1. Penelope #4
Dad sighs. “Heard about the new wife. Can’t believe Lucian moved that fast. What is it—three months? Adeena isn’t even—” He stops himself. Looks at me. “Sorry, pumpkin.”
“It’s fine. Everybody is thinking it. He replaced her. It’s disgusting.”
Mom reaches across and squeezes my hand. “And Xander is living with all of that. No wonder he’s struggling. That poor boy needs family right now.”
He had family. He had us. He had me. And he chose violence and silence and a closet in a warehouse and the words “I don’t want a fucking kid.”
I push my plate away. “Can I be excused?”
“Penny—”
“I’m just tired, Mom. Long first day back.”
She looks at Dad. Dad looks at me. The eye contact, the exchange of parents who know something is wrong but have been advised by therapists to “give her space” and are trying so hard to follow that advice even though every instinct in their bodies is screaming to push.
“Get some rest, baby,” Mom says. “We love you.”
“Love you guys too.”
I mean it. That’s the worst part. I love them so much it makes my teeth hurt, and I’m lying to their faces every single day, and the lie is killing me almost as fast as the pills.
I’m in bed. Lights off. Phone on my chest. The house is quiet—the good quiet, the kind that means my parents are downstairs watching a movie and the world outside is snow and silence and the particular stillness of a Massachusetts winter night.
My phone glows.
Cat: You alive?
Me: Unfortunately.
Cat: Check GlossX. Brace yourself.
I open the app. Scroll. And the bottom drops out.
Somebody has posted a highlight reel of my worst moments.
Concert photos—me dancing, drink in hand, head thrown back, the angles chosen specifically to make me look wasted even though I was just having fun.
Photos from the fight club—the warehouse, Xander in the cage, me standing by the wall.
Captions plastered across them in the app’s signature font: PRETTY PENNY ISN’T SO PRETTY.
EDGEWOOD’S PARTY GIRL. WHO IS SHE REALLY?
The account is anonymous. But I know who posted them. There’s only one person who was at both the concerts and the fight and has a reason to watch me burn.
Xander. My phone rings. Cat.
“You saw?”
“Yeah.” My voice is flat. The pill is wearing off and the edges are coming back and the photos on my screen are blurring because my eyes are filling with water I refuse to call tears.
“Penny… are you okay? Like, really?”
“I’m fine.”
“Stop saying that. Stop saying ‘I’m fine’ when you’re clearly not fine. I know what not-fine looks like, Penny. I’ve been not-fine. I have a doctoral degree in not-fine.”
She’s right. She’s always right. Cat O’Farrell has a radar for bullshit that could detect a lie from orbit, and she’s been pointing it at me for months, and the signal is getting louder, and one of these days she’s going to aim it directly at the thing I’m hiding and the whole structure is going to come down.
“It sucks,” I say. Giving her a crumb. Enough to feel honest without actually being honest. “The photos suck. X posting them sucks. All of it sucks. But I’ll deal with it. Only a few more months, and we’re out of this school.”
“Is that all that’s going on? The photos?”
The question hangs there. Loaded. The question underneath the question: Are you using? Are you hurting yourself? Are you okay in the way that actually matters?
“That’s all. I promise.”
Silence. Then: “Okay. But I’m watching you, Penny MacHale. And I love you. And whatever is happening that you’re not telling me—I’ll be here when you’re ready.”
“Nothing is happening.”
“Right. Goodnight, P.”
“Night, Cat.”
I hang up. Stare at the ceiling. The room is dark and the house is quiet and the phone on my chest is still glowing with photos of a girl I barely recognize—a girl who used to know every track listing of every album by every band she loved, who used to stay up until three a.m. building playlists for moods that don’t have names, who used to believe that the right song could fix anything.
That girl is still in here somewhere. Under the pills and the lies and the fading teal streaks and the friendship bracelet that means everything and nothing simultaneously.
I reach into my nightstand drawer. Pull out the baggy. Crush a pill on the back of my phone case. Lean down. Inhale.
The world goes soft. The photos don’t matter. The closet doesn’t matter. Xander’s voice saying “slumming it” doesn’t matter. Nothing matters except the warmth spreading through my veins and the silence filling my skull and the sweet, chemical mercy of not feeling anything at all.
I close my eyes. Somewhere in the dark behind them, a boy with a friendship bracelet and a lacrosse stick and blood on his shoes is standing over a body, looking at me with wide, terrified eyes, and saying the only words that have ever made me feel safe.
I got you, Penny. I’m right here. That boy doesn’t exist anymore.
But I still hear him. Every night. Just before the pills pull me under.
I’m right here.
I fall asleep clutching the friendship bracelet on my wrist. Teal and yellow. Faded. Eleven years. The last real thing I have left of him.