Chapter One
The old man probably deserved it.
Lyra
Dear Jupiter,
Oh. My. Goodness.
You’ve outdone yourself. I opened my mailbox, saw the shimmery, shiny pink, and nearly got run over by Old Man Norman in my excitement.
Note to self: move out of the road before bouncing with glee.
Ole’ Normy almost had a heart attack. I know, because he stopped the car in the middle of the road to get out and lecture me on proper safety precautions.
Then we both had to jump into my yard to avoid Mrs. Jokic cosplaying Lightning McQueen.
Norman did not like that. Left mid-yelling at me so that he could chase after her and “give her a piece of my mind!” Not gonna lie, I considered following him.
Can you imagine anyone giving Mrs. Jokic a piece of their mind?
I’d bet my entire life savings – all three dollars of it – that she ate him for lunch.
Speaking of lunch, you’d be so proud of me!
! I ate not one, not two, but THREE Taco Bell burritos today.
At an almost appropriate lunch time! I mean, okay, sure.
It was 3:00 PM. And, yeah, I didn’t have any food in the house, so I had to bribe the probably-not-on-drugs teenager next door with a taco to get him to drive to pick it up for me because I couldn’t quite afford the delivery fees.
But. I ate lunch! Just like you’re always telling me to do!
I will take my praises now, please. You can serve them on a pretty pink platter decorated like your letter to me.
Lots of shimmer, lace, and butterflies requested. Hearts mandatory.
Really, though. I can’t stop looking at my letter. I’m obsessed. I’m going to frame it. The shoebox on my desk is unworthy of this beauty. Not that it’s ever really been worthy of any of the beauties you’ve sent me.
Hm.
Maybe I should frame them all…
No, no. You’re right. I don’t have the wall space. What a silly thought.
I’ll just frame my very, very favorites!
How long did my newest favorite take you? All these sequins… My goodness, Jupie, it looks like you glued them on individually. This is insanity.
Oop. Ah. Ugh.
Chrissy is calling.
I guess I better answer…
“Hello,” I greet, shoving my phone between my face and my shoulder so that I can work on the sticker pocket for Jupiter’s letter, even if I can’t keep writing.
I’m going to get a crick in my neck, I know, but Chrissy hates being put on speaker phone, and I hate making Chrissy upset. It’s never worth it.
Unfortunately, a lot of things make Chrissy upset, and they aren’t all avoidable.
“Jove Rogue has lost his mind!” she screeches.
I wince, squeezing the phone tight to my head through the piercing noise even though I’d really rather not.
Chrissy doesn’t like the clattering sound it makes when I drop it, though, and I know from experience that whatever headache this causes is nothing compared to what she’ll give me if she has to hear the clunk of phone on floor.
“Did Jove ever have possession of his mind?” I ask when the ringing in my ears stops.
As far as I’m aware, Jove Rogue is a maniac masquerading as a maniac. He’s been slashing tires and setting buildings on fire since the third grade. Why she thinks that now is when his mind has gone, I have not one single clue.
“Do you know that he went to Grandpa Ferris’ house, hopped into his tractor, and used it to flip grandpa’s car in the driveway? It’s completely totaled!”
My brows furrow as I contemplate that, keeping half of my focus on the task at hand.
I lay double-sided tape down on a large square of brown cardstock, then use it to press a smaller, forest-themed piece of scrapbook paper onto it, making an adorable little pouch to fill with stickers for Jupiter.
“Why would Jove do that?” I ask.
“He’s cracked, that’s why!” Chrissy all but screams. “Grandpa probably stole his parking spot or something three years ago and this is some sick form of revenge.”
“More likely that your grandpa stole his brother’s parking spot,” I point out, reaching for my big color-coded file folder full of stickers.
Jove’s maniac is, as far as I’ve ever been able to tell, mostly confined to defending his brother – whether that defense is appropriate given the “offense” or not. Jove’s justice-o-meter is broken, and the rest of us pay the price for it.
Thankfully, I’ve never personally had to pay his price, likely because I avoid the Rogue brothers like the plague – a task that’s fairly easy considering I so rarely leave my house to go any further than the mailbox.
Even my job as owner of Bandera, West Virginia’s best, and only, plant nursery only requires me to venture as far as my backyard.
