Wicked Little Darling

Prologue

REESE

TEN YEARS AGO

“Why couldn’t Dad come?”

“His boss called him in at the last minute, one of the other workers got food poisoning.” Mom gave me a pitying look without taking her eyes off the road and patted my leg. “Sorry, baby. He sends his love though.”

“How did he send it?” my younger sister asked while kicking the back of my seat.

“Don’t kick your brother’s seat, Lauren. He sent it in a special envelope that only Reese can see.”

“Why don’t I get one?”

“Well, that’s because…”

I tuned them out and turned toward the window, staring out at the gloomy landscape.

The road we were on wound around a high cliff right next to the Atlantic Ocean.

It had started snowing a few minutes ago, and I just hoped it stopped by the time we got to the concert hall.

Yeah, I had an umbrella and my violin would be safe in its case, but I still worried about it.

What if it fell and the case broke open?

What if snow somehow seeped through the cracks?

I loved this violin. Treasured it. Mom had bought it for me last year with money she’d been saving for a long, long time. Before that, all I was using were rentals. It was the very first violin I’d ever owned, and it was my favorite thing in the entire world.

Why did it have to snow today of all days? We’d had nothing but sun for like a month straight.

“You’re gonna win this time. In a few hours, you’ll be standing up there accepting that trophy ’cause you are wicked good.” She did an exaggerated Boston accent on the last two words, which really wasn’t very different from how she normally sounded. Or how I sounded. Or Lauren, or Dad.

I hadn’t really ever thought I had an accent until another kid at the competition last year pointed it out and made fun of me for it.

I’d almost punched him in the face.

I glanced over to see Mom wink at me, and I sighed. “Yeah, maybe. Carter Renfrew won’t be there, that’s the only reason I even stand a chance this year,” I said, drawing a heart on the window.

“I’m not gonna listen to that kind of talk. Who’s that little violin guy you love so much? What would he do? Huh? You think he’s this down on himself?”

“Mom, that was like four years ago,” I grumbled, thoroughly embarrassed.

Four years ago and my first crush, too—and the reason I started playing in the first place. But I’d promised myself I would forget about him.

“Well—damn it, Reese, put your seatbelt on!”

Crap.

“Oooh, Mommy said a bad word!”

“Sorry, baby,” she said to Lauren, glancing at her in the rearview mirror. The look she turned on me wasn’t as nice. “You’re almost fourteen, I shouldn’t have to tell you to wear your seatbelt!”

“Sorry,” I grumbled, grabbing the belt. I hated wearing it, feeling that tight constriction around my chest. I was hoping she wouldn’t even notice, but she noticed everything, annoyingly enough.

“That’s—”

A horn blared, and then Mom threw her arm across my chest while Lauren screamed at the top of her lungs.

It was snowing.

Someone was crying.

I looked to the left and saw my aunt sobbing into a tissue.

I moved my gaze back to the caskets and stared at the smaller one.

Stared and stared and stared.

This felt like a nightmare.

Maybe it wasn’t real.

Maybe if I closed my eyes long enough, I’d wake up.

Yeah.

I closed my eyes, tuning out the monotonous drone of the rabbi and the ringing in my ears.

I pictured Mom and Lauren. Or…I tried to. But their faces weren’t coming into focus, and this thick, heavy sludge of dread started to envelop me.

I opened my eyes as my arm started to itch under the cast, bringing me right back to reality.

In another reality, they were still alive.

In another reality, that truck driver hadn’t overfilled his tires, the truck’s rear tire hadn’t exploded, hitting the car in front of us, making them swerve, making us swerve into the car to our right.

In another reality, it hadn’t been snowing, we’d been able to afford new tires so that we weren’t driving on rubber with no tread and Mom could’ve stopped in time before crashing through the guardrail and flying over the cliff.

In another reality, I would’ve been wearing my seatbelt so that I could’ve been inside that car with them.

Died with them.

Because this reality…

This reality, where I was here and they were gone, where Dad looked at me like it was my fault, like it was me who’d killed them…

This wasn’t a reality I wanted to live in anymore.

It was me who’d killed them. We’d been driving to my annual violin competition.

The only reason I was still alive was because I was ejected from the car.

If I’d just worn my seatbelt…

A hand fell onto my shoulder, and I looked up at Dad. I’d never seen that kind of expression on his face before the accident. He’d been wearing it since the day I first saw him again.

Like there was nothing left in the world for him now. Like he’d had his soul ripped from his body and in its place was the deepest well of sadness and despair that he’d never escape from.

Like he wasn’t my dad anymore, just a broken, hopeless shell of a man.

He’d burst into my hospital room just minutes after I’d woken up, his eyes wild and red, his face stained with tears. He’d looked around the room instead of at me, like he was trying to find someone else, and that…

That was going to stick with me for the rest of my life.

He used to smile at me and tell me he loved me.

He used to laugh and joke with me. He used to tell me and Lauren that he’d love us no matter what, and we used to joke around, trying to list ridiculous things that would end his love for us, but no matter what we said, he always said he’d still love us regardless.

I wasn’t sure I’d ever hear him laugh or see him smile again, and he hadn’t told me he loved me once since the accident.

I didn’t think he did anymore, and I didn’t blame him.

A boy in my class had lost his dad a few years back. He was a soldier, and his unit had driven over an IED on regular patrol.

My classmate missed a lot of school, and when he came back he’d been so different. I hadn’t really understood it then. I’d felt sorry for him, sure. The idea of losing a parent or someone you loved was awful.

But I never thought it would happen to me.

My entire childhood, I would see bad things happening to other people. All the while, I was thankful those things never happened to me. I didn’t believe they even could. I thought I was untouchable somehow.

