9:05 AM.

I awoke on the floor of an empty room. Pain struck my senses as I sat up; my very first hangover, the consequence of an overindulgence in Mara's written words. Excerpts from that book intoxicated my thoughts and dreams as I puzzled over a world that I never imagined. Who was the girl with the pretty façade? Who was the girl who smiled so readily after a bully attack? Two months with Mara and I had been oblivious. She never expressed her hatred for bullies or frustration with my family. She never fretted over hygiene, showed concern for her real parents, proclaimed an interest in animals or books or babies...

Or Ryan. I saw the way they looked at each other. I heard their smacking lips. I sensed the ping of resentment every time Livy forced herself on him. But I believed her when she said that boys were gross. I made the stupid assumption that there were no contenders for her affection! Or if there were contenders, that I stood alone. I was the boy who saved her. I was the director who hired her! I listened. I cared. I strived to be different! What was Ryan Brosh but a basketball jersey, pretty face, and smacking lips?

I hoisted myself from the floor with the knobs on my nightstand drawers. I adjusted my shorts, checked the time, then wandered into the parlor. Whit was in his wheelchair at the bottom of the staircase. He was motionless, listening, neck stretched toward the open ballroom like a flower to the sun.

I waddled past him, rubbed my eyes, and looked up the stairs. The boys were arranged shortest to tallest on the top steps, eye-level with the rosy carpet, admiring the pastel pallet of girls on the ballroom floor. For the first time, I understood why Mara called them 'ferrets.' They were tenacious weasels, rabbit hunters, slender rodents with paws on the banister preparing to pounce. Zombie-ferrets, I thought. Ryan and Whit and Mrs. Greenfield too. All of them. All of them zombie-ferrets.

Of the nine boys who had spent the night, only one refused to look. Ryan Brosh was sitting on the middle step, face forward, hands together... different.

I locked eyes with my arch-nemesis. I scrutinized his pretty face. I coveted his lips. If Mara was going to chose between us, she was going to chose me.

But then he smiled. It was an unsettling smile; forced, as if fish hooks were pulling the corners of his mouth. He glanced down at his hands, then unclasped them slowly as if he was showing a toddler a captured insect. Trapped between his fingers was the pressed petal of a yellow rose.

*  *  *

Only minutes after I shooed the peeping toms from the stairs, boredom struck and spurred a second make-believe war. Armed with Nerf guns, pillows, water balloons, invisible bazookas and unlit torches from the night before, we overtook the front yard in a merciless free-for-all. Every boy claimed to fight for the kingdom, as if the tangle of sleeping beauties represented humanity itself. But in truth, we all fought for the same girl.

**********

Still liking the book? Please consider buying the gorgeous paperback! Details are in my profile : ) Also... there is a prologue and an epilogue that aren't included in the Wattpad version... ; )