Prologue #2
Lane stood there and took it because she knew the rules.
If she fought back, Jeanette would tell everyone she was out of control.
If she ran to a teacher, Jeanette would cry, charm, and make Lane look dramatic.
If she called the police, maybe they’d show up, maybe not.
If they did show up, eventually they would leave, and Lane would still have to sleep under Jeanette’s roof.
So Lane fixed her eyes on the report card lying near the couch and went somewhere else inside herself.
She went to college.
She went to a dorm room with a bed no man had ever sat on without permission.
She went to a dining hall where food was not counted, and it was later thrown in her face.
She went to classrooms where people asked what she thought and waited for the answer.
She went to a future where Jeanette’s voice couldn’t follow her unless Lane let it.
Jeanette grabbed the report card from the floor and crushed it in her fist.
“You ain’t special,” her mother said, breathing hard. “You hear me? You ain’t nothing but a little fast-ass girl who think books make her better than where she come from.”
Lane tasted blood where her teeth had caught the inside of her cheek. She looked at her mother, really looked at her, and saw what she usually tried not to see.
Jeanette was not just angry. She was jealous. Jealous of a report card. Jealous of a possibility. Jealous of a child who still had a chance to become someone else. That realization didn’t make Lane feel powerful. It made her feel exhausted in a way fifteen should never feel.
“I don’t think I’m better than where I come from,” Lane said, her voice low and trembling. “I think I deserve better than this.”
Silence dropped so fast it felt like the whole apartment stopped breathing. Jeanette stared at her. Lane knew she had gone too far. Still something inside her had already cracked open, and she could not stuff the truth back inside.
Jeanette moved toward her again, and this time Lane did not stand still. She stepped back. It was not much. Barely anything. But it was enough to change the air between them.
Her mother noticed.
“You better not run from me,” Jeanette warned.
Lane’s heart hammered against her ribs. “I’m not running.”
Not yet.
Jeanette’s laugh came out bitter and wet. “Where you gon’ go, Lane? Huh? You think them teachers taking you in? You think them people at that school care about you once that bell ring? You ain’t got nobody but me.”
Lane looked down at the crushed report card in Jeanette’s hand. Straight A student. Proof of work. Proof of discipline. Proof that no matter how dirty Jeanette tried to make her feel, Lane had built one clean thing nobody could take from her.
Except Jeanette had taken it.
Not the grades. Not the truth of them. But the moment. The joy. The tiny stupid wish that her mother might love her better if Lane gave her something worth loving.
Lane would never make that mistake again.
Jeanette threw the crumpled report card at her chest. It bounced off and landed near Lane’s shoes.
“Pick it up,” Jeanette said. “Since you’re so proud.”
Lane bent slowly and picked up the paper. She smoothed it with shaking fingers, pressing out the wrinkles as best she could. The creases stayed, of course. Some damage did that. It flattened, but it did not disappear.
She folded the report card and put it back in her backpack. Then she walked to her room without another word. Jeanette shouted after her. Lane didn’t turn around. She closed the bedroom door and locked it with the little hook latch that would not stop anybody determined.
That evening she sat on the edge of her mattress and cried. Her cheek throbbed. Her arm stung where Jeanette’s nails had bitten skin. Her hip ached. But none of it hurt as much as the picture in her head that would not leave her alone.
Jeanette’s face when Lane said she got straight A’s.
Not pride.
Not love.
Resentment.
Lane pulled the report card out again and laid it across her lap. The paper was wrinkled now, ugly with proof of what had happened, but the letters were still there. A. A. A. A. A. A. She traced them with one finger.
Outside her room, Jeanette moved around the apartment angrily because all Lane could hear was cabinets slamming.
The television blared, and her voice rose and fell as she cursed to herself.
Lane listened until the sounds became background noise and the apartment became what it always was, a place she lived but never belonged.
That day, Lane stopped waiting for her mother to come through the door as someone different. She stopped believing good news could soften a woman committed to being hard. Somewhere between the burn in her cheek and the wrinkled report card in her lap, Lane Sanders made herself a promise.
