Girl Most Likely to Succeed

By Alissa Grosso

Members of the Gray Valley class of 1994 are dying at a frightening rate, and Katrina Parker may be the only one who can save them. 

Is this the curse that was placed on them twenty-five years ago finally coming true? To find the answers Katrina is forced tot confront her painful past and the role she played in the tragic events that occurred in her senior year of high school. Though it won't be easy, she feels confident in her plan. After all, she was once voted the girl most likely to succeed. But somebody seems determined to stop her and they just might know the truth about Katrina and what she did. As the body count grows and haunting coincidences abound, Katrina fears her dark secret may be connected to the deaths of her old friends. Now with her twenty-fifth high school reunion looming, she's in a race against time to save the surviving members of the class of '94 before it's too late.

Girl Most Likely To Succeedis a fast-paced psychological thriller full of twists and turns that you won't want to put down. Read Alissa Grosso's debut adult novel today.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Glitter Pigeon Press
• Release date: Oct 11, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386913030

Alissa Grosso

A former children's librarian and newspaper editor, Alissa Grosso is the author of the young adult novels Popular and Ferocity Summer. She is a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI) and currently works as a sales consultant for a book distributor. Grosso grew up in New Jersey, where she graduated from Lenape Valley Regional High School, and earned a bachelor's degree in English from Rutgers University. She now lives in the Philadelphia area.

Book preview

Part One

October 1, 2018

Isaw something out of the corner of my eye. When I looked up, I found Brandon Reid looking back at me. The jug of red tempera paint that I was pouring into the squeeze bottle slipped from my hands and fell to the counter. Paint splattered on my hands and my clothes. I turned on the tap and held my hands beneath the stream. Diluted, the paint looked like blood .

Who? I asked.

Matt O'Connell, he said.

How? I asked.

Drove off Route 80 and into a tree. I mopped up the paint on the counter with a wet paper towel and dabbed at my clothes. That makes eleven, he said. I felt a stabbing pain in my chest.

How did you find me? I asked.

I Googled you, he said. Some hits for some stories you had published and this, youth services coordinator Hanville Memorial Library. I could have called, I guess, but I figured, what the hell, I'll take a little road trip.

I've got an after school group coming in ten minutes for story time.

No problem. I'll wait for you outside. I'll buy you a beer or five.

T he day Max wore his wolf suit and made mischief of one kind and another, was how Where the Wild Things started, only what I read was Matt not Max, and my mind was filled not with the image of a little boy in a wolf costume, but a teenaged boy with long hair and blue eyes and the most infectious smile I had ever known. I read the rest of the story on autopilot. Mentally, I was back in high school .

It must have been right before some holiday because everyone was charged up. Some of us were on our way back to first period study hall from various ports of call. We decided to have a piggy back race back to the classroom. I climbed up on Matt's back, but we only made it part way down the hall before we collapsed in a heap on the floor. The bell rang and suddenly students filled the hallway, but Matt and I were all tangled up and I couldn't stop laughing long enough to stand up.

For a moment the memory brought a smile to my face, but then I realized Matt was dead. In the book, Max got sent to his room without supper and sailed off on an imaginary journey to a land full of wild things. I envied Max and his trivial little punishment.

Miss Katrina? one of my listeners asked. I returned to reality.

I glanced down and there was blood on my hand – but no, it was just some paint that didn't wash off.

M att smoked a lot of pot, I said as we waited for our beer .

The place was a poorly-lit dive that reeked of misery. It was my favorite kind of bar because it did not pretend to be something other than what it was.

What's your point? Brandon asked.

I'm just saying-- I began, but the waitress arrived with my Yuengling and Brandon's Guinness. I took a long pull on the bottle. I closed my eyes, and saw Matt O'Connell. I saw him walking across the cafeteria in slow motion, his golden brown hair pulled back in a ponytail. He stared at something in the distance, the burnout table, maybe—that's where Matt had always sat. I drove him home from a party once, I said. It was a year or so after high school. I ran into him there and he was in no condition to drive, so I offered him a lift. He said he wished he had ditched that day. Started talking about poisoned apples and Adam and Eve and all. I didn't tell him the whole story. There was no need to.

Well, that's one view, Brandon said. He drained his glass and signaled the waitress for more.

All I'm saying is, I don't think Matt ever really could handle it. Maybe that's why he smoked so much pot. Maybe that's why he got into that car accident.

Jesus, Katrina, like any of us could ever handle it. Or do you think you're doing a wonderful job?

