Chapter 2
The Journal of Daisy D. Stiles - Thirteen years ago
Hey.
I feel stupid starting every one of these with some sort of greeting.
You’re just a diary. Or a journal—diary feels too much like something I’d cry over in middle school.
That’s not what this is. It’s just a place for me to put the extra thoughts.
The ones that would get me into trouble if I let them fester too long in my brain. At least, that’s what Dr. Saltore says.
Anywho, a new kid enrolled today. He’s actually standing across the guidance counselor’s office, his broad back facing me, leaning over the counter.
He’s waiting for his class schedule to be printed.
He’s large. I know I say that about everyone since I’m constantly looking up at heads towering above my short height, but I mean it this time.
He takes up a lot of space and his voice sounds like thunder rolling in on a summer afternoon. It gave me goosies, journal.
I shouldn’t address you by name. That’s weird.
Back to the giant. I didn’t catch his name.
For as booming as his voice was, I caught nothing of what he said.
My brain turned to mush when I watched him enter the doorway, and then that mush melted away to nothing when I clocked the tattoo that looks like it climbs the length of his torso peeking out from under the worn and torn T-shirt that stretched upwards when he hiked his JanSport up on one shoulder.
I didn’t know kids our age could have tattoos.
Maybe they can’t. Maybe he’s not my age after all.
I want to know everything about him, and I’m also scared shitless of ever having to hold a conversation with him.
I want the answers with none of the risk that comes with communication.
I’m hunched over Ms. Riccardine’s desk, pretending to be fully immersed in this entry to avoid the off chance of him turning around and making eye contact with me.
There are two things I know for certain. I’ll add to this list as new facts come to light.
1. My heart started racing in a way that would be concerning to a doctor when he walked in the room. It felt like the universe’s way of telling me to pay attention.
2. My mother would strike me dead for having a thought like that about a boy like this.
There was a time when I knew next to every solid fact proclaimed in the universe that August Burton was going to irrevocably change my life.
My heart of hearts told me he was going to be the one to dismantle it all and rebuild the foundation of my time on this earth to be one of great love and purpose.
August was going to be my escape, my haven, my new home.
The place to lay my head and pour out the evil false truths that plagued me.
He was everything painfully good and safe.
And then I learned about frontal lobes developing.
While there was some truth to August Burton showing up and altering the course of my life, I also discovered it was only to wreak havoc and be the bane of my fucking existence.
I curse myself for giving into my weaknesses and look down at my phone to read Red’s response to the text I never should have sent.
Me
Hey, did Gus show up at the café yet?
Little Red Riding Hoe
funny enough, he just left
I sigh and put my phone face down on my kitchen table. It vibrates with another text coming through. I begrudgingly pick it back up because apparently, I’m a masochist.
Little Red Riding Hoe
i know you won’t ask, but he’s okay
I scoff to no one but myself. Of course he’s okay. It’s not like one shattered glass in his hand could take down the giant. He’s a big boy who can handle himself perfectly fine.
It was a fluke that he seemed so off last night. He must have been caught up in his head or something.
But there was that one split second where it was pure undiluted pain on his face, directed completely and totally at me. Different from the seething anger I’m used to basking in. It startled me, knocking me off kilter in a way that felt dangerous.
The sound of a stampede rattles the staircase to my left.
My younger twin brothers burst full force into the kitchen, not a care in the world for who they're disrupting. I envy the freedom they have thanks to the brick wall I’ve built around their innocence, blocking them from the view of the shitshow we live in. For the most part.
“Hunter, slow down before you smash your skull,” I say, throwing out my arm to stop the first twin from crashing into the table.
“Thing’s solid, Daisy.” Hunter raps his knuckles on the top of his head before scooping up one of the bowls I already laid out for them for breakfast.
Chase, the sweet and quiet second twin, silently greets me with one of his famous one-armed hugs and a sigh.
I catch the quick roll of his eyes at our brother before he grabs the second bowl.
Chase waits patiently for Hunter to finish compiling his mash-up of about four different cereals and then pours himself a bowl of safe and trusted Honey Nut Cheerios.
