CHAPTER ONE
HAUNTED
A mark of destiny. That’s what Mom called the star-shaped birthmark on the inside of my left wrist. She said it was destiny’s way of marking me so the world would know to have something big planned for yours truly. I’m sure if she were still here today she would have changed her mind and believed what I did now—my mark of destiny was more like a magnet for tragedy.
Mark or magnet aside, something had led me to Corvallis, Oregon—home of Oregon State University—several days before winter quarter was scheduled to commence. I hovered beside the only remaining companion in my life, unable to muster up the courage to take my first step in this new phase of life.
The monstrosity before me would be serving as “home sweet home” for the next seven months, and if it had a chain-link fence topped with curls of barbed wire, it could have been mistaken for a penitentiary instead of a dorm.
I took a good look at the brick and mortar face of the change I’d selected for myself, and an air of finality settled upon me; confirming what I’d known, but tried so hard to overcome. No matter where I went, I could never leave my past behind. It would always haunt me.
With this cheery thought, I sucked in a deep breath and got after that first step. The next thing I felt was the toe of my sneaker stumble over something—as if a foretelling of what was to come—and I flailed my arms forward, preparing to break my fall.
“Whoa, there.” A set of arms reached out and stopped me before I got up close and personal with the sidewalk. “Curb check.”
I righted myself and brushed aside the mess of hair that had fallen over my face. “Thanks,” I said, blowing aside the final strands. “Those curbs must have some sort-of vendetta against me.”
“Not your first run-in, huh?”
“Not the last either,” I said, finally able to see who was responsible for sparing me a set of scraped palms.
He was the kind of guy who would turn a lot of women’s heads—he had that high-school star of the football team quality—and there was something in his eyes that led me to believe he was fully aware of this.
“Paul Lowe,” he said, extending his hand. “Junior, Captain of the basketball team, and heroic curb slayer.”
I placed my hand in his, attempting to stifle my smile. “Bryn Dawson. Sophomore, Scrabble player extraordinaire, and thankful to the mighty curb slayer,” I said with mock seriousness.
"Nice to meet you, Bryn. So you're new here?"
My smile waned. Great . . . was it that obvious? All I wanted was to fade into the crowd. That’s what I’d managed to do my whole life, why couldn’t I do it now when it actually mattered to me?
I’d always been that girl you could have seen at graduation and wondered if you’d gone to school with her for the past four years. Back then, it was a curse, now I craved anonymity like a socialite craved the limelight.
I cleared my throat. "How did you know?"
He raised his eyebrows. "Several things tipped me off: one—the sweet car,” he began, pointing his turquoise colored eyes in the direction of my vintage Camaro. “Two—the cardboard boxes in the back seat. Three—you look more lost than a Delta Gamma in a study session, and four . . ."—he laughed a few notes and stuffed his hands in the back pockets of his jeans—"actually, I'll keep four to myself. The first three reasons should be convincing enough."
“Another girl throwing herself at you, Paul?” A female student walked up behind him and circled her hands around his arm, giving me a look that had enough firepower behind it to decimate the campus and surrounding community.
“Hey, Amy,” Paul said, his eyes narrowing.
“Who’s your new friend?” she asked him while looking me over top to bottom, no attempt to disguise that she disapproved of every millimeter of my 5 foot 10 inch frame.
“This is Bryn. She’s new here,” he said, winking at me as if sharing some secret, before tilting his head to the girl glommed to his arm. “This is Amy Kirkpatrick.”
She was that girl in school all the girls would have died to look like, and all the boys would have died to go out with. Her legs were as bronze as they were long and the denim skirt that adorned them didn’t leave much leg to the imagination.
“His girlfriend,” she said promptly, the warning in her voice more severe than the look on her face.
Paul raised his eyebrows at her. “I wasn’t aware that’s what we were still calling it.”
She shot him a look that would have crippled me, before glaring back at me. I crossed my arms tight into my stomach, wondering yet again why girls like Amy sought me out as a target for their games of malice. “Always the comedian. You have to watch out for him, Bryn. If you’re not careful he’ll have you hanging on his every word and believing he’s the unofficial prince of OSU.”
I wasn’t sure how to respond, and I didn’t want to get in the middle of some lover’s quarrel on my first day, so I plastered on a smile and turned to retrieve one of the boxes in my car.
“Let me help you get situated,” Paul said, taking a step forward and pushing up his sleeves. He reached for the box I was pulling from the back seat.
“I’ll do it,” Amy said, striding forward and adhering herself to Paul again. I glanced down at the four inch heels on her boots and wondered how she could walk, let alone carry a box that easily weighed half her body weight. “Hey Melanie!” she yelled across the courtyard.