Prologue
Isabelle
PAST
“I would rather sit on a hill of fire ants in my underwear while eating ghost peppers.” I leaned against the counter and popped a cracker into my mouth. My nose wrinkled. It was one of those multigrain ones that tasted more like cardboard than actual food.
“Isabelle Marie Kipton, I have had just about enough of your snarkiness, young lady.”
But I wasn’t a young lady, at least not in my mother’s estimation. Young ladies were poised and put-together and never questioned the dictates their parents set for them. I questioned everything, never went along easily, and was far too disheveled to gain any sort of approval from my parents.
I stared unblinkingly at my mother, not giving an inch.
“You will sit at that dinner table, and you will be composed and polite to our company.”
I let out a snort. “Like their daughter is composed and polite to me?” Lacey was more like the Devil incarnate, but she wore her pretty, polite mask perfectly. So, my mother might as well have thought she was the Second Coming.
Violet looked up from where she was arranging a platter of hors d’oeuvres. “Lacey snaps back because you bait her. Maybe you two are just more similar than you’d like to admit, and you ruffle each other’s feathers.”
I glanced up at my older sister. The perfect image of the young lady my parents wished I would be, with her impeccably styled hair and future-doctor composure. She might as well have been a stranger. When had that happened? I searched my mind for the date the switch had been flipped, when Violet had gone from friend and confidante, the sister who’d always had my back, to someone I couldn’t even begin to understand most of the time.
“You can be friends with her all you want, Vi. I’ll take a pass on having vicious snakes in my circle.” I glanced at my mother. “Or sharing a dinner table with them.”
Red crept up my mother’s neck and seeped into her face. “What is wrong with you?” I stayed silent. The list of what my mother found wrong with me would take us all night to get through. “That’s it. Hand over your phone.”
My fingers tightened around the edge of the counter. “Are you seriously taking my cell because I don’t want to have dinner with someone who’s awful to me? Who bullies my friends, and is cruel to everyone who isn’t in her little gang of followers? I’ve tried to tell you time and again that she’s not who you think she is.”
My mother held out her hand. “Perhaps if you kept better company, these things wouldn’t be an issue. You are who you spend time with, Isabelle. And those girls you run around with are not what I want for your future.”
My back teeth ground together as I slipped my hand into my back pocket, pulling out the device she’d requested and placing it in her palm. No phone meant no emergency line to my best friends, to Ford, to the people who kept me sane amidst the insanity that my mother brought about. I kept my face carefully blank. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of knowing that she’d impacted me in any way. She didn’t deserve to know she had that power.
“Since you insist on acting childish, you’ll be treated as one. Your curfew is now nine p.m.”
I gave her nothing. I was already a prisoner in this home full of people who’d rather judge me than try and understand where I was coming from. God forbid they actually listen to what I had to say.
My mother let out an exasperated sigh. “Why can’t you be more like Violet? She’s polite and helpful, yet you insist on creating trouble and strife.”
It cut more than it should have. If I’d had a dollar for every time she’d said something similar to me, I’d be able to go to college anywhere I dreamed. “But I’m not like her, am I? So, it’s probably safer that I’m gone when your friends are here. You wouldn’t want them to know just what a disappointment I am, now would you?”
“Iz…” Violet started towards me—to comfort or placate, I wasn’t sure—but I ducked out of her hold. I didn’t want her reassurance. I wanted out of this space that felt too tight, as if the walls were closing in on me.
My dad strode into the kitchen, drawn by the raised voices. “Just let her go, Heather. She’s sixteen, she can choose to skip out on one dinner.”
Mom’s glare cut to my dad, a clear threat of the price he’d pay later for defending me. But he was used to her vindictive streak by now and didn’t waver. She turned back to me. “Fine. Be selfish and immature. It’s not like I should expect anything different from you.”
I didn’t say a word, just snatched a granola bar from the pantry and ran out the back door, out of that suffocating house, and towards freedom.
I hunkered down, burrowing into the scattering of pillows I kept in the old tree house at the back of our property, and turned up the music pumping into my headphones. If the songs were loud enough, I could drown everything out: the frustration, the disappointment, the hurt. But some days, there wasn’t a decibel high enough or a playlist long enough. And nothing could erase my mother’s wrath that I’d be dealing with for weeks to come.
I gazed up at the ceiling of the tree house, to the wild mural I’d been slowly adding to over time. My own secret garden. I’d painstakingly doodled and painted hundreds of flowers, interwoven with gnarled vines, as if I could build my own little world here.
I turned the music up another couple of clicks, softly singing along. Music and art. I could lose myself there. I could feel free for a handful of moments before the world came crashing in again.
I felt a tug on one of my earbuds, and it popped free. I stifled a scream as I took in the dark blond head of hair that appeared in the opening of the floor. My hand flew to my chest as my heart rattled. “Geez, give me a heart attack, why don’t you?”
Ford hoisted himself into the tree house, tanned muscles bunching and flexing with his graceful movements. I swallowed against the dryness in my throat. “My ears are bleeding, Trouble. I thought a cat was being killed up here, but nope”—he shot me a grin—“it’s just you butchering Bob Dylan’s greatest hits.”
I threw one of the pillows beside me at Ford’s head. “Bite your tongue. I have the voice of an angel.”
He scoffed but scooted closer to me, leaning against the wall. “So…”
“Yes, Cupcake?”
Ford gave a strand of my hair a quick tug. “You know, the football team started calling me that because of you.”
My eyes went wide. “Oh, man. That makes me ridiculously happy.”
“One of the guys from another team asked me out after a game, assuming they called me that because I was gay.”
Laughter rolled through me, taking over and causing tears to pool in my eyes. “What did you say?”
“I told him I was flattered, but I had a girlfriend.” I arched a brow at him. Ford grinned. “I was flattered, he’s a hell of a cornerback.”
I shook my head. “You’re my favorite.”
Ford tilted his head so that he could meet my gaze. “But you abandoned me to face the firing squad without you?”
I winced. “How bad?”