It’s a new year, so let’s go with a new story! This month I’ll be pulling from a novella I started a while back and plan to finish next, “Dark Paradise.”

Celly’s always been the good girl, but there’s something about bad boy Duke that she can’t get enough of. He wants to be the guy she thinks he is, but his past isn’t something he can easily walk away from.

This is the very beginning of the story.

* * * * * * * * * *

Celly ignores the knock on the front door, but her little brother Tommy does not.

“Where’s Celly?” she hears Mona ask, even though her friend knows exactly where she is, where she always is.

She doesn’t hear his response because Mona is pushing into her tiny bedroom, just a twin mattress on the floor and a desk she dragged home from in front of a neighbor’s house and some crates full of clothes. Her whole life could fit into the backseat of a car, and she sometimes dreams of that, of throwing all her stuff back there and taking off, to New York or L.A. or Mars, but she doesn’t have a car.

“Why aren’t you ready yet?” Mona asks.

Celly is lying facedown on her bed, and she doesn’t lift her head as she says, “I’m not going.”

“Of course you are,” Mona says as she tugs on her arm, trying to flip her onto her back or maybe off the bed. “Everyone goes to the fair.”

* * * * * * * * * *

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