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Prologue
Ten Years Ago
Let’s play a game…you be me and I’ll be you.
My fingernails dig into the leather seat hard enough that they splinter and break. Actual polish was considered contraband in the juvenile facility where I’d spent the last two years. Instead, I used a permanent marker. The color has faded at the center with dark black still staining my nail beds. From afar, the black reminds me of dirt. Like maybe I’ve been digging my own grave.
These look like the fingers of a dead girl.
My parents didn’t come to pick me up. I shouldn’t be surprised. They missed every family day that the detention center had while I was there. The only visits were from a lawyer and my court-appointed social worker.
It’s easier to forget about all the ways I embarrass them with no bothersome reminders.
My father’s angry silence makes sense. Making our family’s private problems public was the highest crime he could imagine. My mother would follow his lead off of a cliff if he told her to. No way would she risk his displeasure by coming to visit me.
It was stupid of me to think she might still call or write.
And Olivia…I don’t know what to think about Olivia.
I tried writing her letters, but maybe I came on too strong because she never wrote me back. I’m sorry about what happened. I went too far. But I also want an explanation. She watched them haul me away, knowing that I only hurt our uncle to protect her.
Maybe my father never let her see my letters. I hope it’s something like that. If she has just been ignoring me like our parents have, then I’m not sure what I’ll do.
Olivia is the only reason that I didn’t beg my social worker for a placement in foster care.
Not that the social worker would have listened. Her response would have been something like how I’m more than lucky to have the family I’ve got. Most of her clients would kill to be in my shoes.
People like her get so caught up by the money, they can’t see what’s hiding underneath the expensive exterior.
Our family driver has barely spoken a word since he picked me up at the gates of the detention center. It isn’t like I expected my family to be standing outside holding balloons. But it didn’t occur to me they wouldn’t come at all until I realized they weren’t there. Stupid me.
The driver isn’t even someone I recognize. He must have been hired onto the staff while I was gone. God forbid that the first face I see after two years in juvie is actually a familiar one. His stern face is what brings it all home for me. I’m not welcome with my family anymore. They will only take me back because it would be even more embarrassing if they didn’t. No amount of time served or rehabilitation attempted is going to change that.
Anger is a natural reaction. It rolls over me like a heatwave. But I’m surprised by the burning in my eyes as I blink away tears.
I thought I’d run out of tears a long time ago.
My twisted reflection in the window glass stares back at me, mocking my attempts to get control of my emotions. The therapist I’d been forced to see had told me I have a tendency to react with anger when I should really feel guilt instead. She made it clear that admitting to my wrongdoing, really believing that I deserved punishment, was the only way to control my emotional reaction. There was no point in insisting that I didn’t deserve to be locked up because that’s the same thing everyone says.
Her response was always that innocent children don’t get put behind bars.
I pull my feet up on the seat, knees pressed to my chest. Compulsively, I rip open the Velcro strap on my shoe. Then press it back down, only to rip it up again. Over and over, until the sound drowns out the loudest thoughts in my head.
“Enough,” the driver snaps.
When I look up, his repressive gaze glares at me in the rearview mirror.
I rip the Velcro up one more time just to annoy him. “Sorry.”
“Little shit,” he mumbles before looking away.
“You’re the one who refused to turn on the radio,” I remind him.
The drive makes an annoyed sound, but doesn’t respond.
We pass the front gates and my toes curl in my tennis shoes.
I might consider running if I had anywhere else to go.
