Afterburn: A Novel - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Zane is the New York Times bestselling author of Afterburn, The Heat Seekers, Dear G-Spot, Gettin’ Buck Wild, The Hot Box, Total Eclipse of the Heart, Nervous, Skyscraper, Love is Never Painless, Shame on It All, and The Sisters of APF; the ebook short stories “I’ll be Home for Christmas” and “Everything Fades Away”; and editor for the Flava anthology series, including Z-Rated and Busy Bodies. Her bestselling novel Addicted is a major motion picture and she is the publisher of Strebor Books, an imprint of Atria Books/Simon & Schuster.

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Chapter One

Rayne Waters, Age 15

Birmingham, AL

June 1990

I was lying in my bed dreaming about Prince laying me down on his basement bed; like he did to Apollonia in Purple Rain. I'd fallen asleep staring at the poster of him I had taped to my bedroom ceiling; a nightly routine for me. It was the one where he was lying on his stomach with his ass cheeks exposed; enough to tease the millions of teenage girls who idolized him like me.

"Rayne, wake up! Wake up, dammit!"

Momma's high-pitched, irritating voice pierced into my blissful sleep. I willed both it and her to go away. Lost cause. Momma shook my shoulders and yanked me halfway off my twin-sized canopy bed.

"Rayne, you know you hear me! Sit up, missy! Time for a talk!"

Trying to sleep was out of the question so I propped my back up on a pillow. "Momma, it's the middle of the night. Can't this wait?"

"No, it can't wait."

Her breath almost knocked me out when she plopped down beside me, landing her hip on one of my kidneys. I moved over slightly. She was drunk again; no huge surprise. Momma spent at least five nights a week at the Eagle, a cruddy bar less than a mile from our apartment.

"Baby, I should've done this a long time ago, so listen up!"

"Done what, Momma?" Various scenarios raced through my head. Then I remembered my less than stellar grades. "Is this about my progress report? I'm gonna pull that D up in math. I promise."

Momma let out this hideous laugh. "This ain't 'bout no damn school! Fuck school!"

Humph, I wonder how many members of the PTA would want to jump on Momma's back for telling her child to "fuck school." She wasn't exactly June Cleaver but she could've at least been supportive of my education. I was really trying hard in school and was having issues with a couple of classes; mainly because of my staying up half the weeknights waiting for her to come home. I'd hear all these creepy noises in and around our apartment and we didn't exactly live in the safest area of Birmingham. I realized Momma was doing the best she could, considering my father -- who she refused to name, if she even knew his name -- had never been a part of our lives. Momma worked as a waitress at this dump where they couldn't even give me free food to eat. She used to try to get me to come by there after school to eat at her employee discount rate, but after a couple times of struggling to chew their meatloaf and ending up on the toilet for three hours, I decided my digestive system was more important than saving money.

On the flip side, I'd gained a lot of weight from eating fast food. I tried to tell myself that I could lose it at any given time. After all, I was young, and that had to count for something. I wasn't obese, so I simply let it flow and ignored the few assholes at school who made comments. I'd tell them, "God didn't intend for everyone to be a bag of bones!"

Momma slapped me on the leg and the pain shot up my spine. The room was flooded with an unwelcome burst of light after she reached for the ceramic lamp on my nightstand. "I wanna talk to you about fast ass boys!"

"Momma, why are you yelling? I'm right here."

Once my eyes adjusted to the light, I noticed her mascara and lipstick were smudged. She was so beautiful, even in disarray. She had the smoothest caramel skin, and men lost their minds over her gray eyes; the ones I shared with her.

"What about boys?" I asked. "I'm not even dating."

She pulled the bottom of my nightgown down further over my legs, like there were a bunch of perverted old men standing around my room or something.

"That Henry boy," she said in disgust. "I've noticed he keeps coming 'round here, sniffing your drawers."

"This is crazy, Momma," I stated in protest.

Henry Wilkes was ugmo, which made him twice as jacked up in the face than ugly. Chance Martinez, my best friend, and I had made up the word to describe him. He was still my friend because you have to take friends where you can get them and most of the boys in the school were so stuck on themselves that they made me sick. The majority of the girls were too busy sizing each other up in competition to be friendly.

"Momma, Henry and I are friends. I don't like him. He's not attractive, at all."

"Forget being attractive. Does he have any money?"

She was tripping. Did she not realize that no one at my school had money? If they did, they sure as hell wouldn't be playing house in our neighborhood. We didn't have two nickels to rub together and it was my guess that Henry and his family didn't have two pennies to rub together.

She stared at me like she was awaiting a response, one

that should've been obvious, so I replied, "Don't think so.

Why?"

Her voice went up three decibels as she catapulted off the bed and threw her hands on her hips. "'Cause if he ain't got no money, he needs to keep his little ass from 'round here!"

"Henry's my partner for a science project. That's why he's been coming over lately."

I figured that was the end of the conversation so I laid back down. Momma pinched me on the shoulder and I shrieked out in pain. "Ow, Momma! Why'd you do that?"

"Sit up and listen to me, dammit! I've been whoring all my life and I'm a good whore. You better learn how to be a good...