She would get out. She would become everything Jeanette swore she was not. And one day, when the world learned her name, nobody would ever be able to say Lane Sanders had survived because somebody saved her. She would survive because she saved herself.
At seventeen, Lane Sanders had learned that survival was a skill. One she practiced daily.
The years since that crumpled report card had hardened her in some ways and sharpened her in others.
Jeanette’s cruelty hadn’t disappeared. If anything, it evolved.
What began as resentment had fermented into something uglier and meaner.
Despite every effort Jeanette made to break her, Lane kept growing like a rose forcing itself through concrete.
Seventeen-year-old Lane stood five feet seven with long legs, thick thighs, wide hips, a narrow waist, and a flat stomach.
She had the kind of body women paid trainers to achieve, and men noticed whether she wanted them to or not.
Jeanette hated it, and Lane knew she did because every compliment Lane received was met with a sneer.
Every achievement was met with criticism.
Every sign that Lane might become something more than the circumstances she’d been born into seemed to infuriate her mother.
The irony was that Lane had earned every curve honestly.
Jeanette rarely gave her bus fare. She claimed she didn’t have it despite somehow always finding money for liquor, cigarettes, and whatever man happened to be occupying her bed that week.
So Lane walked three miles to school and the same three back home.
Rain, heat, or cold, it didn’t matter. Then she’d joined the cross-country team and discovered running would become her therapy since she wouldn't dare ask Jeanette about the possibility of sitting on a professional’s couch.
Every mile was another argument she didn’t have to hear and another insult she didn’t have to absorb in that apartment.
Her part-time job as a page had her shelving books at the library, providing another solace for her to dwell in.
She read and checked out so many materials that she knew she made the right decision keeping this completely to herself.
Jeanette didn’t know about it, which meant she couldn’t ruin it.
Her paycheck wasn’t much, but it was enough for toiletries, thrifted clothes, and bus fare when the weather was bad.
As Lane flourished, Jeanette continued to deteriorate.
Alcohol wasn’t enough anymore. It had become routine for Lane to come home and find pills and powder on the ragged coffee table along with men who always seemed to know where to her mother find the next high.
The apartment became a revolving door of strangers, and Lane learned to lock her bedroom door.
She memorized which floorboards creaked and made sleep lightly a habit because in her life safety was often an illusion.
Though her extracurricular activities kept her away from home as much as possible, eventually she always had to go back.
On a rainy October evening, everything changed.
Lane had just finished a shift at the library and returned home later than usual, noticing the apartment was strangely quiet.
No television, no music, no male voice she didn't recognize.
Just Jeanette passed out on the couch with a pipe beside her.
That should’ve been her warning. She knew Jeanette’s latest boyfriend was there because, much like her mother, he didn't work. Lane couldn’t remember his name.
Only that he smelled like cigarettes and the way he stared at her made her uncomfortable.
She hurried into the bathroom before retreating to her room, barely having time to close the door before it pushed back open.
Her stomach dropped as her mother’s creepy crackhead boyfriend stood in the doorway smiling, making her skin crawl.
“What the hell are you doing?” she yelled.
His gaze traveled over her slowly, and she felt herself getting into fight-or-flight mode.
“You all grown up, ain’t you?”
Lane moved immediately, trying to escape, but he blocked her path.
What followed happened fast. He grabbed her, pulling her to him, trying to kiss her.
She was fueled by adrenaline and refused to go down without a fight.
Years of cross-country conditioning and carrying her own groceries mixed with fighting for every inch of peace she possessed.
Lane drove her knee upward hard enough to fold him in half.
She shoved past him and sprinted into the living room.
“Mama!”
Jeanette barely looked up.
“Your man just tried to—”
The words died in Lane’s throat because her mother wasn’t horrified, concerned, or angry. She looked annoyed that her high was being disturbed, if anything.
“What now?” Jeanette slurred.
“He cornered me in the bathroom.”
Jeanette blinked and laughed. “Oh, please.”
Lane stared at her with tears in her eyes. “He tried to… he tried to touch me!”
Jeanette rolled her eyes. “You think every man wants you. You trying to take my man now?”