* *
Fries. Pop-Tarts. Cap’n Crunch. A Hershey’s bar. Burger. With cheese. I really like cheese. And mustard and ketchup on top. SpaghettiOs with little hot dogs cut up into it. Like Mommy used to make.
Stop thinking of food.
I can’t even cry. It would hurt too much to cry. Take too much effort.
Too cold. The shower in our tiny bathroom in the trailer wasn’t the best place to sleep. I had water. But the water was starting to hurt my tummy.
How long had it been? I needed food.
I tried to get out but he’d done something to stop the door opening on the other side and I could see he’d boarded up the tiny window above the sink.
Sleepiness kept coming for me.
I was so tired of thinking about food.
Just be sleepy.
I heard the stomping of feet outside the door.
A cracking sound.
I felt a sudden tingle of warmth over my face.
“Open your eyes, Trash.”
I opened my eyes.
He glared at me from the narrow doorway. “Punishment is over. I’m sick of using Carla’s bathroom.”
My mouth felt dusty. Dry. Gritty. Like our road outside in the hot summer.
“Well?” He grabbed my arm and hauled me up. It hurt more than usual. “Get the fuck out.”
He let me go and I fell against the door frame, then slumped to the ground.
My legs didn’t work right, I thought, panicked.
Suddenly pain flared up my side and I turned.
He drew his foot back from contact with my hip. “I said get the fuck out.”
Somehow I managed to crawl.
The bathroom door slammed shut behind me. I lay on the floor of our kitchen, staring up at the cupboards.
Finally I whimpered.
There was food. But I was too tired to reach for it.
* * *
I WAS TOLD WHEN I GET OLDER ALL MY FEARS WOULD SHRINK!
I shot awake at the blaring sound of Twenty One Pilots coming from my phone. My alarm. Fumbling for the phone, I turned off the alarm and sat back.
My body was coated in sweat.
I hadn’t had a nightmare like that in a long time but it didn’t take Freud to figure out why the bad dreams were back.
After all, in a couple of weeks I was moving all the way across the country to live with a man I’d never even met.
Groaning, I dragged myself out of bed, wondering why I had been blessed with the most selfish, irresponsible mother on the planet.
* * *
“I can’t believe India is really moving.”
At the mention of my name I halted before turning the corner in the hall. I was on my way to a dance committee meeting after school.
“I can. It’s the first thing since she got here that’s ever made sense,” Siobhan said.
I narrowed my eyes. She was such a bitch.
“How do you mean?” Tess said.
“Oh, please, Tess. You and I both know that India doesn’t bring much to the table. Look where she lives compared to me. She’s way trash. I’m way live. I have the big party house and the pool. And my house is by the beach. She lives in some poky little apartment that only Anna has seen the inside of. It’s a crime that she’s as popular as she is.”
I barely heard anything after “She’s way trash.”
Panic had seized my chest at those words.
No.
This was supposed to be my safe place.
No one could talk about me like that here.
As long as I was still here, this was my kingdom. I whirled around the corner. Tess was already striding down the hall toward the classroom the dance committee used for meetings.
Siobhan had been staring after her but jerked a little at the sight of me.
I eyed her carefully as I passed. “Well. Are you coming or not?”
“I am, but why are you?” she grumbled as she fell into step beside me. “It’s not like you’ll even be here for the formal.”
“Then, no. But I’m still here now,” I reminded her.
And I got more joy than I should have when everyone in the room greeted me enthusiastically and barely acknowledged Siobhan, and still more when a lot of my suggestions were taken despite the fact that I’d be long gone by the time of the actual dance.
I was in control.
Siobhan and her words couldn’t touch me in that room.
“You look tired,” Anna told me quietly once the meeting was over.
I couldn’t exactly tell her that was because, for the fifth time this past week, I’d had one of the old nightmares. It had woken me up at three that morning and I couldn’t get back to sleep.
“Just exhausted. Packing and stuff, you know.”
“I know. Don’t remind me.” Anna wrapped her arm around my waist and pulled me into her. “Did Hayley tell you any more about this guy?”
“A little. And I Googled him.”
Her eyes grew round with curiosity. “What did you find?”
Nothing incriminating. But still something terrifying. “Hayley said he was wealthy. She meant wealthy. This guy is high society. She’s moving me into high society. Me.” I felt the growing panic in my chest, knowing that climbing the social ladder in Boston was going to be near impossible. Being bottom of the social hierarchy was a nightmare. People didn’t notice you down there, and when you were almost invisible there was no one to care if anything bad happened to you. No one to swoop in and stop you from being hurt.
It was a different kind of social ladder altogether in Theodore Robert Fairweather, Esq.’s world. “How am I ever going to fit in there?”
“Not everyone at your school will be wealthy.”
Unfortunately, Anna was wrong. “Most of them will. I’m going to private school.”
She
