On a warm day in March, best friends Sam and Fran watch from the town overpass as their friend Marcy gets into a stranger's car and drives away. Three days later, she's officially declared missing. Despite being the last people to see Marcy alive, Sam and Fran refuse to go to the police. If they tell them why Marcy flagged down the car, their dark actions from that day will be revealed and their lives potentially ruined.
But when Sam begins receiving threatening letters, it becomes clear that someone else knows the truth about what happened the day Marcy disappeared. At the same time, a woman begins following Sam, inserting herself into her life and Marcy's case. As rumors from her past begin to resurface, Sam must deal with a town that doesn't forget and a missing friend who might or might not have left behind the answer to her disappearance.
On a warm day in March, best friends Sam and Fran watch from the town overpass as their friend Marcy gets into a stranger's car and drives away. Three days later, she's officially declared missing. Despite being the last people to see Marcy alive, Sam and Fran refuse to go to the police. If they tell them why Marcy flagged down the car, their dark actions from that day will be revealed and their lives potentially ruined.
But when Sam begins receiving threatening letters, it becomes clear that someone else knows the truth about what happened the day Marcy disappeared. At the same time, a woman begins following Sam, inserting herself into her life and Marcy's case. As rumors from her past begin to resurface, Sam must deal with a town that doesn't forget and a missing friend who might or might not have left behind the answer to her disappearance.
The balloon appears out of nowhere, floating on a breeze that has been nonexistent all day, until now.
I watch it sail lazily in the air, dipping and rising. Bopping left before twisting like a ballerina and heading right. Skipping along, then hovering, then skipping some more. It finally comes to a stop, snagged on the branches of the maple tree across the road. I encourage another breeze to come and send it on its way, but the air has fallen still.
My voice, when it comes out, is higher than usual.
“The park’s at least a few miles from here, right?”
Ted follows my line of sight. “It could have come from anywhere, Sam.”
“But it’s pink, her favorite color. And today’s the day.”
Ted shrugs, picks up a small rock near his side and throws it over the edge of the overpass. I watch it bounce twice and then skitter off the side of the road below. “Like I said, it could be from anywhere. Balloons can fly for hundreds of miles. Even thousands if the wind is strong.”
Fran laughs. “Thousands? You just totally made that up.”
I squint against the sun and rub my palms on my shorts. “Maybe she’s trying to tell me something.”
“Like what?” Fran says. “I’m dead?” When I shoot her a look, she grows apologetic. “Look, even if it came from the ceremony, it doesn’t mean Ella’s sending you a message. What happened is some well-meaning, but totally clueless Welltown resident released this balloon thinking that the perfect way to honor a dead girl was to send an environmentally unfriendly material out into the world. And it ended up floating here. That’s it. Nothing more.”
I turn my attention skyward, scanning the horizon. “You’re right. I’m overreacting.”
Pleased, Fran nods and pulls her gum out in a long string before shoving it back into her mouth in a yarn-like ball. She kicks her combat boots idly in the open air of the overpass. “What do you guys think of me buying a cape? I’m ready to start a Welltown trend.”
I bite off a chunk of bologna sandwich and drag my gaze away from the balloon. “Please don’t. As one-third of our amazingly awkward trio, it would be an understatement to say we do not need that kind of attention.”
“We should all get one,” she says, blissfully ignoring my advice. “Make Principal Anderson lose his shit. Actually, make this whole town lose its shit. But they aren’t cheap. The good ones aren’t, at least.”
Ted snorts, dragging the back of his hand across the small teardrops of sweat on his forehead. “I didn’t know there was such a thing as a good cape.”
“Depends on the material. I like leather.”
I put down my sandwich. “Sane people don’t wear leather capes. You know that, right?”
“Who says I’m sane?”
I shrug, smiling. “Not Irene Miller. She’s told me more than once that you look like you might be hiding a nail file in your bra.”
“And your mom might be right.” Fran smiles slyly.
Taking one last bite, I toss my sandwich crust over the edge. It flutters until it lands on the road below. When I peer down, I can’t help but think it looks like a tiny white body on a black river, and I have to close my eyes to push down the ugly memory that tries to surface.
The town closed the overpass years ago and left it to die, but there’s nothing we love more than a place that adults have deserted and want nothing to do with. We breathed life back into the structure and made it our own, a spot where we can get away from everything and rule over our own world—a derelict world that sometimes smells like pee on really humid days, but still our own.