The suffering of others was horrible, sure, but it was never mine and I didn’t fully understand how deep it could really go.

I did now.

Everyone said I should be grateful to be alive, that it was some kind of miracle.

I wasn’t grateful. All I wanted to do was wallow in this ugly, aching despair that only grew with each passing day. The further the distance between the accident and the present, the deeper that despair dug itself.

And what kind of miracle left two people dead and one barely alive? What miracle made the only parent left decide to blame his thirteen-year-old son for a freak accident? What miracle stripped away the illusion that life was good and showed me the ugliest, most painful parts of being human?

I resented the fact that I was still here. Maybe if Dad told me it was okay, maybe if he told me he loved me and that everything would be okay, maybe…maybe I’d be okay.

I didn’t know. I wasn’t sure about anything anymore.

“Ready?” he asked, his voice flat and quiet.

I looked at the two open graves, wondering how long I’d zoned out. They’d already lowered the caskets.

“Go ahead.”

I walked forward and pulled out the two envelopes from my pocket. They were slightly crumpled, but I hadn’t wanted them to be ruined by the snow.

I’d wanted to put my violin in Mom’s grave. I didn’t ever want to play again, didn’t want to look at it, but Dad had told me no, she wouldn’t have wanted that.

She made me promise to make it to Carnegie Hall one day. To go to college and do all the things she couldn’t afford to do when she was my age.

That promise felt like the only thing I had left of her now. It was something that tethered us together, something I could do, some way to make amends. To apologize for being the reason she wasn’t here right now.

I crouched low and pressed a kiss to both envelopes. The snow was still falling, collecting on top of the caskets, and there’d be nothing to protect the words I’d written from it.

My hands shook as an uncomfortable buzz of anxiety began winding its way through my nerves.

How would they be able to read my letters if the snow melted the words? Why hadn’t I put them inside the caskets? I should’ve—

I should’ve—

“Reese.”

I sucked in a long breath, trying to dispel the tightness in my chest.

Maybe they already knew the words I’d written. They must. They had to know.

I held the smaller one over Lauren’s casket, let it fall, then did the same with the larger one over Mom’s casket.

It felt like losing them all over again.

“Sending all my love in a special envelope only you can see,” I whispered. I stood up but didn’t move away as other people started coming around and throwing flowers into their graves.

I didn’t want there to be flowers in there, wilting and dying on top of them. Decaying in their resting place.

I wanted to jump down and throw the flowers out, to scream and yell at everyone here to fuck off, get lost, you didn’t love them like I did.

You didn’t know them like I did. You weren’t there when Lauren was born, you weren’t there when I taught her how to rollerblade or ride a bike or play baseball.

You weren’t there when she lost her first tooth and cried so hard she threw up.

You weren’t there when she dressed up as a dinosaur for Halloween and got made fun of by all the other kids, you weren’t there to jump in and make fun of them right back.

You weren’t there when she followed me around and copied everything I did.

You weren’t there when she died.

When the first shovel-full of dirt was thrown on top of Lauren’s casket, I wanted to yell at the man to stop, to get them out of there, don’t leave her down there in the dark, she was terrified of the dark.

I wanted to hold my mom. I wanted her to hold me.

To tell me everything was okay, to sing to me.

Just once.

Just one more time.

I lost it when I couldn’t see the caskets anymore. It was as if someone had forcibly sucked all the air from my lungs, and the most intense, crushing anguish began grinding down on me until I was on my hands and knees, trying to inhale between choked sobs as I screamed.

I didn’t even know what I was screaming through my tears, and I guessed it didn’t really matter, but Dad had to drag me away.

I didn’t remember much about the next week, the next month, the next year.

Life took on a hazy, dreamlike quality where nothing felt real after that. I was trapped behind an impenetrable warped glass wall looking out at the world and listening to the muffled sounds of everyone else’s lives while mine fragmented and crumbled around me, dry as dust.

I was watching myself disappear, one moment at a time, and there was no one there to reach for me, no one to save me.

I didn’t perform anymore. Not on a stage. I’d tried, once. I hadn’t wanted to but Dad had guilt-tripped me into getting on that stage by saying it was what Mom and Lauren would’ve wanted.

It was because of this stupid fucking violin that they were dead.

As I’d stared out at the sea of people watching me and realizing I’d never see my mom’s face in that crowd ever again, I broke down and ran off stage.

But I’d promised her I’d be the first in the family to go to college. I promised I’d do something with my life. Make something of my life.

If I broke that promise…it was like I’d be killing her a second time, and I wouldn’t survive that.

I didn’t understand how other people could go about their lives like everything was fine. Like the worst hadn’t happened. I couldn’t stand watching happy families and other moms with their kids. I hated all the pitying smiles and every murmured I’m so sorry. I hated all of it.

Most of all, I hated the awful truth I discovered, the illusion ripped away like velcro—that I was worth nothing to Dad without Mom and Lauren. I wasn’t enough for him, and he’d never loved me like he loved them.

And that…

Well. After that, I loved him and I hated him, and I wasn’t sure which was the greater burden to bear.

I still carried that burden even after he got so drunk he drove off a bridge and broke his neck.

After that, I had to go live with my grandma, who was as cold and uncaring as my dad became in the end.

I was fifteen when I learned what true pain was.

True pain was love.

Because once the person you loved was gone, you were stuck with all those feelings. There was no one to give them to anymore. They sat there inside of you, a bitter, corrosive amalgam of a past that could never be undone. A constant reminder of everything you didn’t have anymore.

Death created a distance both insurmountable and infinitesimal; it broke things apart and pulled them together. It was a touch that could shatter or bond—it just depended on the strength of who it touched.

I wasn’t strong. Not at all.

I just refused to break completely.