Hunter and Chase are the eleven—almost twelve—year-old products of our father’s failed vasectomy. The one he said he went to the follow-up appointment for, to confirm everything was all set. He did not do that.
We listen and we don’t judge.
(That’s a lie.)
I love my little brothers more than anything on this planet, including myself.
I had a plan to get the hell out of here, but everything halted the day they were born.
And it really did take looking at them with my own eyes to make the decision, but it was finite the second they were earthside.
I don’t regret it. Giving them pieces of a childhood that I dreamed of having is worth it all to me.
But that doesn’t mean I don’t feel a sting at all of the thoughts of what could have been.
So much of my life feels like the could-have-beens.
“What’s the plan for today, my dudes?”
Hunter tilts his head to the right, an antagonizing smirk on his face. “Chase, you wanna go first?” There’s half a pause before he continues. “No? Thought so. So—”
“Apologize,” I cut him off.
Hunter has the audacity to bristle as if we don’t have this same argument at least four times a week.
“Now,” I add.
With a harumph and a scoff, Hunter finally again turns to our brother. “Sorry for trying to include you!”
I take a deep breath, channeling every bit of patience I can muster to not slam my fist on the table and scream at the top of my lungs. A very practiced art in this household. I need to remain level-headed. “Chase,” I say through clenched teeth. “Go eat your cereal in the living room. Please.”
Chase nods, silently grabbing his bowl while getting up. He squeezes my shoulder as he passes me so I can knock dumbass Hunter down some pegs. I hate how much he reminds me of our mom. I hate that no matter what I pour into him, it feels like it just drains right out.
I wait until I hear the sounds of Big City Greens playing on the TV to address Hunter. “I’m fucking sick of it, Hunter.”
“Yeah, me too. When’s he gonna talk again?”
“I meant how you treat him, how you treat everyone. You don’t just get to bulldoze through people, expecting them to follow your lead. You don’t get to act like you’re better than everyone else. It’s wrong.”
Every time this kind of argument comes up, Gus’s voice pounds through my outer defenses.
His reminders of my snobbery and stuck up-ness that he knows nothing about but insists on commenting on regardless.
He’s wrong. He’s so fucking wrong, I just don’t bother to correct him. I have to reserve my energy for this.
Hunter grumbles, and I can’t make out what he says. I don’t try hard enough to decipher it, knowing I probably wouldn’t appreciate the response.
I lower my voice. “And as for Chase…The answer is maybe never. We’ve been over this. I know it’s hard to grasp. I’m sorry, I wish we had better answers. But he’s still the Chase we know and love.”
“No, he’s not. And I’m sick of you saying that. Mom and Dad think he’s a freak too!” Before I can comment further, Hunter pushes himself from the kitchen table, abandons his breakfast, and throws himself back up the stairs.
I sink into my chair, already exhausted, and it’s barely seven a.m. I can’t even pretend to be surprised that Hunter has been eavesdropping on our parents’ conversations and that our parents’ conversations include how messed up they think Chase is.
No care for who might be listening in while they’re in the safety of their own home.
They don’t bother with thinking about how words like that could affect their children, only if they were to run and spill their secrets.
Which we wouldn’t. We’re trained not to.
One day, Chase was on the cusp of his tenth birthday, a blabbermouth kid without a care in the world, not willing to leave a second of silence hanging. And the next, everything went quiet.
Tests, counseling, group and private therapy, programs, day camps—you name it, our parents tried it. Chase stopped talking, and there’s not a single verified reason why.
Of course, Mom and Dad worried for different reasons than I did, or why any normal parent might worry: Was there trauma undetected? Some lingering irregularity within his DNA? Could other symptoms for some underlying issue start to present themselves?
No, no. Mary Jane and Ronald Stiles only cared about the optics of the situation. What would the people in their circle say if they knew their son was mute?
I hear the shuffling of socked feet to see Chase coming back into the kitchen, checking to see if the coast is clear. He has a soft smile on his face when he leans in to rest his chin on my shoulder for a second.
Chase communicates perfectly fine. You just have to pay attention.
