Chapter 1 – ELLIE
ELLIE
Age Eight
I clutch my pink unicorn tighter against my chest and count the water stains on my new bedroom ceiling.
One. Two. Three. Four.
Four.
My stomach twists into knots. Four is wrong. Four is scary. Four makes my skin feel itchy and gross, like when I accidentally touch something slimy.
I need five.
Five is safe. Five is good. But there's only four ugly brown spots spreading across the white ceiling like dirty fingerprints.
"It's just temporary, baby," Mom says from the doorway, her voice shaky like it gets when she's trying not to cry. She takes another puff from her cigarette, the smoke curling around her face. "We'll find somewhere better soon."
I want to believe her.
The new house smells like old grease and something sour.
The carpet has stains that match the ceiling, and when I walked across it earlier, it made gross squishy sounds under my feet.
Our old apartment wasn't big or fancy, but it smelled like Mom's vanilla candles and it had clean white walls.
I even had a canopy over my bed and a big window looking out at the park.
This house is in a park, too. A trailer park, Mom says. But I've never been to a scary park like this before, with angry dogs and angrier looking people.
"Why can't we go home?" I ask, regretting it as soon as I do because I already know the answer will make Mom's eyes get that sad, scared look.
Mom's face crumples a little before she catches herself. "Because Daddy's real wife found out about us, sweetheart. She... she wasn't very happy."
Real wife.
I don't understand how we can be fake. Mom's real. I'm real. We love Daddy and he loves us, doesn't he? But when I asked Mom about it yesterday, she started crying so hard I thought she might throw up. So I don't ask anymore.
The phone rings from the kitchen, making Mom jump. She hurries away, leaving me alone with the four water stains and the smell of old cigarettes.
I press my face into my unicorn's soft pink mane. Her name is Sparkles, and she's been with me since I was little-little, not just regular little like I am now. Mom says I'm getting too old for stuffed animals, but Sparkles makes me feel safe when everything else feels wrong.
And the best part is, she has five pink stars on her side.
Mom's voice sounds muffled but I can hear it all the way from the kitchen. "No, I told you, we can't... Please, just give us a few more days... I know, I know..."
I slide off my new bed and tiptoe to the front door. Mom's pacing in the tiny kitchen, the phone cord stretched tight, her free hand pulling at her hair the way she does when she's really scared.
I slip outside, the screen door creaking behind me. The sun feels too hot on my face and the air tastes bad. This place is nothing like our old neighborhood with its neat sidewalks and flower boxes.
But Mom needs me to be brave. She needs me to try to like it here so she won't feel so bad about everything being messed up. So I take a deep breath and walk toward the sound of kids laughing somewhere beyond the trailers.
The trailer park looks like my maze toy, only instead of clean white boxes and walls, it's made up of big metal ones and rusty dumpsters, and I'm the tiny little ball inside, trying to get into the right slot.
Rusty cars sit on blocks in driveways, the hoods popped up like hungry mouths.
I try not to walk too close to any of them, but the pavement has too many holes.
Holes big enough to swim in. Weeds grow so tall between the trailers, I can't see over them, and somewhere a big dog that sounds like it eats kids for breakfast barks over and over.
Bark bark bark.
Bark bark bark.
Always three.
I follow a dirt path between two rows of houses, stepping carefully around broken glass and rusty bottle caps and cigarettes. The laughter gets louder, mixed with the squeak of old metal. There's a playground, but it looks like the kind of playground I've only ever seen in Halloween cartoons.
The swing set tilts to one side with rusty chains Mom probably wouldn't want me to touch.
The slide has a big dent in the middle, and the merry-go-round is missing half its seats.
But kids are playing anyway. There's a girl with bright red curly hair and another girl with blonde hair like me, plus two boys I can't see clearly from here.
I hang back, nervous all of a sudden. At my old school, making friends was easy. But these kids are new. Different. And they walk like they own this broken playground.
But I need to make friends. I take a deep breath and walk toward the swings, Sparkles tucked under my arm to keep me safe.
The red-haired girl walks up to me right away, smiling, but it isn't a nice smile at all. It's a smile like she's baring her teeth. "Look what we have here," the she says, her voice sing-song mean. She's older than me, maybe ten or even eleven, and her eyes are cold gray. "The new girl."
