Chapter 1
Karla
Fourteen Years Old
I hated going to school.
On the list of tasks I never wanted to partake in, going to school was at the top.
It was a waste of my time; when I was there, I never learned anything because I never paid attention.
Over the past few months, I’d worked really hard at shutting off my brain, because I didn’t want to be aware of people staring at me. And people always stared at me. Always.
I didn’t blame them. If the roles were reversed, and they looked like me, I would’ve stared at them, too.
Actually, before the car accident, I was known for my ability to stare a little too long at people who looked different than I did.
When I was a little girl, Mom used to pinch me gently when I’d do it in church, but I couldn’t help it.
I was a stupid kid who didn’t know that people can’t pick and choose what they look like.
Mom couldn’t pinch me anymore, but I didn’t stare at people anymore, either. I was very good at keeping my head down and minding my own business while it seemed as if everyone else was minding my business, too.
Grandma Claire pulled up the car to the curbside of Clover High School, then put it into park.
We’d already dropped off my younger sister, Lorelai, at her kindergarten class before Grandma drove me to school.
Normally, Lorelai and I had a nanny taking us to school, but my father had an uncanny ability to fire nannies for the most absurd reasons.
The last one—Heather, or whatever the heck her name had been—was fired because on Spaghetti Monday, she made tacos.
To be fair, I would’ve fired her for the same mistake. Mondays were always for spaghetti. Not lasagna, not Alfredo. Spaghetti.
I was certain Dad had told Heather, or whoever, about Spaghetti Mondays, but she thought it would be cute to make tacos.
So she was fired.
The one before her was fired because she put the toilet paper roll on the wrong way. Grandma Claire said the way toilet paper went on the roll didn’t matter, but it drove Dad mad seeing it go under and not over. Then again, everything seemed to keep Dad on edge. My father was coldhearted.
I wished I could say he was always that way—it would’ve made it easier for me to hate him—but he was never cold or distant before ten months ago, before the accident.
If anything, my father was my hero. He was the one who took me to ballet classes from a young age.
He’d gone as far as performing in a tutu on stage with me for the “father-daughter” performances.
He’d also fly us out to New York City every Christmas to see The Nutcracker. I used to want to be a ballerina.
Now I wanted to be nothing other than left alone.
I had a feeling Dad and I had that in common.
My long, dark-brown hair danced across the back of my neck. It was still a little wet from my shower that morning, but I didn’t care. Maybe having wet hair would give me a nice case of pneumonia and I’d have to miss a few weeks of school. That would be such a bummer.
Grandma Claire turned around to look my way and pushed out a bright smile. “You should have a new nanny to take you and your sister to school soon. Your father is interviewing a few new individuals today.”
“Lovely,” I sneered with an attitude that Grandma Claire didn’t deserve. I didn’t look at her, because she looked a little too much like Mom. I wondered if that was also why Dad hardly looked at me anymore. Because I looked like Mom.
Or maybe it was due to my scars.
Maybe it was a mixture of both.
Or maybe he just hated me.
Who knew? Who cared?
A new nanny . . .
Ugh.
I was too old for a nanny. How many fourteen-year-olds did you know who had a nanny? Dad could’ve easily driven us girls to school each day, but he made up the excuse that he had to be in his office early Monday through Friday.
I knew he was lying. My father was many things, but a good liar was never one of them.
I figured that was why he didn’t speak much anymore.
It was better for him to be quiet than to try to be a good liar.
He hadn’t driven a car with Lorelai and me in it since the accident.
I didn’t blame him. I didn’t know if I wanted to be in a car with him since the accident, either.
I hated that for both of us.
I hated that I blamed him.
I hated that he probably blamed me.
I hated that he blamed himself, too.
I hated that Mom was gone.
I hated that Lorelai wouldn’t have enough memories of our mother to play on a forever loop in her mind.
I hated that Lorelai would probably forget Mom as a whole by the time she was six years old.
I hated that I’d never forget her. Remembering your deceased mother was like remembering heaven existed—something so beautiful but so far out of your reach.