The waitress brought us another round even though I had not quite finished my first. I could have spent all night coming up with reasons Matt's death had nothing to do with Joanna Pasternak, but even in the unlikely case I could convince Brandon, it wouldn’t matter. Matt would still be dead, and I knew the real reason.

They think it might have been suicide, Brandon said.

What? Why did you say it was an accident?

Officially that's what was put down on the report, but it was daytime, the roads were dry. Make of it what you will.

I couldn’t stop myself from picturing it in my head. Who commits suicide on Route 80?

Well, maybe it was an accident, Brandon said. He didn't sound convinced. Like you said. Maybe it was DUI or something.

That wasn’t what I was saying, but I didn't correct him. Maybe he was right. That night all those years ago (more than twenty I realized with a shock), I drove Matt home from the party because he was in no shape to drive. Maybe this time around there was no one there to give him a lift.

I was married, Brandon told me .

I was engaged, I countered.

She left me for some guy she met online. She told me I wasn't happy enough for her.

I left him. He was a psychopath with a gun.

No shit. Gun-wielding psychopath. None of us have met our maker that way before.

I used to think that Brandon and I would wind up together. We weren't a couple in high school, but I always felt like there was some chemistry there, a spark. I had a crush on him, I guess. It could have been all in my head, but no, it wasn't just my imagination. There was something there. Maybe if Joanna Pasternak hadn’t died, we would have become some happily married couple living in the suburbs and waving goodbye to our kids each morning as they got onto the school bus. It didn’t exactly sound like a dream life, but it didn’t sound that bad either. In fact, it sounded kind of nice.

You ever feel like you're missing out? I asked.

On?

Kids, wife, the typical American life.

Well, it's not like we couldn't do that, if we wanted.

By we I knew he meant any one of us, any of the Gray Valley 150, or well, 139, I guess it was now. (No, I reminded myself, 138. How could I have forgotten about Joanna?) Brandon didn't mean that the two of us should pair off, start making babies and hosting barbecues on the weekends. But still my mind wandered off for a minute or two, picturing this weirdly idyllic scene.

So, what do we do? I asked.

Let's get married and join the PTA, he said. It was sarcasm, but I had to stifle a gasp. It was like he'd seen into my head, glimpsed that daydream. I had to remind myself that I was the one that brought up that typical American life stuff. Brandon was just riffing on that. I don't know, I keep thinking there's got to be a way to put an end to it all. We can stop it.

I wished I could. But I knew unless Brandon had a time machine he hadn't told me about, that it was too late. He, of all people, should have understood this. Maybe he did. Maybe that's why he tracked me down, but I didn't say any of this. Instead I said, If there's even anything to stop. The waitress walked by, and without even saying a word, Brandon signaled for another round.

Well, yeah, but the body count would argue otherwise.

Eleven. The number felt like a dark cloud looming over my head.

This would have been an appropriate time to tell Brandon about the letter, but I didn't. I'd spent the past two weeks trying to pretend I never received it, like I could just mentally will it into nonexistence. It was something like trying to pretend that a curse didn't exist.

October 2. 2018

Ino long slept well. I used to have no problem sleeping through the night, but that changed after Tofer. Something about being terrorized by a psychopath makes it difficult to sleep, go figure. Even though I didn't really have any reason to worry anymore, old habits die hard. I woke a few hours after crashing with a dry mouth and a throbbing head .

Why did I drink so much? Three beers at the bar, then vodka laced with cranberry juice after we came back here. My body was upset with me for overdoing it. By the light of nightlights—the house was full of them, something else I owed to my fear of Tofer—I shuffled out of the bedroom, through the living room, where a snoring Brandon was passed out on my couch, and into the little galley kitchen.

The events of the previous evening were foggy in my head, but the fact that Brandon was on my couch convinced me that nothing happened between us. Still my teenage self would have been over-the-moon excited by the very idea of Brandon spending the night at her place. I imagined going back in time to tell my younger self this good news. Sure, you’re forty-two, single and childless and living in a crappy house you can just barely afford, but your high school crush is passed out drunk on your couch. So, there’s that.

I poured myself a glass of spring water, and shook out a couple of aspirin from a nearly empty bottle. I chugged them back with the water, then stood in the kitchen doorframe, looking at Brandon, who hung off either end of my small sofa. I had a guest bedroom, but it lacked a bed. It was really nothing but a place to store boxes of miscellaneous crap. Stuff like old photos and high school yearbooks.