"Must be the one who bought that shitty trailer," one of the boys says with a twisted smile that makes him look like a grinning hyena.
The other kids stop playing and turn to stare at me. My cheeks get hot, but I make myself step forward anyway. I rehearsed this in the mirror. I'm not afraid of them.
"Hi. I'm Ellie. I'm new. I just moved here with my Mom."
"No shit," the other boy says. He's got dirty blond hair and an even nastier smile, somehow. "What's with the baby toy?"
I hold Sparkles closer. "She's not a baby toy. She's my friend."
The kids laugh, but not the nice kind of laughing. The mean kind that makes my stomach hurt.
"How old are you, baby?" the red-haired girl asks, stepping closer. "Five? Six?"
"I'm almost nine," I say, lifting my chin. "And I'm not a baby."
"Eight and still playing with stuffed animals," the blonde girl snickers. "That's pathetic."
I want to run home, but my feet won't move. These kids are just like the kids at my old school who used to whisper about how my clothes came from the thrift store and how Dad never came to the school fairs.
"Can I... can I play on the swings?" I ask, my voice smaller than I want it to be.
"These are our swings," the red-haired girl says proudly, folding her arms. "You can't just show up and think you belong here."
"But they're not really yours," I say, confused. "Mom says they're for everyone."
The boy with dirty hair laughs. "Wrong answer, princess."
Before I can react, hands shove me hard. I stumble backward, my feet tangling together, and crash to the ground. Pain shoots up my leg as my knee scrapes against the rough asphalt. Sparkles flies from my arms and lands in the mud with a squelch.
"Oops," the red-haired girl says, not sounding sorry at all.
Tears sting my eyes, but I blink them back. I won't cry in front of them. Just like Mom never cries in front of Dad. But when the boy reaches for Sparkles, something hot rises up in the back of my throat.
"Don't touch her!" I scramble forward on my hands and scraped knees, ignoring the sting.
"What's this thing made of, anyway?" He holds Sparkles up by one dripping leg, examining her like she's a dead bug. "Looks pretty flammable."
"Give her back!" I lunge for my unicorn, but he holds her higher. He's too tall for me to reach.
"Maybe we should see how well she burns," he says, grinning at his friends. "Bet she'd go up real nice."
"Please," I whisper, and I hate how my voice breaks. "Please don't hurt her."
The kids laugh harder, and I know I'm about to lose the only thing that makes me feel safe in this horrible new place. I'm about to start crying for real when a shadow falls over all of us.
He's huge.
Bigger than any kid should be.
I look up and up and up until I see a face that makes my breath catch in my throat.
The new boy standing behind me is tall enough to be in high school, but something about his eyes makes me think he's closer to my age.
They're dark and serious, and hard to see behind his even darker hair, but they're not hard and sharp like a grown-up's, or even a big kid's.
Scars crisscross his face in angry red lines, and the lower half of his face is covered by a black and white skull bandana like the ones I see hanging by the cash register at Walmart.
One of the scars is so bad it pulls down the bottom lid on his left eye, and when he blinks slowly at the other kids, it doesn't close all the way.
He doesn't say anything. Doesn't move. Just stands there like a mountain, staring down at the kids who were hurting me.
The red-haired girl takes a step back. "Mind your own business, Tank."
Her voice is sharp, but it doesn't sound sure at all anymore. The other kids aren't standing as close to her as they were.
Tank.
The name fits him perfectly. He's big and solid and dangerous, like the tanks I saw at the war museum when Dad took us last year.
I don't know why they'd make a whole museum for something so bad, but Dad was excited about it and I liked listening to him talk about the different exhibits.
It's one of the only times we ever went out together as a family, even if we had to drive two hours to get there.
Tank still doesn't speak, but he takes one slow step forward. With that one step, he's in front of me now. The boy holding Sparkles drops her like she's on fire and backs away.
"We were just playing," the blonde girl says, her voice high and nervous.
Tank's eyes go from one kid to the next. I've never seen anyone look so scary without even trying. The kids who seemed so big and mean a minute ago suddenly look tiny. Tinier than me, even. They're shaking.
"Come on," the red-haired girl says, trying to sound tough but failing. "This place is boring anyway."