Chapter 1
Seraphina
“Here you are.”
I toss the little baggy onto the bed, next to the slumped-over form of Ben.
He doesn’t turn to me, just groans. Probably still in the throes of his last trip. But he’ll be happy when he wakes up and sees his next hit is ready. Well, not happy. But at least, he won’t beat me.
Not that he does it all that much anymore. I’ve gotten pretty good at blending into the background.
I leave Ben to sleep off his trip in the tiny room that serves as bedroom and living room, and go to the even tinier room, more like a closet really, where we keep a small fridge and a set of burner plates.
I turn on the old relic of a TV that I’ve perched precariously over the fridge, and zombie out with the news in the background.
I cut the $9.99 head of broccoli I took from the Devil Grocery Store into little bits that I’ll fry with two eggs and some stale bread.
A sad little meal of all-you-can-steal omelet.
As the omelet cooks, the TV drones on about the quadruple murder that’s been on the news all week.
Even in a shitty town like Oakley, an entire family getting snuffed out is interesting.
Especially since it has nothing to do with drugs.
The Coles are as white-collar as they get around here.
An ambitious politician, his wife and their two kids.
All dead overnight. Not a murder-suicide, no drugs found, no theft.
Weird. I was vaguely intrigued until I saw the home they lived in.
One of those new little white houses on the one road in Oakley slowly being gentrified.
And when I saw the pictures of the two cute blond kids with the curls and the ribbons, the chubby guy with the clean-shaven face, the woman in the dress with the happy smile, I stopped caring altogether.
They lived a life so removed from my own.
I would happily have lived a short life if I had lived that kind of life.
I flip the channel, annoyed, but they all seem to be talking about the same thing. Guess it’s more interesting than the usual: drugs, homelessness, gang fights.
I stop when I see Damien Wells speaking.
That’s different—or not. He seems to be delivering a eulogy at the family’s wake.
I don’t care, though, about the words coming out of his mouth. I don’t need to listen to know they’re exactly the right words for the right situation. I wouldn’t expect anything less from the most powerful man in the state, the CEO of Devil.
Still, Damien Wells has always fascinated me. I’m not exactly attracted to him, though he’s certainly conventionally handsome with his black wavy hair, chiseled features, his broad shoulders and toned forearms.
But there’s something about his eyes. They’re dark as night, and they’ve always unsettled me. Especially when he raises his head, staring straight at the TV camera, like he does now, his mouth curling into the smallest of smirks.
Yes, something’s definitely off with Damien Wells.
The camera pans to the other four Devils, but I don’t care about them. Only their luxury department store, with its aisles full of pricey perfume packages that I spend my mornings stuffing into an old beat-up backpack.
-
I turn off the TV.
The omelet is done, so I cut half of it and put it on a plate, sit at the lonely little plastic table and eat it. Not from hunger. I don’t remember being hungry since Mama died. It’s more of an automatic thing, my body doing what’s necessary so it won’t die. Survival mode: what I excel at.
I finish, then put the rest of the omelet on the plate for Ben.
No need to get more than one plate dirty at a time.
I go back to the bed and set it down on the mattress next to him.
He groans and mutters something indecipherable. Fifteen minutes is all it took for him to shoot up the meth I got for him.
“More…” he groans.
“Not today,” I say, my voice loud and weird in my ears. I use it so infrequently.
At once he lunges out and his fist connects with my jaw. For a drug-addled loser, he hits hard, though his punches are not as bad as they used to be.
I flinch and rub my face.
“Now,” he growls.
Sighing, I grab my now-empty backpack and go back outside. I don’t want to shoplift again. My feet are sore from walking all the way to Astley and back. And I do it all day, every day, for him. I never get any thanks. Not that I expect any. But is it too much to ask that he not hit me?
I’ve given that asshole five years. Five whole years.
I met him as a freshman in high school. He was a senior, and when he stood behind me in the lunch line and asked what my name was, I was so surprised I dropped my entire tray on the floor.
Until then, I’d been invisible. A quiet loner. Not the kind of person you would bully, the kind you’d forget was even in your class.
I used to be happy to sink into my invisibility, but by the time I started high school, I’d grown sick of going through life unnoticed, a sad, helpless jellyfish.