“Ok, next car is yours,” Ted says. He grabs my hand and squeezes, the moisture on our palms mixing and making my heart dance. His blue T-shirt is damp with sweat, and I watch as a pearl of it slides down the side of his face.
As if on cue, a motor rumbles in the distance.
“C’mon, Corvette.” I crane my neck and watch with disappointment as the forest-green hatchback approaches. “Jeez,” I sigh. “I’m doomed to have a crappy car.” As we watch the vehicle crawl over the horizon, I notice it isn’t just a car, but a car pulling an orange and white U-Haul. To my amazement, an out-of-state license plate hangs on the front of the vehicle. I shoot Fran a glance.
She shrugs. I turn to Ted. He looks at both of us, his eyebrows arched into two bushy peaks.
“Someone’s moving to Welltown,” he says. “I wonder who the glutton for punishment is.”
“Someone who must be on crack.” Fran chews off the tip of a black-painted fingernail, then suddenly brightens. “Or maybe someone who will wear a cape with me.”
I open my mouth to say something when I spot a slender arm hanging languidly out of the car’s open passenger window. Long black hair whips and tangles in the wind like spider legs.
Worry folds in my stomach then, and my gaze flits to the balloon still entangled in the tree. The Welltown horizon, always a reliably straight line with no end, suddenly tilts like a seesaw, and I need to blink a couple times to bring it back to its proper position. My stomach roils.
The vehicle-slash-U-Haul passes slowly underneath our feet, pushing up a swell of hot exhaust that forces me to pull my shirt over my nose and cough. As the car travels down the road to town and the cloud of fumes finally floats away, the pop of Ella’s balloon sounds in the distance.
Excerpt From
Four's A Crowd
R.H. Layne
This material may be protected by copyright.
Fours A Crowd introduces us to R.H Layne’s captivating writing full of dramatic twists with a literary structure that leads the reader through the enigma that is happening in this small town, while piecing together flashbacks and journal entries that help fill in the gaps. The portrayal of the main lead spiraling downwards into a darkness she can never escape has the readers riveted to find out how she is going to save herself from this whirlpool of lies, jealousy, and deceit.
Fours A Crowd centers on a girl named Marcy who has spontaneously gone missing. Sam and Fran had been around when they watched her enter an unknown vehicle, but they refused to go to the police in fear of what they will find out was the reason behind her entering the vehicle. So instead of speaking forward, even after a bloody backpack has been discovered, they decide to bury their secrets with them. Thinking the small town won’t be able to look thoroughly into the case. But when Sam finds out she has a stalker who may know what they have done, she begins to feel the overwhelming sensations of how much a little white lie can expand into misery. The plot spirals into a suspenseful mystery as the characters begin to deceive each other for their own safety.
Fours A Crowd is written with so much suspense, so much tension between the characters from keeping the truth from each other, that their loyalty is tested between friends that used to believe they could trust one another. This book is the perfect combination for the upcoming weekend since as it would pair perfectly with the theatrical release of I Know What You Did Last Summer with their similar tropes of betrayals between friends over a secret that led to someone going missing. This book also has a similar scene where Sam receives a not that even reads ‘I know what you did,’ that shows similarities between the two.
It’s an enticing and fast-paced, that will have you gasping for the truth, seeking out any and all clues before the twist ending approaches. When I read the synopsis, I immediately knew this story had the potential to be fun and riveting for the younger readers without allowing the ‘secret’ trope becoming rinse and repeat, but Layne has given us a truly unique plot with characters you become concerned for and an ending you won’t see coming until it hits you.
Layne writes characters that you resonate with from the beginning. Through journal excerpts and flashbacks, you get a sense from Marcy’s views that things aren’t always as they appear. Sam’s spiral into jealousy from watching her best friend connect with the guy she admires most causes her to create a whole situation to mask her sinister plan to make Marcy disappear. The emotional stress Sam and Fran feel when they start getting questioned about the day Marcy went missing is expressed as if the reader were standing in the room with them. Feeling the perspiration drip from their foreheads. Seeing the guilt as they were asked about the entry in her planner that said they were to hang out the day she went missing. The mental development of Sam and the pacing from the future to the past, allows the reader to fully comprehend the group more and why they refuse to turn on each other. But you can feel the push they need before finally
Fours A Crowd is a novel built around dark secrets, envy, and deceit that draws you into the tension, causing you to become invested in what exactly happened on the day Marcy went missing. With heart-racing style, you’ll find yourself reading this in one sitting from the suspense Layne has created in this prodigious YA thriller.