The closest I ever get to a Rogue brother is when I accidentally run into Mars at Taco Bell, and I may or may not have taken to hiding behind the soda machine if I see his car pull into the parking lot.
The more distance between me and a Rogue brother, the better.
“Who cares whose parking spot he stole?” Chrissy curses in my ear. “He should be in jail!”
Well. Yes, probably. But who’s going to put him there?
No one has any evidence that he’s ever done anything illegal, except for that one time when he set the courthouse on fire, but he was a kid when that happened and they don’t usually give kids life in prison for things like that… I don’t think. They didn’t give him life in prison, at any rate.
“Is your grandpa’s insurance going to cover the car?” I ask.
My thumb abandons its job of flipping through stickers to find the perfect ones for my beloved pen pal and moves toward my mouth instead.
I halt its progress just before the nail makes its way between my teeth.
Not today, thumb. I’m breaking that habit.
With purpose, I force it back to the sticker folder.
“Of course it’s not going to cover the car!” she snaps again. “It was 40 years old and hadn't run in 30. That’s not the point , Lyra.”
Um. Except. Isn’t it though?
“So Jove junked your grandpa’s junker?” I ask, pulling out a harp sticker and putting it in the to-send pile, where it joins a planet Jupiter, a monarch butterfly, and a rosy maple moth.
“That’s not so bad. Last week he slashed Muffy Goodman’s tires and stole her spare.
She was late to work, and I heard she got fired because of it.
I guess it wasn’t the first time she’d been late.
” I mean, sure, Muffy kind of sucks. She took the last chocolate cake from the grocery store bakery last month – out of my shopping cart, where it had been for the entire 20 minutes I’d been in the store.
Still. Ruining an already useless car seems pretty tame in comparison to costing someone their job, no matter how sucky that person is, if you ask me.
Which, of course, Chrissy didn’t.
“Muffy Goodman deserved what she got,” Chrissy hisses. “My grandpa didn’t.”
Ah.
Right.
I remember that not only did she not ask my opinion, but she’s also got a long-standing arch nemesis thing going on with Muffy. Something about… something? I can’t recall. Chrissy has a long-standing arch nemesis thing going on with just about half of Bandera.
“Of course he didn’t deserve that,” I try to defuse. “I just meant-”
“You just meant that you’d rather defend a complete lunatic than be on my side,” she interrupts, scoffing. “I shouldn’t be surprised. You’re always on everyone’s team but mine.”
I’m…
I’m always… What now?
“Chrissy,” I try again. “I didn’t-”
“And you know what, Lyra ,” she spits my name like a curse.
“I don’t have to put up with this, you know?
I’m better than this. I’m better than you with your holier than thou attitude and the way you argue with every single thing I say and your seriously ugly outfits.
Do you know you dress like a forest witch’s toddler?
It really matches your immature, selfish, annoying personality. ”
Uh.
Um.
Wow.
Okay.
Wow.
I swallow, blinking hard at my hand, which hovers over an ever-growing pile of stickers on my desk.
I hate that her words slice me, bringing up a myriad of emotions better kept under the surface, covered with a plastic liner, a layer of mulch, and a very pretty plant. Perhaps a tulip.
Chrissy’s hard breathing pushes through the phone for several agonizing seconds while I attempt to shove the horrible, icky, gross gross gross feelings breaking through the garden bed of my brain way back down into the depths of me, next to all of my other repressed emotions.
Self-hatred can stay in the box where it belongs, far below the roots of lovelier things, thank you very much.
Inadequacies and that I’ve-never-been-good-or-right-and-I-never-will-be feeling can stay there too.
Goodbye, feelings, see you never.
“You don’t have anything to say for yourself?” Chrissy cuts into my valiant attempts at feeling absolutely nothing at all in the wake of feeling absolutely way too much.
Do I have anything to say for myself?
Huh.
“Not really,” I mutter.
I’m not one to make excuses.
I try my best to be kind and helpful and a good friend, but she’s probably not wrong.
At my core, I am selfish. It’s no surprise that Chrissy would see that and point it out, being as close to me as she is.
It’s not even really a surprise that she’d call me holier than thou , because what is self-righteousness if not the root of selfishness?
At its core, selfishness is simply the belief that you deserve exactly what you want and exactly as much attention as you crave because you are better and more worthy of those things.