years, because words equaled noise, and noise was rewarded with fear and violence. Used to equal those things, but not anymore. I hadn’t spent nearly four years in intensive therapy only to not use my words, and Rosa and Carl hadn’t dedicated every moment of their free time to erasing a past full of nightmares only to watch their efforts fail.
Words weren’t the problem. They flew through my head like a flock of birds migrating south for the winter. Words were never the problem. I had them, always had them, but it was plucking the words out and putting a voice to them that had always been tricky.
I drew in a breath and then swallowed drily. “Yeah. Yes. I’m...ready.”
A small smile tipped up Carl’s lips as he scooped a long strand of hair back from my face. My hair was more brown than red until I stepped outside. Then I turned into a living, breathing crimson fire engine of auburn awkwardness. “You can do this. I completely believe in that. Rosa believes in that. You just have to believe in that, Mallory.”
My breath hitched in my throat. “Thank you.”
Two words.
They weren’t powerful enough, because how could they be when Carl and Rosa had saved my life? Literally and figuratively. When it came to them, I’d been at the right place at the right moment for all the wrong reasons in the universe. Our story was something straight out of an Oprah special or an ABC Family movie. Unreal. Saying thank you would never be enough after everything they had done for me.
And because of everything they had done for me, every opportunity they’d given me, I wanted to be as perfect for them as I could be. I owed that to them. And that was what today was all about.
I hurried to the island and grabbed my book bag and keys before I broke down and started crying like a kid who’d just discovered Santa wasn’t real.
As if he read my mind, Carl stopped me at the door. “Don’t thank me,” he said. “Show us.”
I started to nod, but stopped myself. “Right,” I whispered.
He smiled then, crinkling the skin around his eyes. “Good luck.”
Opening the front door, I stepped out on the narrow stoop and into the warm air and bright sun of a late-August morning. My gaze drifted over the neatly landscaped front yard that matched the house across the street, and was identical to every house in the Pointe subdivision.
Every house.
Sometimes it still shocked me that I was living in a place like this—a big home with a yard and flowers artfully planted, with a car in the recently asphalted driveway that was mine. Some days it didn’t seem real. Like I’d wake up and find myself back...
I shook my head, pushing those thoughts away as I approached the decade-old Honda Civic. The car had belonged to Rosa and Carl’s real daughter, a high school graduation gift given to Marquette before she’d left for college to become a doctor, like them.
Real daughter.
Dr. Taft had always corrected me when I referred to Marquette that way, because he believed it somehow lessened what I was to Carl and Rosa. I hoped he was right, because some days I felt like the big home with the manicured yard.
Some days I didn’t feel real.
Marquette never made it to college. An aneurysm. There one minute and gone the next, and there had been nothing anyone could do. I imagined that was something Rosa and Carl had always struggled with. They saved so many lives, but couldn’t save the one that meant the most.
It was a little weird that the car belonged to me now, like I was somehow a replacement child. They never made me feel that way and I’d never say that out loud, but still, when I got behind the wheel I couldn’t help but think about Marquette.
I placed my bag on the passenger seat. My gaze crawled over the interior, landing on the reflection of my eyes in the rearview mirror. They were way too wide. I looked like a deer about to get slammed by a semi, if a deer had blue eyes, but whatever. The skin around my eyes was pale, my brows knitted. I looked scared.
Sigh.
That was not how I wanted to look on my first day of school.
I started to glance away, but the silver medallion dangling from the rearview mirror snagged my attention. It wasn’t much bigger than a quarter. A bearded man was engraved inside a raised oval. He was writing in a book with a feathered pen. Above him were the words SAINT LUKE and below was PRAY FOR US.
Saint Luke was the patron saint of physicians.
The necklace had belonged to Rosa. Her mother had given it to her when she entered med school, and Rosa had given it to me when I’d told her that I was ready to attend public school my senior year. I guessed she’d given it to Marquette at some point, but I hadn’t asked.
I think there was a part of both Rosa and Carl that hoped that I’d follow in their footsteps, much like Marquette had been planning to. But becoming a surgeon required assertiveness, confidence and a damn near fearless personality, which were three adjectives literally no one would ever use to describe me.
Carl and Rosa knew that, so they were pushing me more in the direction of research since, according to them, I’d displayed the same aptitude in science in my years of homeschooling as Marquette had. While I hadn’t protested their urging, spending forever studying microbes or cells sounded as interesting as spending forever repainting the walls in my room white. But I had no idea what I wanted other than to attend college, because until Rosa and Carl had come into my life, college had never, ever been a part of the equation.
The drive to Lands High took exactly eighteen minutes, just as I expected. The moment the three-story brick building came into view beyond the baseball and football fields, I tensed as if a speeding baseball was heading for my face and I’d forgotten my mitt.
My stomach twisted as my hands tightened on the steering wheel. The school was enormous and relatively new. Its website said it had been built in the nineties, and compared to other schools, it was still shiny.
Shiny and huge.
I passed the buses turning to do their drop-off in the roundabout and followed another car around the sprawling structure, to the mall-sized parking lot. Parking wasn’t hard, and I was a little early, so I used that fifteen minutes to do something akin to a daily affirmation, and just as cheesy and embarrassing.
I can do this. I will do this.
Over and over, I repeated those words as I climbed out of the Honda, slinging my new bag over my shoulder. My heart pounded, thumped so fast I thought I’d be sick as I looked around me, taking in the sea of bodies streaming toward the walkway leading to the back entrance of Lands High. Different features, colors, shapes and sizes greeted me. For a moment it was like my brain was a second away from short-circuiting. I held my breath. Eyes glanced over me, some lingering and some moving on as if they didn’t even notice me standing there, which was okay in a way, because I was used to being nothing more than a ghost.
My hand fluttered to the strap of my bag and, mouth dry, I forced my legs to move. I joined the wave of people, slipping in beside them. I focused on the blond ponytail of the girl in front of me. My gaze dipped. She was wearing a jean skirt and sandals. Bright orange, strappy, gladiator-style sandals. They were cute. I could tell her that. Strike up a conversation. The ponytail was also pretty amazing.