So, that's why well before dawn I was digging through boxes of old mementos, things I couldn't remember why I ever saved in the first place, cursing myself for not being more organized. The least I could have done was label the boxes better. I was well into my fifth box before I found it. There was no reason my senior yearbook should have been in a box with my old Cabbage Patch doll and a photo of my cousin at her college graduation, but there it was.

It had been nearly ten years since I had looked at my yearbook. My parents were still living in Gray Valley then. Brandon showed up on Christmas Eve to tell me Steve Hughes was killed by an IED in Iraq.

I sat down on the floor and cracked the yearbook open. I was distracted by the messages and signatures written inside the front cover. We all seemed so much more hopeful then, so alive. My eyes fell on the scrawled signature at the corner of the page, the word PEACE written in big block letters above it. Matt's message was simple and real, like him, though without the false optimism of the other messages. I wondered if he was struggling even then. I stared at the big capital letters, the way the blue ink stood out against the grains of the golden yellow paper, and in my head there was a vision of another inked message, this one on a square of notebook paper. Matt was there that day, of course. I could see the look of surprise and disappointment on his face like it was yesterday. How could he be gone? It wasn’t fair.

Rest in peace, I whispered to the signature, tracing the letters with my thumb.

I flipped past the candids, but paused on the Senior Picks page. There, from the corner of the page, teenaged Brandon and I smiled for the camera beneath the caption MOST LIKELY TO SUCCEED.

I flipped forward through the yearbook pages until I came to the senior class portraits. There were pencilled check marks next to the faces of the dead. I would have to add one more. It took me five minutes to find a pencil in the jumbled mess of a room. The point was worn down almost to the wood, but it would do.

Matt's hair was down in the photo and looked freshly combed. Even in the black and white photo, you could somehow sense the ocean-like color of his eyes. He was smiling, and it looked genuine. Of course it was. Our senior portraits were taken at the end of junior year. Beneath the photo was the alphabet soup mess of responses to the yearbook questionnaire that included things like favorite food—calzones from Pietro’s, and favorite song—Touch of Gray. I stared at the words and the picture above it, which were all I had left of the boy I once knew.

There was a noise, and I looked up in surprise to see Brandon standing in the doorway.

I guess I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t sleep, he said.

I shut the yearbook quickly, embarrassed, and stuck it quickly on top of one of the piles. I hoped that Brandon couldn’t see what it was, but I wasn’t sure.

Sorry, I guess the couch isn’t too comfortable, I said.

I think the bigger issue is the curse, Brandon said. It’s hard to sleep with something like that hanging over your head.

October 2, 2018

As soon as the baby story time crowd cleared out, I walked upstairs to Gretchen's office. The door with its shiny gold Director nameplate was ajar, but I knocked anyway, and heard a muffled come in. My boss was in the middle of her mid-morning snack—half a container of yogurt and a granola bar on the desk in front of her .

Sorry, I said. I didn't mean to catch you at a bad time. She waved away my apology.

Looked like you had a good turnout this morning, she said.

I know this is last minute, I said, but it's something I only just found out about. I was wondering if it would be okay if I left a little early today. An old high school friend passed away, and there's a viewing this evening, in New Jersey.

Oh, Katrina, I'm so sorry. Was she ill? The question, or rather, the pronoun, caught me off guard. My mind went suddenly to Joanna. Thankfully, before I made a fool of myself asking my boss how she heard about Joanna, I realized that she only assumed that the wake was for a female friend.

He, I said, and not ill, exactly, not in the traditional sense, anyway, but I think he had been unhappy for a long time. I didn't need to say any more. She understood, nodding her head sympathetically. She reached across the desk and placed her hand over mine. She had true librarian hands, dry and rough from constant paper handling, and though I knew Gretchen was still years away from retirement, I noticed the first signs of what my grandmother always called age spots on her hands. It was a reminder not only that Gretchen was aging, but that I was as well. Ninety-four was 24 years ago, a little voice piped up from the back of my head, before I shut it back up in the dark windowless room where it belonged.

Yes, of course, you can leave early. You know, I didn't want to say anything before, but I thought when I saw you this morning that you were looking a bit weary. I know how difficult it is to say goodbye to someone so young. Gretchen pulled her hand away, and the way she looked off into space I knew she was thinking of her stepdaughter, who at the age of sixteen chose to take her own life. The suicide happened long before I started working at the library, but I heard about it from others. I had always associated Gretchen's stepdaughter with Joanna, and even though it made no sense, I always felt vaguely guilty around Gretchen, like somehow I was to blame for her stepdaughter's death.

