For Now (Star-Crossed City #3)

Prologue

SIXTEEN YEARS AGO

“Poor thing. Look at her.”

A hush falls over the group of women gathered in my mother’s sitting room. I feel them all turn, craning their elegant necks while holding their bodies stiff—ankles crossed primly, manicured talons clutching teacups of gin.

Pointed stares scrape over my profile. I wince, holding back the urge to double over the book propped on my bent knees. One of the fairytale retellings I live in.

“Always sitting in that window seat, nose in a book,” a different lady mutters into my mother’s china.

“She’ll freckle,” another tuts, her Southern lilt sugared with false concern.

“And get crows’ feet,” someone else agrees. Her syrupy voice sharpens as she represses amusement. “All that reading.”

There’s a soft sort of snort. “Well, it isn’t as if the poor dear has anything better to do. No friends. No boyfriend. Bless her heart.”

Prickling giggles fill the entertaining space, floating over streaks of Georgia sunshine. Humiliation hunches my spine.

Everything they say is true. I know that—but knowing never seems to make it easier to hear.

A bolt of mortification sticks in my throat. The stinging in my eyes instinctively brings me to my feet. Mama taught me better than to cry in front of anyone. It’s unbecoming.

Doing my best to seem casual, I shuffle from my sun-warmed window seat in the front parlor, scuttling to the foyer stairs, praying against all odds that I’ll make it up to my room before—

“Alice.”

Of course.

Mama marches out from the kitchen, balancing a platter of tea sandwiches no one will touch on her left hand. She reaches over to pinch my chin with the pointed fingernails of her right.

“Alice, so help me,” she hisses.

I keep my eyelids low, still hoping—always hoping, no matter how foolish and pointless and just plain stupid it makes me—that she won’t see the tears.

No such luck, of course.

Her French-tipped acrylics bite into my jaw, yanking sharply until I meet her cool blue eyes. So like mine. The only piece of me she has never criticized.

She sees the wet sheen of shame glossing my gaze and scowls, her nostrils flaring in frustration. “Upstairs.”

Even her growl is feminine. And too low for the ladies to overhear. Even when she adds, “And don’t come down until you’ve composed yourself.”

I grimace—it will be a while.

Ever since I turned twelve, it’s gotten harder and harder to talk myself down when I get upset.

Now, I’m fourteen and it only gets more difficult every year. I suspect it has something to do with my age, but Mama steadfastly refuses to discuss puberty with me until I “blossom.”

From what I can tell, that has less to do with anything biological and more to do with acting the way she wants her daughter to act. At the rate I’m going, I might never get The Talk all the girls at school chortle about.

I scurry upstairs, silently snicking my door shut behind me while I wipe my eyes on the shoulders of my T-shirt. It’s a good thing she didn’t escort me up to my room—the whole place is covered in magazine clippings and unspooled wrapping paper.

She would loathe the very concept of what I was up to last night. It was something I saw in a magazine—an idea I launched myself into with the sort of enthusiasm I can only muster for books, art, and daydreams.

Because, I realize, a weight sinking into my center, that’s exactly what all these clippings are.

The silly daydreams of a stupid, optimistic little girl.

My fingers sift through the stack in the middle of my mattress, where I’d placed all the pictures and articles I deemed “a must.” By the time I started wrapping the designated shoebox in pink-heart wrapping paper, the pile had gotten a little alarming.

There are a lot of pictures here. And a few of them feature men’s cologne ads I don’t quite understand my obsession with.

I gather them all, holding tight, preparing myself to crush them in my fists. They suddenly feel so embarrassing. Proof that I’m dumb enough to dream of people who will never want me back. Pointless reminders of things I can never have.

If I’ve grown up knowing one thing for certain, it is the simple fact that I am going to die alone.

My mother tells me often, mourning every piece of my appearance and each part of my personality. Constantly sighing reprimands about how I will end up on my own with a cat. Or six.

Since kindergarten, she has weighed my every attribute on the grand scale of “Attractive” versus “Unattractive.”

My singing voice? Attractive.

Having my face hidden in a book every spare moment? Unattractive.

My table manners? Attractive.

My tendency toward second helpings? Unattractive.

Stuttering when nervous? Unattractive.

The way my eyebrows fold when I frown? Unattractive.

A bedroom bursting with books, paintings, magazine scraps, and sketches? Unattractive.

My pile of unappealing traits grows bigger every year, along with my waistline. And now? The situation looks dire, the scales woefully out of balance.

Mama tries to help. Keeping track of just how much weight I need to lose. Pointing out that my preferred floral prints only accentuate my “unseemly” figure. Pinching every roll and jiggle my clothes display.

She keeps track of which colors highlight the unnatural paleness of my skin, the dishwater tones in my hair. She’s also taught me tricks to straighten and shellac the frizzy curls—always with the affection and patience a drill sergeant might show his cadets.

Self-improvement occupies every moment we spend together. I cycle through a new diet every six months. Low carb, no carb, high protein, low fat, no sugar, gluten-free, paleo, keto, vegan.

Weekends are reserved for the latest exercise craze, speech tutors, and Mama’s lectures on the finer points of catching and keeping a man. Christmas and birthday gifts come as bags of new clothes—a different look this time, of course, to camouflage whatever flaw serves as her current fixation.

Our current fixation.

I’ve begun to feel like a piece of furniture, always undergoing renovation but never quite fitting in the corner she purchased me for.

Still, she buffs, paints, plucks, and straightens.

Smooths, scrapes, and putties. Changes my colors, changes my fixtures.

Only to once again determine that I am just… wrong. All wrong.

And then, like she has so many other times, she strips me down to the studs and starts again.

Lately, though, she’s sort of given up.

She’s stopped fussing every time she catches me reading into the night instead of focusing on my “beauty rest.” In fact, she doesn’t check on me at all.

Her fervor for shopping excursions and makeovers has dimmed, cooling into an exasperated hopelessness, punctuated by scoffs and dismissive flicks of her wrist whenever I debut a new outfit for her elusive approval.

She sighs about how she’ll never have grandchildren. Changes the subject whenever I mention a cute boy from my class.

Somehow, it feels worse than the constant critiquing. After all, if my own mother has given up on me, I must be a real hopeless case.

Standing in my childhood bedroom, bathed in cheery morning light that makes the nauseous pain inside me seem all the more insidious, I stare down at my pile of hopes.

The image on the top page snags my focus for a moment. A picture of a tiki-hut honeymoon suite on a beach in Hawaii. My fingers curl like a reflex, preparing to crush it.

But I’ve always been much too soft for my own good.

So, instead, the photos wind up in my heart-papered shoebox of shame, stuffed under my bed, where I hope no one will discover my deepest darkest secret.

I may not believe in those hopes anymore, but I can keep them all the same. Like notes from the Tooth Fairy or letters to Santa. Only, I’ll hoard pictures of engagement rings, articles about intimacy and babies, and decorating your first home as newlyweds.

No one needs to know. I can cut them out and tuck them away, just in case—maybe, miraculously—there is someone meant for me, after all.

Maybe he won’t care about my flabby belly or my wild hair or the wide set of my eyes. Maybe he’ll like that I read into the night and sing in the shower and stain my fingernails with my art projects.

Maybe he’ll just… love me.

Even if he shouldn’t.