“Are you even listening to me?!” she shouts and I shake my head. Fuming, she snatches the bear from my hands.

That snaps me out of my motionless trance. “Hey, that’s mine!” I cry, jumping to my feet and lunging for the bear. My shoulder bumps into her arm as she moves it out of my reach.

She moves back and tucks her arm behind her back. “Consider it a punishment for hurting my daughter.”

“Your daughter deserved it.” I panic. If she does anything to that bear I won’t be able to take it. I need that bear or else I can’t survive—don’t want to. Why did I survive?

“Well, when you’re ready to apologize to Jennifer, you can have it back.” She heads toward the door to the house where Jennifer is standing with a smile on her face, expecting an apology.

“Sorry,” I practically growl, wanting the damn bear back enough that I’ll do whatever she asks at the moment. “Please, don’t take it away.” Desperation burns in my voice. “It’s all I have left of my mom and dad—it’s all I have of them.” I’m begging, weak, pathetic. I hate it. I hate myself. But I need that bear.

Jennifer grins at me as she crosses her arms and leans against the doorway, her cheeks stained red from the drying tears. “Mom, I don’t think she’s really sorry.”

Amelia studies me for a moment. “I don’t think she is either.” She frowns disappointedly, like she’s finally seeing that she can’t fix me, then turns for the door with my bear in her hand. “You can have it back when I see a real apology come out of that mouth of yours. And you better make it quick because you won’t be here for very much longer.”

“I said I was sorry,” I yell out with my hands balled into fists at my side. “What the hell else do you want me to say?”

She doesn’t answer me and goes into the house with my bear. Jennifer smirks at me before turning for the house, shutting the lights off and then closing the door on her way inside.

Darkness smothers the garage and I’m suffocated by the dark. But it’s nothing I can’t handle. Seeing things is much harder than seeing nothing but the dark. I like the dark.

I slide down to the ground and lean back against the wall, hugging my knees to my chest as I let the darkness settle over me. A few tears slip out and drip down my cheeks and I let more stream out, telling myself it’s okay, because I’m in the dark, and nothing can be seen in the dark.

But after a while I can’t get the tears to stop as what Jennifer and the other kids said plays on repeat inside my head. I think about the last time I saw my parents lying in their coffins and how they got there. The blood. I’ll never forget the blood. On the floor. On me.

More tears spill out and soon my whole face is drenched with them. My heart thrashes against my chest and I tug at my hair as I scream through clenched teeth, kicking my feet against the floor. Invisible razors and needles stab underneath my skin. I can’t turn off the emotions. I can’t think straight. My lungs need air. I hurt. I ache. I can’t take it anymore. I need it out. I need to breathe.

I stumble to my feet and through the dark, until I find the door that leads to the driveway. I shove the door open, sprint outside into the sunlight and race past the cars parked in the driveway and toward the curb. I don’t slow down until I’m approaching the highway in front of the house where cars zip up and down the road. With no hesitation, I walk into the middle of the road and stand on the yellow dotted line with my arms held out to the side. Tears pool in my eyes as I blink against the sunlight, my pulse speeding up the longer I stay there and that rush of energy that has become the only familiar thing in my life takes over.

It feels like I’m flying, head-on into something other than being moved around, passed around, given away, tossed aside, forgotten. I have the unknown in front of me and I have no idea what’s going to happen. It feels so liberating. So I stay in place, even when I hear the roar of a car’s engine. I wait until I hear the sound of the tires. Until I see the car. Until it’s close enough that the driver honks their horn. Until I feel the swish of an adrenaline rush, drenching the sadness and panic out of my body and mind. Until my emotions subside and all I feel is exhilaration. Then I jump to the right where the road meets the grass as the car makes a swerve to the left to go around me. Brakes screech. A horn honks. Someone shouts.

I lie soundless in the grass, feeling twenty times better than I did in the garage. I feel content in a dark hole of numbness; a place where I can feel okay being the child that no one wants. The child that probably would have been better off dying with her parents, instead of being left alive and alone.