I didn’t know if I still believed in heaven, but I was almost certain that hell was real and I was a permanent resident.
Grandma Claire seemed unfazed by my sarcastic reply. She kept smiling Mom’s smile and nodded. “I love you, Karla. Have a great day, sweetheart.”
She always called me “sweetheart,” even though there was nothing sweet about me anymore.
I was soaked in sour, dripping in resentment and hurt and everything bad.
I felt like an outsider to everything and everyone.
People seemed so happy, especially the other kids at school.
Everyone moved around as if their lives didn’t suck, while I dragged myself around with a dark cloud of angst sitting heavily over my head.
I was burnt toast in a world of Pop-Tarts.
After muttering a pathetic goodbye to Grandma Claire, I climbed out of her car, shut the door, and stood still on the sidewalk for a few moments. People hurried past me in a blur, laughing at seven in the freaking morning, as I studied the large, concrete building that resembled a cage.
Who laughed at seven in the freaking morning? Happy people, Karla. Happy people laughed at seven in the freaking morning.
That was probably why it seemed so foreign to me.
For a moment, I wondered when the last time I’d laughed had been, but then I remembered.
It was the day of the accident, before we climbed into the car.
Mom and I were singing the theme song of Gilmore Girls as we walked to the car, arms linked together, excited about our vacation.
Gilmore Girls was her favorite show, which was why Lorelai was named after the main character.
We giggled like idiots walking—no, skipping—to the car, as if all we knew was happiness.
I blinked my eyes a few times, needing to shake off the happy memory because the saddest one followed shortly after.
Whatever. Laughing was overrated. So was Gilmore Girls. I hated it every time I had to call out my little sister’s name, because I couldn’t do it without feeling a tug at my heart. I wished she could change her name. It was soaked in memories of the woman I loved the most.
My fellow classmates kept passing by me, as if they were quick-paced lemmings hurrying into their prison sentence. It was a strange feeling seeing so many familiar faces that were no longer familiar to me.
Clover High wasn’t a huge school, and I knew all my classmates by name.
Many of them used to be my best friends.
Many of them used to invite me to their parties.
That stopped after the accident. I couldn’t blame them for distancing themselves from me, though.
I hardly wanted to be around me, either.
I did sometimes wonder why they pulled away. I wondered if it was due to the physical scars on my body or the psychological scars in my mind. Either way, I didn’t blame them.
Except for Missy.
She was supposed to be my best friend forever.
We’d made bracelets for it and everything.
My eyes followed as my ex–best friend walked with her arm linked to a senior, Colton Stevens. The biggest jerk ever. He had Missy acting nothing like herself. She wore a ton of makeup and dressed how Colton liked her to dress.
After my accident, Missy told me we couldn’t hang out because my scars creeped Colton out.
I guess “best friends forever” had a different meaning to her than it did to me.
Unfortunately, all my other friends were followers of Missy and did whatever she said to do. Which meant they ditched me.
They never looked my way, even though I knew they could see me out of the corner of their eye. They just kept moving toward the building, just as everyone else seemed to do as I stood there frozen on the sidewalk, debating if I wanted to go inside the prison or run away to never be seen again.
My eyes fell to everyone’s feet as they scurried by.
On average, it took most students 70 steps to get from the sidewalk to the entryway of Clover High School.
It took me 214 steps with my limp. My father told me I should use a walking cane, but the last thing I wanted to do as a fourteen-year-old girl was use a cane to move through my freshman year of high school.
I already had people calling me “Scarface” thanks to the apparent damage to my face from the car crash ten months ago. I didn’t need to add walking with a cane to my already-high level of embarrassment.
I hated life, but I guess it would’ve been odd for me to like it. I didn’t have much going for me, so every day felt like a chore. A curse, even. It felt like I’d landed in a novel, and I was the tragic villain.
Speaking of novels, those were the one thing I still enjoyed in my life.
Words were so important to me. Reading and writing were how I escaped the world around me.