I yanked my hand away from Gretchen and sprang to my feet. I muttered a quick thanks, and then ran from her office so quickly I nearly knocked down Lane, the reference librarian. He gave me a look of concern, and I was too embarrassed to even choke out a word of apology.

October 2, 2018

Gray Valley existed at the shadowy fringe of New Jersey suburbia, where the down and out outnumbered the up and coming two to one, maybe three to one. There was no main street, just a highway that ran the length of town, a couple of gas stations, twice as many strip malls, each with one or more vacant stores. The For Lease signs that stood at the edge of the road were faded and worn .

Home, I thought as I drove through this familiar landscape. It was a depressing thought.

I didn't need my GPS to tell me to make a right onto Race Street, and then a left into the parking lot of Callum Funeral Home. The small building looked tidy and neat. The parking lot was bright with artificial light and looked freshly paved. It might have been the nicest looking place in town, and what did that tell you? The funeral business must have been positively booming. In my head I heard my grandfather cracking a joke, People are dying to get out of there. Who could blame them?

I passed by the closest parking spots, and pulled into one of the further away ones. I killed the engine, but made no move to get out of the car. The lot wasn’t packed, but the turnout looked decent. Matt was young enough and personable enough that there would be a handful of locals, maybe a few good friends and, of course, family members. And what was I? I didn't think I qualified as a good friend. It had been years since I last talked to him, and honestly I wasn’t sure if we were ever good friends.

I had to take at least some of the blame for losing touch with Matt. He was troubled. I knew this. Why didn't I do more to try and reach out to him? If I had, would he still be alive? It was not the first time I'd felt guilt over someone's suicide, and I feared it wouldn’t be the last.

I couldn't stay in my car all night. It was time to go in there, but there was another option. I could leave. There was no point to me being here. It was too late to help Matt, and I was an idiot for thinking that showing up here would help me in any way. Would I know anyone here? Maybe someone else from our class? I didn't know Matt's parents, and there was going to be that awkward thing where I had to tell them how sorry I was for their loss, and at the same time try and explain who I was. No, it would be better to not go in at all. I glanced out at the parking lot. Had anyone seen me sitting here in my car?

There were a few people enveloped in a cloud of smoke just outside the front door, but it was unlikely they'd noticed me out here at the far end of the lot. It was too cold tonight for anyone but the desperate nicotine addicts to be hanging out outdoors. But then I caught a glimpse of someone hurrying across the parking lot toward the building, and my heart did a somersault in my chest.

I couldn't believe what I was seeing, but I recognized that face, that walk. I was overwhelmed by confusion, fear, elation and relief, mostly relief. It had all been some terrible misunderstanding. It was like that recurring dream I had where Joanna Pasternak was still alive and well. The letter. The thought bubbled up from my subconscious, but I pushed it away. The Joanna thing was a dream, but this? This was no dream.

I flung open the door, and attempted to get out, only to realize my seatbelt was still buckled. I freed myself and had the presence of mind to grab my keys and my purse before locking and shutting the door. I ran toward the building I just saw Matt step into. The rubber soles on my practical librarian shoes were silent on the fresh asphalt, but still the smoking group glanced in my direction. No one runs to a wake. I slowed myself down to a brisk walk, and tried to assess the state of my hair by touch alone, tucking it behind my ears, finger combing my bangs.

I still felt like I was moving at hyper-speed as I pushed through the front door and entirely missed the small step that lead into the building. The trip sent me careening inside, arms pinwheeling in a desperate attempt to remain vertical, and the thought that had been passing through my head since I was eighteen made a return visit: this is how it happens. But it wasn't. Somehow I fought off gravity to catch my balance, and though it was no longer needed an arm reached out to steady me.

Are you okay? the person asked. His voice was familiar, but changed slightly with age, and he'd changed too. His hair was cropped short. His face was different, older, but something else has changed, too, something I couldn't quite discern—and then, of course, it hit me. The man holding my arm was not Matt, but his older brother. I didn't know him, he was six years ahead of us in school, but I remembered the way teachers would say how much Matt looked like Dan, would sometimes call Matt Dan by mistake. The man who held my arm was not the boy I used to know because the boy I used to know was dead, his remains sat in that coffin at the front of the room to our left.

I'm sorry, I said, and those words were more fraught with meaning than Dan could ever understand. In an ideal world, this would be the point where I