I never got to experience those things other girls did.
Sparkly dresses, pretty bicycles, friends.
Going out on dates, sitting down at nice restaurants where servers looked you straight in the eye and took your order. Normal things.
So when Ben spoke to me, my heart melted. A week later, I had dropped out of school and moved into his basement apartment.
Ben is a loner too. And with his sunken-in eyes and greasy hair, everyone always assumed that one day, he’d shoot up the school.
He never did, though. Instead, he shoots meth.
It’s been five years now, and I’ve grown used to passively watching as time drifts by. I’m nineteen now, and if I was one of those girls on TV, I’d be in college.
But I’m not on TV. I’m in Oakley.
-
Shoplifting is the one thing that keeps me sane.
I’m tired and sore, but it wouldn’t have taken a punch to the jaw to convince me to head back to the neighboring town of Astley. The minute I start walking, I feel hopeful again. Once I’ve left the squalor behind and reached the heart of Astley, my life begins. Because here, everything is possible.
Stores line the long avenue. They sell just about everything under the sun. It’s here that the Astley folk come to buy toys, or books, or home goods, or sports equipment.
But I’m not looking to buy, and what interests me is the large department store at the end of the avenue.
There’s a big, blood-red neon sign that draws the eye in. Devil, it reads, and that’s where I invariably end up.
Something about that place has always attracted me.
Even before I began to shoplift, I would spend my days there, walking around the overpriced grocery store on the basement level, wondering what it would take to become one of those people who could afford overpriced collagen smoothies and fancy sushi.
Then I’d head up to the other floors, and imagine myself buying this oversized stuffed bear or riding around on that pink bicycle.
Mainly, I’d wonder about the people who built this place. The five Oakley kids who left their hometown behind. The five friends whose names make up the acronym of Devil. Damien, Everest, Vale, Igor and Logan.
Growing up in Oakley is growing up with that legend. Work hard, kid. Maybe one day, you too can leave all this behind.
It’s been many years since I’ve had those pink bicycle dreams, and I know, now, that it’s all bullshit.
I draw nearer to the blood-red sign, my heartbeat picking up.
That sign spells danger, but it’s the danger that thrills me.
Slowly, I walk to the main entrance, butterflies in my stomach.
I can’t tell if I’m dreading or hoping to be caught.
Lately, I’ve come to realize it’s mostly the latter, and it unsettles me.
But no matter how hard I try to be noticed, no one ever bothers me here.
I’m as invisible now as when I was a kid.
Pushing into the crowded store, I head up to the fourth floor.
That’s where the perfume bottles are, aisles and aisles of small expensive boxes.
Small and easy to steal. Not too expensive to be locked behind glass, but expensive enough to be worth the trouble.
Just a couple of boxes, and I can get Ben his next hit.
I wander into my favorite aisle, the one with the high-end, namebrand perfumes.
It’s also the aisle with the most cameras.
They seem to be pointed straight at me, and I glare up at them as I stuff five boxes into my backpack.
Even though I see the tiny blinking red light that tells me they’re turned on, no one bothers me.
A saleslady even enters the aisle at one point, and when she sees me, she quickly averts her eyes and walks back out.
I wonder what it is about me that scares her. My eyes? I know they freak people out. They’re some weird shade of purple, and about three times too big for my face.
Or maybe she’s been warned to let me be. I nearly laugh out loud at the thought. But it’s so strange how everyone in this store seems intent on avoiding me. What other explanation can there be?
At first I merely thought the employees’ apparent determination to ignore me was odd, but these past few months, it’s started to really grate on me. I try to make my movements obvious, stare up at the cameras, glower at the workers.
Hey! I’m stealing from you! Talk to me. Stop me. Look at me!
I flash my scary eyes at them and dare them to meet my gaze.
I’m Seraphina Connor, you fuckers! I exist! Now say something!
But it’s useless. Sighing, I zip up my old backpack and walk toward the escalator.
I pass the third floor, the clothes department, and spot the sparkly pink dress that always makes my heart flutter.
It looks a lot like one I used to covet as a kid, and I see a little girl pulling on her mother’s hemline while pointing to it.
I smile to myself, wondering at how children’s dreams never change.
Her mother shakes her head. Guess some dreams will always stay out-of-reach.