Chapter 1

Violet


(Freshman year of college)


I’ve got my fake smile plastered on my face and no one in the crowd of people surrounding me can tell if it’s real or not. None of them really give a shit either, just like I don’t. I’m only here, pretending to be a ray of sunshine, for three reasons: (1) I owe Preston, my last foster parent I had before I turned eighteen, big time, because he gave me a home when no one else would; and (2) because I need the money; and (3) I love the rush of knowing that at any moment I could get busted so much—so much that it’s become addicting, like an alcoholic craves booze.

“You want a shot?” the guy—I think his name is Jason or Jessie or some other J name—calls out over the bubbly song beating through the speakers. He raises an empty glass in front of my face, his gray eyes glazed over with intoxication and stupidity, which are pretty much one and the same.

I shake my head, my faux smile dazzling on my face. I wear it almost like a necklace, shiny and making me look pretty when I’m out in public, then when I go home I can take it off and toss it aside. “No thanks.”

“You sure?” he questions, then slants his head back and guzzles the rest of his beer. A trail drizzles from his mouth down to his navy blue polo shirt.

I’m about to say Yes, I’m sure, but then stop and nod, knowing it’s always good to blend in. It makes me look less sketchy and people less edgy and more trusting. “Yeah, why the hell not.” I aim to say it lightly even though I loathe the fiery taste of hard alcohol. I rarely drink it, but not just because of the taste. It’s what I do when it’s in my system, how my angry, erratic, self-destructing alter ego comes out, that makes it necessary that I stay sober. At least when I’m sober, I have control over the reckless things that I do, but when I’m drunk it’s a whole other ballgame, one I don’t feel like playing tonight. I already have a barely touched beer in my hand and have no plans on finishing it.

Jessie or Jason smiles this big, goofy, very unflattering smile. “Fuck yeah!” he practically shouts, like we’re celebrating and I want to roll my eyes. He lifts his hand for me to high-five and I slam my palm against it with a frustrated inner sigh, even though it’s a good sign because it means he’s veering toward becoming an incoherent, drunk idiot.

It’s always the same routine. Get them drunk and then I can get more money. It’s what Preston taught me to do and what I do pretty much every weekend now, hitting up the parties around the nearby towns. Never in the town I go to college in, though. That would be too risky and way too easy to get noticed according to Preston.

I’m wearing a tight black dress that shows off what little curves I have, along with my leather jacket, and thigh-high lace-up boots. My curly black hair that’s streaked red hangs down my back, hiding the dragon tattoo and two small stars on the back of my neck, each star drawn to represent the people who have loved me in life. I usually wear my hair down because guys always seem to like to run their fingers through it, like they get their kicks and giggles from the softness. Personally, I have no opinion about it, although a lot of girls seem to gush over guys playing with their hair. Let them touch it if they want, just as long as I get paid at the end of this charade.

J, as I’m going to call him because I honestly can’t remember his name, pours two shots of tequila, spilling some on the countertop. When he hands it to me I slam it back without so much as flinching, filling up my mouth with the disgusting drink, then I quickly move my beer up to my lips, pretending to chase the shot with it, when really I spit the tequila into the bottle. I smile as I move the bottle away from my mouth and set the empty shot glass down on the counter. Preston would be so proud of me right now, since he taught me that little trick as a way to stay sober when everyone else is getting drunk to avoid mistakes with the deal. And I’m glad, because mistakes with Preston never go over well.

“Another?” J asks, pointing a finger at the glass.

I decide it’s time to move on from shots and on to taking care of business. I dazzle him with my best plastic smile as I set my beer down on the counter. I stained my lips a bright red before I left and my dress is low-cut enough to show a sliver of my cleavage, created by a push-up bra. It’s all a distraction, a costume to keep them focused on something else besides the deal. Distractions equal mistakes.

I grab the bottom of his shirt and bat my eyelashes at him as I lean in, trying not to scrunch my nose at the foul scent of alcohol on his breath. “How about you take me to your room?” I breathe against his cheek. “So we can take care of some business.”

He blinks his blue eyes through his drunkenness, alarmed by my bluntness. Most people are. And that’s what I love about it. Throw them off. Never let them know what’s really hidden in me. Never let anyone in because no one really wants to get in, not for good reasons anyway.