CAELA
“You just gotta stick it out for, like, two years,” Eliza told her during one of their phone conversations the first week. “I know it sucks, but it’ll be easier once school starts and you can make some new friends.”
“Unless no one here likes me.”
“Don’t be stupid. Why wouldn’t people like you?”
“I mean, my own mother doesn’t seem to like me. And Rob definitely doesn’t.”
“Yeah, well, screw them,” Eliza said. “I like you, and I happen to have excellent taste. So who cares what they think?”
But Caela did care. Maybe it was just because she missed her dad, but she found herself desperately wanting her mother to like her.
She’d never wanted that before. Her mom’s abandonment and lack of interest had stung, but Caela was able to accept it.
Because she had her dad there to love her enough for both of them.
But now he was gone, and her mother was the only parent she had left.
Caela tried to be what her mother and Rob wanted at first. She started wearing preppy clothes.
She tried to listen to Christian radio and country music.
She forced herself to smile more, even though it felt like she was dying inside.
She even stopped asking them to call her Caela and resigned herself to being Michaela from now on.
There was nothing she could do about being gay, aside from just giving them what they wanted and never bringing it up.
Caela tried. She really tried.
But it wasn’t good enough.
Rob still looked at her with blatant distrust and disapproval in his eyes. And her mother hardly looked at her at all. They still questioned every move she made, every place she went, every person she spoke to. Each moment Caela spent in that house was suffocating.
The only person who seemed to like Caela was Sam, the kid who’d made her mother realize that being a parent wasn’t so bad after all. Her mother adored him. Spoiled him and told him how wonderful he was.
And to be fair, he was pretty wonderful.
Sam loved Caela from the moment they met. He loved to have her take videos of him with her fancy camera, loved to play catch with her in the backyard, loved to sit on her bed and ask her a thousand questions while she waited on texts from Eliza and Grady.
Texts that, once school started, became less frequent.
“Michaela, can I play with your camera?” “Michaela, what’s this song called?” “Michaela, can we watch a movie?” “Who’re you texting, Michaela?” “Michaela, will you play LEGOs with me?”
But it seemed like her mother and Rob hated how close Sam and Caela were becoming, so they found excuses to pull him away from her every chance they got, isolating her even more in the house that should have been her home.
She couldn’t breathe.
School wasn’t much better. This farm town was tiny, and Caela quickly learned that the people at her new high school had all gone to school together since kindergarten. They already had their friends, their routines, their full lunch tables, and there didn’t seem to be any room for her.
She needed something, though. Something to occupy her time, to get her out of the house and keep her distracted so she wasn’t constantly thinking about her dad or the fact that Eliza and Grady were hanging out without her.
“I think I’m gonna apply for a job at Ricci’s.”
It was early autumn, a few weeks into the school year. They had been sitting down at the dinner table for fifteen minutes, and it was the first time Caela had spoken. Most nights, she didn’t say anything beyond answering yes or no questions.
Rob turned to look at her, and her mother put down her fork.
“Ricci’s?”
“Yeah,” Caela said. “You know, that pizza place a few blocks from here.”
“Why?” Rob asked.
“Why?”
“Why do you need a job? What do you need money for?”
Caela shrugged. “I don’t know. It just seems like a good way to keep busy. I’ll be able to pay for gas money.”
“We give you enough gas money to get to school and back,” her mother said. “Where else do you need to go?”
Caela looked down at her plate of barely touched food. This was how almost every conversation went with them. “I don’t know. To the mall or the movies?” In truth, she wanted the job just to have a reason to be out of this house a few extra hours a week.
“Will you bring us pizza?” Sam asked, bouncing in his chair, blissfully oblivious to the tension at the table.
“Sometimes. What kind would you want me to bring?”
“Pineapple!”
Caela wrinkled her nose at him. “Only for you, kiddo.” She glanced at Rob, knowing her mother would only agree to this if he allowed it. “If I’m able to get a job, of course.”
The adults exchanged a look, both frowning, before Rob turned back to Caela.
“Fine.”
And that was the end of that.
At least until she met Bonnie.
Bonnie was another employee at Ricci’s. Caela worked the register while she made deliveries.
She was a bit older than Caela, freshly eighteen, having graduated a few months earlier, and based on the looks some of the customers gave her when they spotted her in the restaurant, she clearly had a reputation.
“Who died?”
It was the first thing Bonnie said to Caela on the night they met.
She was taking the trash out to the dumpster, and Caela was on her break, scrolling through Eliza’s Instagram feed while she waited for a response to a text she’d sent hours ago.
In those brief moments when she was away from her mother’s family and out of view of customers or classmates, Caela let the fake smile fall away.
She must have looked as miserable as she felt.
She turned to look at Bonnie. Looked her straight in the eyes.
“My dad.”
“Oh.” Bonnie winced. “Crap. I’m sorry.”
Caela looked back down at her phone and refreshed her feed.
