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Summary from the Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

A psychological thriller told from the points of view of a teenage serial killer and the runaway girl who falls in love with him.

Excerpts:

This book begins from the view of a young girl, L*** who has a crush on a rock star by the name of Throb:

With Throb, it was nice in the beginning, the music, and his voice rough, like gravel in his throat, but the words, thrilling:

Pluck my heart
From my flesh
And eat it . . .

Dark music, I call it. Music that speaks to me… (p.1)

At first, she claims to have stolen a Throb CD, but then she backtracks and says she did not have to pay for it. (p.3) She goes on to explain how she gets the CD:

There’s this guy, the assistant manager, who’s like forty years old, and he opens the door of the stockroom and I slip inside and wait for him. He likes to look at me. I close my eyes. He tells me to stand this way, then that way. I hear him breathing. Finally, he says, “Okay.” (p.3)

As the story continues, she begins discussing her mother’s new boyfriend:

Gary looks at me as I look at Throb’s picture. I can feel him looking at me, something he’s been doing lately. He also rubs close to me when he meets me in the hallway… It’s nice to have him look at me…(p.4)

We [she and her mother’s boyfriend] are alone in the house…heat seems to be radiating out of him, his arm pressing against my arm…his arm is around me and he’s caressing me on top and I lean against him…but I pull away from him, thinking of my mother (p.5).

She runs away and hitchhikes. An older, married man picks her up…”I am aware of my short shorts and move my legs…He is trying not to look, but looks anyway…”(p.15) She asks if he [the driver] would like to kiss her (p.16). The young teenager then asks him to pull over, and before he does, he asks her why (p.16). She then makes an offer and asks for $20:

He reaches for me…and I go toward him, letting him have me, and he kisses my cheeks…and his hands move all over my body…he touches my top and his hand remains there, caressing…letting him squeeze and caress, and he’s not rough at all….I let him continue because he is tender with his touch (p.17).

He paid her $30 and she stole his wallet (pp. 18-19).

Eric is a teenage murderer whom L*** becomes obsessed and wants to find when he leaves a detention facility for juveniles. She met him when she was younger – twelve – and recognized his name in the news.

Eric murdered his mother and stepfather as well as young girls. As part of the plan to kill his mother and stepfather, Eric inflicts pain on his arms to fake abuse:

He had stolen three cigarettes from Harvey’s [his stepfather] pack. Went to the shed in the backyard…

…Lit the first cigarette, did not inhale…he rolled up his left sleeve…braced himself and pressed the burning tip against his flesh..

…he lit another cigarette…the tip end still glowing red, he pressed it against another spot on his arm, learning that pain reaches a certain point and does not get worse…and you can survive it. But, Christ, how it hurt…making himself look at those three cruel scorched places, could smell his burning flesh—no, not flesh, but the small hairs on his arm…

…He would put the hammer to work tomorrow…he wondered how he could use it to facilitate breaking his harm…(pp.38-40).

Eric also killed young girls, and he recalls a moment with one:

…Finally he laid her [one of the girls he killed] gently to rest in the bushes…he trailed his mouth along her flesh, so warm and moist against his lips. Bliss filled him. He had never known such tenderness before… (p.45).

Throughout his time in the juvenile detention facility, Eric, without remorse, reflects back on the girls he murdered. Those moments please him – he is psychotic. While in detention, Eric catches a mouse, remembering that “B.A. [another girl he killed], like the mouse, had had no notion about what was going to happen.” (p.71)

After squeezing the mouse to death, “he slipped the body into his pocket and flushed it…Felt no regret, felt nothing, as the rushing waters swallowed the mouse.” (p.71)

L*** makes it to shelter in her destination city where she can continue her “fixation on Eric.” (p.101). She held a vigil at the house of Eric’s aunt, where he is now staying since his release. Seeing L***’s face in the newspaper, Eric recalls meeting L***:

He had just finished with A.H. [the other girl he murdered]. Had laid her down in a thicket near the tracks, waiting for the proper moment to dispose of her body…when he encountered the girl [L***].

…He recalled now how his heart accelerated…two in one day…how could he dispose of two of them? …Excitement flooded him, however, at the thought of sharing tenderness with a child (pp. 122-123).

L*** leaves the shelter and hides in a tree in front of Eric’s aunt’s house, waiting for him (p.128). She finally comes down and runs into a young reporter (p.130). “…His eyes [the reporter’s] kept moving over me, and I knew that he was not interested in my answers after all.”

She sneaks into Eric’s van and reveals herself as he is driving (p.146). She offers to get out of his vehicle after an officer drives by, Eric did not want to let her get out – “It was too soon, too risky to do what he might have done without a second thought a few years ago.” (p.152)

At a park, L*** tells him she is “fixated” (p.165) on him: “Fixated means I [L***] need to kiss you. But a real kiss, I mean. Pause… our tongues touching…”(p.165).

L*** recalls A.H. the first time she met Eric and she tells him about what she remembers. Eric feels he must get rid of her.

L*** is thinking about how Eric reacts to her:

He doesn’t respond to me the way other guys do. I mean, when I move my legs or draw back my shoulders so that my top sticks out—like when I got out of the van and stretched…(p.170).

He buys her [L***] clothes and they spend the night in a motel. Eric plans to kill L*** then: “Maybe with a pillow, quick and silent.” (p.180)

She falls asleep. Pillow in hand, Eric remembers: “He had done his mother this way. Seemed like the kindest way to do it – you did not see the face…the struggle was feeble and brief.” (pp.188-189)

L*** wakes up just as he tries to smother her and tells him he loves her (p.189). He doesn’t kill her.

They go to a carnival where he agreed to meet with a woman and L*** takes a ride on a Ferris wheel. L*** notices the woman Eric meets, wanting to look like her, then she thinks about herself as she approaches the ride: “This top of mine is proving irresistible to the young guy operating the Ferris wheel. He is looking at me up and down, but mostly up…”(p.204). She pays and gets on the ride.

I [L***] look toward the street and spot a brown van parked near the entrance. The van sparks a dim memory…On the street next to Eric’s aunt’s house, the van that the reporter…had pointed out to me…They’re [the police] keeping tabs on him (p.207).

She gets down and runs to the location of Eric and the woman with whom he meets. About to kill this woman, he hears L***:

“Don’t touch her.” (p.211)

“It’s a trap, Eric. The cops…they’re here…” (p.211)

While Eric is surrounded by officers, L*** runs and hides in the woods to avoid the police (p.213).

Eric and L*** go for a ride in a canoe (p.222). L*** removes her life jacket and falls into the water. He tries to save her. She drowns when the canoe hits her head (p.225). Eric goes to prison.

The ending:

…And the worst image of all, the one he dreaded but could not prevent: the way she [L***] clung to him at the last moment …: Love me, Eric.

…was this what crying was like? Later, in the deepest heart of the night, the monster also cried (p.229).

Research by M. Lyn