“CAMILLA!”
“Yeah…” She struggles to say much, but she tries to reach for me. “It’s…okay…Lydia…we’re going…to be…okay.”
I
Part One
There are wounds that never show on the body that are deeper and more hurtful than anything that bleeds.
-Laurell K. Hamilton
1
Lydia
Age-Twelve
The doors hiss open, and I step down off the school bus with all of the other kids from the neighborhood.
It’s so hot today. The sticky, humid kind of hot I hate. My uniform clings to my skin with sweat, and my back feels drenched where my book bag is resting. It’s heavy, making my shoulders burn a little from the weight.
The west side of Charlotte is always loud, even when nothing is happening—day and night. Especially in the neighborhood we’re in now. It makes it all feel so overwhelming sometimes.
Cars going by with the bass playing so loud that it hurts my head, dogs barking in almost every yard—some chained to trees in the front, some in the back—guys sitting on their front porches smoking cigarettes or passing around a blunt, calling out things I ignore as I walk by, and boys riding around on their bikes or those little 4-wheelers, popping wheelies and yelling back and forth to each other. Everything feels so chaotic, so I keep my head down and my pace fast like I do every day from the bus to the house, not wanting to linger outside around here.
Our current foster house is in a cul-de-sac at the back of this neighborhood in Enderly Park. All I see every time I walk up to the front of the house is the ugly peeling paint on the front door, the broken steps, and the random furniture sitting on the porch.
The front door is never locked when someone’s home, so it just creaks open when I push on it. I immediately smell weed and the body spray that’s trying to cover the weed smell up. Miles, my foster brother, is sitting on the couch in the living room, hitting his bong, smoke curling around his long, wavy, unkempt hair.
I stand there with the front door open for a moment, hoping some of the gross smell will go out behind me. He looks up as soon as he finishes his hit and locks his half-lidded, red eyes on mine as he blows out the smoke in front of him.
“What the hell are you staring at?”
I look down fast, not wanting to talk to him. I close the front door behind me and quickly walk down the hall to the room I share with Camilla and our six-year-old foster sister Alexis. The house always smells damp and moldy, and nothing is ever really kept up with…but it’s not as bad or as dirty as some of the other houses we’ve stayed in before. There are no bugs here at least. What more could a girl wish for in such a luxurious life?
A door…maybe I would wish for a door.
We haven’t had one on our room since the last fight Camilla and our foster mom got into. She took it off, telling her privacy was a luxury, not a right in her house. I guess basic human decency is a luxury around here.
I place my book bag down on the mattress we all share, that’s sitting on the floor, no bed frame of course, because again, that would be too much of a luxury around here.
I grab some clothes from the bucket in our closet and head into the hall bathroom to change. I hate sweating, and the god-awful way humidity makes me feel like I’m suffocating. A fresh pair of clothes always calms down the overload of things I’m feeling on days like these.
After changing and taking my hair down, I grab my uniform from off the bathroom floor and go to walk out. I’m met by Miles blocking me from leaving the bathroom, standing there with the bong in one hand while his other hand is resting on the door frame.
“What’s your problem? You don’t know how to speak to someone when they talk to you?”
I quickly shake my head and whisper, “I don’t have a problem.”
“You’re so weird, you know that? You don’t talk to anyone except Camilla or Alexis, and you never come out of that damn room unless it’s to eat or go to school. What’s your deal? Do you not know how to have a personality? I mean, damn, at least your sister is a little fun. I don’t know whatyourfucking problem is.”
I just want to go to my room and avoid him. These kinds of interactions with Miles never end well.
“Maybe you need to take a hit to loosen up,” he tells me, pushing the bong towards me and bumping my chest.
“I don’t want to,” I tell him, still looking at the ground and not at him.
“Oh, come on. I was basically your age when I started smoking. Stop being so uptight; it’s annoying, and such a fucking buzzkill. You think you’re better than everyone else here or something?”