She regretted this immediately, though. Because right there on her screen—the very first photo—was a post from one of her former classmates, taken at what looked like a party.
That wasn’t the problem, however. The problem was the two very familiar figures in the background, making out on a couch.
Caela’s heart sank into her stomach.
No wonder Eliza hadn’t texted her back yet.
She had no reason to be upset. Eliza was just a friend, no matter how Caela felt about her.
And yet, there was a gut-wrenching sense of betrayal.
Maybe it was because part of her had still held out hope that perhaps one day something would happen between them.
Maybe it was because it had only been a couple of months since Eliza assured her she didn’t like Grady that way.
Had she been lying? Or had things already changed that much since Caela left?
If something had changed, why hadn’t Eliza told her? Weren’t they still best friends?
Her phone began to buzz, an alarm letting her know her break was coming to an end. She swallowed the lump in her throat, closed the app, and got to her feet.
Bonnie looked over at her again. “You wanna hang out after your shift?” she asked. “My ex is throwing a barn party tonight, and I don’t wanna give him the satisfaction of showing up alone.”
“Thanks for the offer,” Caela said, “but I don’t think I’d be very good company right now.”
“Girl, I’m never good company,” Bonnie retorted. “Pretty rancid company, in fact. We’ll get along fine.”
Caela laughed. Just a small laugh, but it was the first one in weeks.
And that’s how Bonnie became her first friend in Kentucky.
Bonnie was loud and brash, with a temper as wild as her long auburn hair. She drove too fast, had a new dirtbag guy in love with her every week, and she seemed to absolutely loathe everyone in that town.
Everyone but Caela.
And that felt really good, to have someone actually want her around. Her mother certainly didn’t. Rob clearly wished she’d disappear. And they wouldn’t let Sam, the only one who actually liked her, spend more than five minutes with her. Her friends back in Ohio had already moved on without her.
But Bonnie was right there, insisting on occupying her time. No one had shown that kind of interest in her since the accident. And Caela wanted to hold on to that feeling as long as she could.
So when Bonnie told Caela she should do something, she usually did it.
“These earrings would look so good on you,” Bonnie said one day while they were shopping at the local mall. They weren’t fancy or anything. Just two little dangling daggers.
“Oh, yeah. Those are cool,” Caela said. “But my mother would flip. She’d make it out like I was promoting violence or something.”
“That’s stupid.”
“I know. She’s kind of ridiculous.”
“I think you should take them, Cae.”
Caela shook her head. “I can’t afford to buy anything else today. Jennette’s in the shop, and this week’s paycheck is going entirely to pay for her to get fixed.”
“Yeah, notice I said take and not buy,” Bonnie said, voice lowered so none of the other shoppers could hear them.
“What?” Caela whispered. “I can’t do that.”
“Why not? Didn’t you tell me you used to go tagging buildings with your friends?”
“Yeah …” Even thinking about those memories of Grady and Eliza felt like a knife to the chest. “But that was different.”
“Not really. Your folks already treat you like a delinquent. Might as well have the fun of being one.” She plucked the earrings’ package off the display rack and pressed it into Caela’s hand.
“I’ll distract the cashier while you sneak out.
The alarms here are, like, always broken, so it ain’t gonna be hard. I promise.”
She was staring at Caela, an eyebrow raised, waiting for a response.
Caela’s heart thumped harder in her chest as she realized she was being tested.
Bonnie was seeing if she was cool enough, worthy enough, to be her friend.
And Caela was more scared of her disappointment than she was of the trouble stealing these cheap earrings might get her into.
So she did it.
Any regret or remorse she may have felt disappeared an hour later as they sat in Bonnie’s car outside of Ricci’s and Caela opened up the package.
“You wear one in your left ear, and I’ll wear the other in my right,” Bonnie said, taking one of the tiny daggers. “It’ll look sick.”
Caela unscrewed the back of the other earring, carefully putting it in her left lobe piercing. “How do I look?”
“Hot,” Bonnie said with a grin. She’d already put her earring in, too. “Now everyone will know—anyone messes with you, and they’ll have to deal with me.”
Caela beamed at her. Finally, she had someone who cared about her. Who wanted to defend and protect her. For the first time since moving here, things didn’t seem all that bad.
When she went home a little later, Rob’s glare and her mother’s declaration of disapproval stung just a little less.
They hated Bonnie, of course. They called her every name under the sun. Trash. Punk. Criminal. They told Caela she was a bad influence. They even expressly forbade her from spending time with her outside of work.
But Caela ignored them. After months of failed attempts, she was done trying to be the good girl they wanted. She’d done everything they’d asked and it hadn’t worked. It hadn’t made them love her. But now she had someone else to care about her.
So now she was Cae.
It was like Bonnie had said: They treated her like a delinquent even when she hadn’t done anything wrong. She might as well enjoy herself living up to their negative expectations. And what Caela enjoyed was having a friend.
She wore that little dagger earring every single day after that.