I ruffle his dark hair. “It’s not you, buddy. You never need to change a thing. You know that, right?” He nods before placing his empty bowl in the sink. He turns and grabs Hunter’s to clean out and place in the sink as well. God, he’s such a good kid.
“You shouldn’t be cleaning up after him. It only rewards his tantrums,” I remind Chase.
Chase shrugs his shoulders and gives me the whaddya gonna do?
face before retreating back upstairs to his room.
He must be fist pumping on the top landing when he realizes he narrowly missed our parents emerging from their bedroom here on the first floor.
Their conversation is floating through the house now that their door is open.
“...and the McIntyre funeral, do we have that one ready to be delivered? The mass starts at eleven a.m. Good morning, Daisy.” My mother greets me with a tight-lipped smile. I should have escaped with Chase.
I should have broken out of here years ago, seeing as how I’m about to turn thirty and still take up residence in my childhood bedroom.
“McIntyre should be good to go. I’ll drop it off myself. I’ll meet you at the car.” My dad kisses my mom on her temple and gives me a half wave before leaving out the back door. It’s the most acknowledgment I’ve come to expect from him.
It wasn’t always like this. Before everything went to shit, I assumed my dad loved me in the way every daughter would hope for. He’d take me to the movies and fishing with his friends. I was like his little sidekick. And then I wasn’t.
“Morning, Mom,” I reply before making myself look busy shuffling through my print outs on the table.
A mistake. I snap the hair tie around my wrist in punishment when Mary Jane’s eyes dart to the papers.
She snatches the top two in her hands to inspect while she prepares her morning coffee.
I roll my eyes when I watch her pour at least two shot glasses worth of vodka into the travel mug.
She thinks no one notices. It’s a fucking joke.
“This is for Hale’s illegitimate children, yes?” she asks, holding up the papers.
She’s referring to the designs and inspiration pictures for the bouquets Margot asked me to make for the gender reveal.
Margot wanted to do something special and unique, without the risk of blowing anyone up with pyrotechnics.
She said simple cupcakes just wouldn’t do, and I’m downright honored to have been asked to take on the task.
I want it to be perfect, and it will be. But Mary Jane Stiles’s and my versions of perfect are two very different things. And she’s the definition of throwing stones in a glass house, so she’s the real judgmental bitch who hates everyone. But that’s beside the point.
“These are my starting points for the gender reveal bouquets I’m doing for Sawyer Hale and his fiancée, Margot, yes.”
“They’re paying for this, correct?”
They are not. This is a gift. She doesn’t need to know that though. “Deposit is in the account and documented in the Excel sheet.” Two truths. She’ll never dig to find out that the money came from my own personal account. Hell, she’ll probably forget this entire conversation in a few hours’ time.
The thing with starting your day with spiked coffee is you leave the window of hazy memories open for far too long. Things get jumbled and contorted in your brain.
“Well, good. Can’t say I see whatever vision you’re going for but…” She tosses the papers back in front of me. “Make it presentable. We have a reputation to uphold. Please ensure your brothers find their way to camp today before coming into the shop. Oh, and Daisy—”
I finally look up. My mother was beautiful once.
A complete knock-out who I dreamed every day I’d grow up to be exactly like.
She used to remind me of Morticia Addams and my dad, Gomez, fawning over her in a way that made my mom the center of every room she walked into.
The lines on her face at the time were only from smiles.
Now, she’s weathered. Tired. Sunken in and hollow eyes that hold too many bad memories and mistakes.
She tries to hide the aging and flaws. Her bathroom counter and medicine cabinet are filled to the brim with products. Her closet is stocked with pieces picked out by a department store stylist. To me though, none of it matters. I see the reality.
Today, she has on a black cotton maxi dress that brushes along the floor as she walks. Her dry, dyed black hair is collected and clipped into a barrette in the shape of a leaf. A gift from my dad years ago. The only person in the world she has a soft spot left for.
“Yeah, Mom?”
“Your hair looks like shit. Fix it before you leave this house. You’re a Stiles, act like it.” The door slams behind her.
“Fuck you too!” I call. No one hears me. No one would care anyway. This whole family is so fucked.