Pale Girl (Pine Ridge Universe #1)

Chapter 1

ONE

“My eyes! Snowblind!”

Oh, good. Asinine college boys who think they’re God’s gift to one-liners exist out here, even in the sticks.

Sophie ignored them, shutting the trunk of her black Civic, her snow-white hand standing out in sharp contrast to the dark paint.

With a small grunt, she shouldered her duffle bag and balanced the heavy box on her hip.

Around her, dozens of other kids were doing the same thing.

The semester was starting at Antonia College.

The new crop of freshmen (or perhaps the old crop of on-campus residents) were making their way inside.

Wit-Boy turned out to be the RA for Sophie’s dorm, Pettiford. When he met her cold, unblinking stare, he at least had the sense to look bashful. “Want some help?” he offered by way of an apology.

“No, thanks. 318? I can find it myself.” She took the room key and tucked it into the pocket of her dark acid-wash jeans. Of course, just as she’d gotten situated and her box, bag, and purse were balanced, her phone rang.

That would be her mother, giddy with excitement that her little girl had arrived in “the country”, where there was fresh air and sunshine.

Or, it would be her father, who would be growling with dismay because his little princess was three hours away in Bradford County, up in the fog-laden, dreary Endless Mountains that ran into New York State.

Not cool for a man who grew up in the slums of Ibadan, Nigeria, followed by the better, but still city-central slums of Philly.

Sophie sighed and decided not to take the elevator.

She was slender (some rude people may have used the term “twiggy” at one point) and looked like a good gust of wind would blow her down, but she was surprisingly strong and fast. Running up three flights of stairs while carrying forty pounds wouldn’t even wind her.

“Hi, Mom. I made it. It’s beautiful, just like the website.”

Squeals, right on cue. After her mother ran out of breathless Armenian, she lapsed into breathless English. “Oh! Oh, if Tatik could see our baby girl, a college woman, in the mountains, the hills! She would say-”

“-It was like the Armenia I should have been raised in.” That was a frequent line of her late grandmother’s.

Despite living through a genocide of her people and finally escaping refugee camps to make her way to Philadelphia, Tatik had still believed Armenia was the most beautiful place in the world.

“Can you see the mountain? Your Tatik grew up in the shadow of Ararat, you know.”

“I know. Yes, mountains galore.”

“You don’t sound thrilled. Oh, no. Are you homesick?”

“I told you! We didn’t raise some country girl! It’s a scholarship, so we’re not paying out of pocket. At this point, all we spent is a tank of gas and the toll money for the Turnpike. Come home, Sophie! There are plenty of music schools right here in the city.”

Opening the stairwell door to the third-floor hallway, she rolled her eyes and bit back a grin, picturing her father’s broad, coppery-coal face with his eyebrows hitting his close-cropped curls as he marched in circles around their tiny living room, trying to get the phone away from his much smaller, olive-skinned wife.

“Yeah, Daddy, but none of those schools offered me a free ride.”

“So you work a little longer, take a few more years to graduate-”

“No. I wanna get this done.” School is torture. The real world has to be better, right?

“Sam, we talked about this!”

“Ali, how can you-”

“Oh, look, here’s my room! I’ll call you when I’m done unpacking, okay? I love you, don’t worry, bye!” Sophie spat it all out in a rush and hung up the phone. She pushed open the narrow beige door and was instantly— underwhelmed.

Antonia College was ranked 164th college in Pennsylvania — out of 165. Sophie hadn’t bothered to look at who took the bottom spot, but she wondered if their dorm rooms were any better.

The room could have been borrowed from an IKEA display, circa 1970.

Everything was muted brown, cheap wood, and straight lines.

The furnishings consisted of a desk, a chair, a small dresser, and a narrow single bed with folded, plastic-wrapped linens and pillow at the foot.

The walls were a dusty white. Out of morbid curiosity, she held her arm against the wall.

She was paler than the paint. Her eyes closed, rolling heavenward in frustration under blue-veined lids.

Maybe the double dorm rooms were nicer. Maybe if you paid you got a nicer room. Maybe this was only for the lowly freshmen?

It didn’t matter. The room didn’t matter. The people didn’t matter. She marched down the stairs to get what mattered.

SHE RESTED HER CELLO against her knee and put the rock stop on the floor, setting the endpin into the tiny brass circle.

Her stand was set up in front of the wooden chair and adorned with her audition piece, which was also her favorite piece, Dvorak Cello Concerto in B Minor.