I didn’t read or write love stories, though.
I read horror books with monsters and crafted the same kind of stories.
It was easier for me to relate to them than some blond girl who had the body of a goddess and some hot guy who was grumpy toward everyone but the goddess girl.
“Watch out, Scarface,” a kid said as he intentionally bumped into my left shoulder, making me lose my already-unstable footing.
I fell forward, only stopping myself from hitting the concrete ground by placing my right hand down to brace the impact.
Unfortunately, doing so scratched up the palm of my hand, leaving it red with the feeling of a brush burn.
I shut my eyes.
I took a breath.
I stayed down in the hunched-over position for a little bit longer before standing up. Humiliation filled my gut, even though everyone else was already out of my view. Everyone moved on so quickly while I stayed stuck in quicksand, wishing that it wasn’t too slow to drown me.
Instead of moving toward the building, I started walking to my left.
I was going to run away from the prison instead of spending the next seven hours wishing I would’ve.
It took me thirty minutes to get to where I was going. My leg ached as I moved down the streets. After the piercingly painful journey, I found myself at the one place I always ended up whenever I was feeling lost and alone.
Mom’s grave.
It didn’t look freshly planted anymore, and new grass was growing all around it.
The flowers that Dad must’ve left every few weeks were rotting, and I felt bad about not having new ones to replace them with.
Mom loved flowers, and Dad always left them for her.
It was clear he hadn’t been to visit her.
We used to have beautiful, vibrant flower arrangements with accents of greenery throughout the whole house.
Mom would spend hours on Sundays laying out the flowers and foliage, putting together the arrangements while sourdough bread baked in the oven and one of her many records played in the living room.
Most of the time, it was Diana Ross and The Supremes—Mom’s favorite.
We hadn’t had flower bouquets in some time now.
Or freshly baked bread.
I missed those smells.
We hadn’t had any music from the record player, either.
I missed those sounds.
Everything at home was now eerily quiet and dull. It was hard to believe our lives used to be filled with so much color.
I sat down on the grass in front of her tombstone and took in a deep, weighted breath. “Hey, Mom, it’s me, Karla,” I whispered, crossing my arms over my legs. “Just a life update—it still sucks without you.”
I told her about everything. I told her how Uncle Landon, Dad’s best friend, kept checking in on our family, even though he was busy with his celebrity lifestyle as an actor.
Every now and again, Uncle Landon would fly into Illinois to spend quality time with Lorelai, Dad, and me.
Even when we didn’t want company—especially when we didn’t want company.
I loved Uncle Landon. He shared with me how he used to struggle as a kid, too, and he always helped me through my hard days.
I didn’t have the heart to tell him that all my days were hard.
That felt like too much for anyone to carry, and I knew Uncle Landon would’ve worried about me.
I didn’t want to be a bother to him, so instead, I always told him I was OK. He never believed me.
I told Mom about Lorelai and how big she was getting.
Grandma Claire had managed to teach her how to ride a bike.
I felt jealous watching my little sister speed around the driveway with no training wheels on her bicycle anymore.
I used to love riding my bike before the accident.
Now I could hardly sit on one comfortably.
I also told Mom about Dad. She probably wouldn’t have recognized the person he’d become after her death. She probably wouldn’t have recognized me, either. That made me feel like a bad daughter.
I stayed at the cemetery until around two-thirty in the afternoon before I started heading back to school.
And like always, I wrote her a letter that I left under a big rock that I had set beside her tombstone.
There was now quite a collection of love letters I’d left for her, because Dad used to write Mom love letters all the time.
She loved them so much, and well, since Dad was no longer writing them, I wrote my own type of love letters to her.
I knew she’d never read them herself, but maybe, just maybe, the wind could transfer the words up to heaven. You know, if heaven existed.
Grandma Claire pulled up to the school, only this time Lorelai was in the car, too. I climbed into the car. Grandma Claire smiled at me. “How was school, sweetheart?”
I shrugged. “Good.”