Or last year, my Junior year, when one of them printed out dozens of copies of my yearbook photo from Sophomore year and scribbled WHORE all over it in bright red ink before pinning it up all over the school.
Not to mention the time they flooded the girls’ bathroom—while I was using it. They were mean, feral even, and didn’t deserve an ounce of sympathy from me. Guilt assuaged, I dug into my breakfast with renewed enthusiasm.
“—and they just got in these amazing tiny backpacks. Like, 90’s retro. We definitely need to get those.”
I tuned back in and shook my head. “Not unless Grandma Bird has an enlarging spell,” I said with a smirk. “I have Chemistry this year. There’s no way I’m going to fit that textbook in a tiny backpack.”
Julianne laughed. “You say that like you’re actually planning on doing homework!”
I grinned and went back to eating. Normalcy restored, and not a moment too soon. The bus trip home would have been awful if I’d had guilt stacked on top of motion sickness.
Chapter Three
My mistake was thinking I could take a nap on the bus. Dreams rolled over me in a sun-speckled pattern, their colors bleached and indecipherable in the light that filtered in through my closed lids.
The emotions weren’t bleached, though. If anything, they were stronger, jerking me awake with a brutal twist as the bus took the last turn into Starline High’s parking lot.
People stood and started moving toward the door almost before the bus rolled to a complete stop.
Sitting in the very back gave me the excuse I needed to curl around myself for a little while longer, to let the nervous sweat dry and my heart slow down.
I took a few very deep breaths to unclench the cramp in my solar plexus that was pressing on my lungs and making my stomach wriggle.
Even though most of the campers drove their own cars, almost everybody had parents waiting for them in the parking lot.
Nobody wanted their precious car sitting out in the parking lot for three solid weeks, and at least half the parents around here had enough job security or free time on their hands to get away for an hour and take their kid home.
I let the bus empty all the way before I tried to move.
Honestly, I was sort of afraid I’d throw up, and the fewer witnesses to that, the better. Eventually, though, when the luggage locker underneath the bus was beginning to sound hollow and the crowd outside was reasonably thin, I made my shaky way to the front of the bus and down the steps.
My luggage was already set aside for me, a matching brown-and-pink set my mother bought ages ago and had grown bored with.
She had offered to buy me my own. If I hadn’t been feeling particularly forgotten that day, maybe I would have let her—but I had no intention of allowing her to ease her conscience with presents, not after she’d skipped every holiday plus my birthday and Christmas and Mother’s Day last year.
Dad had too—but I didn’t blame him quite as much as I blamed her. He was just the face of the operation. My mom was the one who scheduled the tours. She could have made sure they were home for at least some of the important days.
Like picking your kid up from camp day, I thought as I scowled at the rapidly-emptying parking lot.
Watching kids leave in cars stuffed full of balloons didn’t help my mood much.
Some parents actually enjoyed seeing their children.
Mine—well, let’s just say I’d left my car in the shadiest part of the parking lot the day the bus left for camp.
Leaving my luggage where it was, I hiked across the sticky-hot asphalt and found my car right where I’d left it—tucked between the dumpster and a raggedy old pine tree.
After swinging back around to pick up my things, I started for home. It was a longer drive than it should have been, considering there was only one high school for the whole town—but this was Texas, land of the widespread.
I’d lived there two years, almost three, and still couldn’t get used to how spread out everything was.
You’d think you were on a back road in the middle of nowhere, then boom, you’d find yourself at a busy intersection. Half a mile on down the road, you’d be back to nowhere again.
It was mind-boggling for me.
I’d spent most of my life living in the Bay Area, where the only reason to stop building was for water, fire, or poppies.
I was used to disappearing into crowds and losing myself in classrooms so full that the teachers couldn’t even match names to faces on sight.
Kids flowed in and out like the tides, with only a few staying longer than a few years at any one school.
I never really had a group of friends until I moved to Starline. Of course, I never really tried hard either.
“Honey, I’m home,” I called ironically as I let myself into the house.
Even after two years, the paint smelled fresh and the carpets stayed fluffed without encouragement. It wasn’t surprising.
There were only three of us living here, and my parents were never home long enough to leave an impression.
Knowing that no one would care, or bother to say anything even if they did, I didn’t think twice about dumping my cargo in the living room in a haphazard pile before strolling into the kitchen.
The long drive had left me hungry and what little of the waffles and syrup was still churning in my stomach surely needed a replacement.
I wasn’t sure what I was looking for, but I soon discovered that it definitely wasn’t in the fridge.
The parents must have left around the same time I did—either that or their next overpriced pep talk was going to be on cleaning out moldy refrigerators.
Making a face, I slammed the nasty thing closed and scowled at it.
I had the maid service’s phone number and I knew the parents paid for on-call services as well as weekly clean-up.
I also knew that I would be embarrassed to admit to anyone, even the cleaners, that the family that lived in this million-dollar house didn’t actually do much living in it.
We weren’t much of a family, either, to be honest. I think that part held more shame for me, but I would never admit it.
I was eighteen now. A legal adult, as Mom was so fond of reminding me—when she remembered to talk to me—and I didn’t need mommy and daddy around all the time anymore.
Hell, I hadn’t needed them around for the last five years—as long as they kept my spending account full.
“Because money solves everything,” I muttered sourly to myself as I glared at the refrigerator. “Fuck that.”
I scrubbed the damn fridge out myself, choking and gagging the whole time, but too stubborn to quit.
I wouldn’t be telling the girls about this little adventure.
They wouldn’t understand.
I barely understood it myself, honestly.
Stepping off the bus alone, with no one older or wiser to tell me why I felt badly about things I shouldn’t logically feel badly about, coming home to an empty house where nobody missed me except the leftovers, just set me off.
I’d mostly worked off my anger by the time I set the security alarm and went to bed.
Mostly.
Chapter Four
I wasn’t supposed to meet the girls at the mall until noon, but being home alone was only agitating me.
Even looking at the newly-glistening fridge made me angry, because there was no one to share my victory with.