It wasn’t perfect, yet. To the kind folks who’d accepted her admissions tape at Antonia, it was worth a full scholarship.

That should have tipped me off, Sophie thought before the music took her away.

Her fingers flew and her bow arm moved in perfect unison, her body swaying slightly. At times like this, her mind was loose, relaxed. Sometimes, there was nothing but music. Sometimes, happy daydreams.

Not this time.

Memories were flooding back as the piece progressed, a journey from beginning to end.

“PALE GIRL!”

“Sophie, would you like to visit the nurse? Are you feeling okay?”

It started in kindergarten. She hadn’t gone to preschool, she’d been looked after by Tatik and Granny Ijemma on alternating days, her mother and father whenever possible.

They all doted on their baby girl, the only child, only grandchild in their newly adopted country. Adopted child. Adopted culture.

She stood out in the family photos, swan white between her mother’s long, dark locks and deep olive skin, protectively nestled under her father’s broad shoulders and broader grin, a rich coffee color.

She felt different but special. Part of a neutral-tone rainbow, something unusual but worth smiling over.

Then the first recess came and the rainbow turned into a tornado.

“What’s wrong with your skin?”

“Why are you so white?”

“Are you an albino?” An older kid wearing one of the School Safety reflective belts cornered her as she boarded the bus in the afternoon, squinting at her curiously.

“I’m Armenian-Nigerian-American,” she whispered, eyes wide, rushing for the safety of the tall, green seats.

If only the bus ride had carried into an alternate dimension, but it did not.

“Hello, Beautiful! Hi, Princess!” Her mother and father were both there at the bus stop, having taken time off from work.

Her father swung her up and around, cradling her close. “Tell us all about it, Princess?”

“Did my little Snow White make any new friends?” Her mother held her pink backpack with one hand while tickling her shoulder with the other.

“No! Don’t call me that!” Sophie exploded, scrambling down, sobbing.

The nickname had been one she chose after watching the old Disney movie, finally seeing a character in a movie that she resembled.

Her parents played along and let her dress up as the classic princess for Halloween three years in a row.

“Baby! What happened?” Her mother followed after her, anger and worry in her eyes.

“What’s an albino?” Sophie asked.

The next thing she knew, her father’s lion-like voice was roaring on the phone.

The next day, no one in her class said anything about how pale she was. No one said much of anything to her.

The bus was hell.

Every new grade was hell.

Middle school was... It didn’t help that lots of the kids had already been with her for the previous five years. Middle school gave tongues new wings, new lies.

Her mom was a ghost.

She got bitten by a vampire.

Sophie’s a burn victim. The only way they could save her skin was to remove all the pigment.

She was in an accident, with acid, like the Joker.

“Sophie? Are you feeling faint? Would you like to visit the school nurse, dear?”

HER BOW SKIDDED TO a juddering halt, a sour roll across the strings. She stopped, blinking back tears. Then, like always, she turned the page and played on.

PHILADELPHIA HAD TOO many people. Philadelphia had millions of places to hide, but she felt like all eyes were always on her.

The psychiatrist her parents forced her to see during high school said that was all in her head— but she noticed that the same psychiatrist, like every doctor ever, ordered a battery of blood tests to pinpoint the root of her “condition.”

Like all the rest, the tests showed nothing. She wasn’t anemic or riddled with parasites. Her heart, lungs, liver, and everything else proved normal.

She was just abnormally pale.

“I want to go away.”

“You could stay with Uncle Darrell and Aunt Izzy?” Her father was already pulling out his phone.

“No. To a place where no one knows me.”

“New York?” her mother imagined she wanted to lose herself in a big city.

“No more cities. When they see me, all of them notice, no matter what the shrink says. I want to go to a place with fewer people. People are always going to say things, but at least in a tiny little town at a tiny little college, there will be less of them.”

“Baby, don’t hide what makes you-”

She shut the door in their faces, feeling bad. They got skin color drama. They did. But they had other people in the world the same shade as them. Sophie had never seen anyone who looked like she did, except on Halloween when white pancake makeup was smeared over faces.

Her fingers ticked over the laptop keys, searching.

Smallest colleges in Pennsylvania

Smallest colleges in Delaware

Smallest music schools in the country

Why can’t I tan?

Body makeup

Tanning spray

Back to the open searches. Antonia College appeared on two of them. Antonia, Pennsylvania, population: 3,460. Antonia College, current enrollment, sixteen hundred.

The college was half the town. The music department’s web page was pitiful.

Perfect.

She applied.