful like murder for me to hate your face. Or something like cheating on me with one of my best friends. But even then, I didn’t hate Nathan. I was hurt. Hurt in a way that was weird to me because it wasn’t going away. It wasn’t like a cry at the end of a sad movie or the pang in your heart when you read a story about someone being bullied online.

This was different. It was a hurt that came over me in gigantic cold waves and settled inside my chest. It just lingered on and on, every day, making me feel like I was someone else, someone I didn’t recognize, someone who had nasty thoughts and who cried unexpectedly. It made me forget to do homework and forget my phone in my room and forget where I was going.

It was a new feeling and I didn’t know how to get rid of it, how to make the sadness stop popping up like some jerk-off Jack-in-the-box.

Shoving my hands in my pockets I trudged across the street to the coffee shop to meet my new tutor for chemistry, the cold wind instantly whipping my hair across my face and into my lip gloss, where it stuck. Sigh. I was flunking chemistry because I couldn’t seem to focus. The formulas danced in front of my eyes when I looked at the online study sheet for our final exam next week. It was like temperature and molarity were twerking with each other. Rory, who was pre-Med, had tried to help me study, but I had ended up crying and she had ended up horrified.

I wasn’t sure that I wouldn’t wind up leaky-eyed on my tutor, too, but I was willing to risk it. I couldn’t stay in that apartment alone in the dark for one more minute. The lighting sucked and with it getting dark so early every day, it felt like every corner of the room was a black hole filled with happiness thieves. Like there were little men hovering in there, snagging my confidence and hope while I watched TV and slept. It was a weird thought to have, but I was having a lot of weird thoughts, and they were foreign to me. It was like suddenly discovering your thoughts are in Hindi and you don’t know why and you don’t speak that language.

Pushing the door open, the warmth of the room washed over me and I gave a residual shiver. My hair was still stuck to my lip and instead of pulling it away, I decided to chew on it a little. It felt good, like I was six years old again and had the right to nibble my hair. I looked around for a nerd. I had never met the tutor, who was a grad student. My professor had given me his e-mail and said he was the best for helping undergrad students understand concepts. His name was Darwin, according to Professor Kadisch and the e-mail address. That couldn’t be his real name. Or maybe it was. But anyone who went by that name, nickname or not, had to be a nerd. Which was perfect, because only a nerd could save me from failing this course and having to retake it next semester.

It wasn’t very crowded in the coffee shop but as I moved inside, I didn’t see any obvious candidates for a Darwin. There were three girls studying together, and two couples. See, couples were everywhere. You couldn’t exist without stumbling over like a hundred perfect pairs of people who believed they were in love every single day. Some of them probably even were in love, though I had my doubts about Couple Number One. They looked bored. Couple Number Two? Love. And say hello to jealousy, Kylie, your new best friend.

I pushed those thoughts to the back of my mind where there was a box labeled Things That Suck and went back to searching for my genius tutor. And why weren’t those thoughts in Hindi? Geez, so not fair.

There were two guys sitting by themselves. One was wearing hipster glasses and had a tattoo sleeve, his head bobbing to the music fed through his iPhone. Nope. The other one looked a little young to be a grad student, but he had acne and curly hair that went to his shoulders. He was staring intently at his computer screen, papers spread out all around him. This was clearly my man. He was going to have to be a superhero to save me from repeating this class, and, frankly, he looked up for the job. I also felt that I was perfectly safe from bursting into tears in his presence. Nothing about him seemed compassionate or friendly.

Approaching him, I smiled. “Are you Darwin? I’m Kylie. Thanks for helping me study.”

But he just glanced up at me blankly. “What?”

“I’m Kylie. Professor Kadisch gave me your e-mail . . . we arranged to meet here.” Then as his expression never changed, I realized I was barking up the wrong nerd tree. “Are you Darwin?”

“No, I’m Christian.”

“Oh.” I gave him a smile of apology, readjusting my backpack on my shoulders. “Sorry to bother you.”