Chapter 2

CHAPTER TWO

GWEN

T he day before the trees died, I was thinking about survival. The long-term kind of survival was always on my mind: groceries, bills, keeping my dad out of trouble. But as I crossed the busy quad to the school library, my arms piled with books, I was immediately concerned with not getting bulldozed. Kids laughed and jostled each other, various guys tossed various balls. I'd always liked to stay invisible in a crowd, the only downside being that nobody bothered to get out of my way.

The collection of books I was returning was an ode to my love of Gothic literature: The Turn of the Screw , Rebecca , and, of course, several favorites by Edgar Allan Poe. I'd read everything by Poe a dozen times. I felt strangely at home in his world of echoing hallways and high-ceilinged rooms and walls adorned with portraits of some long-lost love. The lives in those books were very different from my own, but the loneliness was the same.

I spent lunch in the library almost every day. Sometimes the place felt too good to be true. It was quiet and they let you read books for free—plus, if I picked an obscure-enough table, the librarians didn't seem to mind if I ate my squished Wonder Bread sandwich there.

I stopped short to avoid colliding with Thomas Fitzgerald, a burly senior who was busy handing photocopied flyers to anyone he passed.

"Watch it!" he exclaimed.

I looked at the flyer in his hand, which declared fitzgerald's eclipse blowout: november 6th in aggressive font. The eclipse was over a month away, and he was already making sure most of the student body would be drunk for it.

"Sorry, Foster," he said, looking at the flyer, then looking at me. "I'm only inviting, like, sevens and above. You understand, right?"

For as long as I could remember, I'd loved the serenity of night, the comfortable blanket of dark sky, the brilliant moon overhead. There was something exciting about the idea of the night overtaking the day. And when it happened, the last place I wanted to be was Thomas Fitzgerald's "blowout."

Maybe a different girl would have told him that. Or maybe a different girl would have slapped him across the face and encouraged him to go screw himself. I just stood there, silently willing our conversation to end. I felt my jaw go tight.

Thomas examined me before adding, "You know, you'd be prettier if you smiled. I mean, not a lot prettier, but?—"

"Excuse me," I muttered at last. The corners of my mouth tugged even further earthward as I shuffled out of his way.

I was preparing to reflect on what an ass Thomas was when I realized Valeria Garcia was watching me from across the quad like I'd just become her target in The Most Dangerous Game . I had bigger problems than Thomas. I wasn't surprised Valeria had set her sights on me. She seemed to love playing with me the way a cat unravels its favorite toy, tearing at the stuffing with indifference.

Valeria was wearing a strapless yellow dress that probably cost more than my dad's ‘99 Chevy Caprice. She was always in bright colors—reds, yellows, the occasional hot pink—and all her outfits included a healthy amount of bare skin. While all my clothing choices were a vain attempt to disappear, Valeria existed to be seen.

Her blood-red lips curved into a playful smile as her eyes flashed in my direction. The wind caught her long, dark hair, making her look like something out of a shampoo commercial from hell, her features at once perfect and unsettling.

I felt a chill travel down my spine. I was scared of girls like Valeria, girls whose looks demanded attention even before they opened their glittering mouths to speak. People were eager to follow beautiful girls, eager to laugh at their jokes, even the cruel ones. Perhaps especially the cruel ones.

I did what I always did when Valeria was around: I kept my head down and avoided her gaze. Whatever she was up to, she could find another victim.

I was a few feet from the library steps when something tripped me—only that was impossible because there was nothing there. No branch, no curb, just the green grass beneath my feet.

It hadn't felt like a branch either. It felt… hot , an invisible, fiery coil around my ankle. It pulled my legs out from under me and I tumbled forward, the contents of my bag flying everywhere. Before I could catch myself, I'd landed facedown, tampons and loose change strewn around me like humiliating confetti.

I lay there, pain shooting up my knees. Tripped by invisible fire? Mental stability had never been a strong suit in the Foster family. Perhaps it was finally my turn to lose my mind.

The laughter of every kid in the quad erupted around me. Come on, how funny was it to watch somebody fall? But I knew why they laughed. Each of them was overjoyed that it was me and not them lying in the dirt.

Then I heard Valeria's voice. Of course she would have a front-row seat to my degradation. That was just the natural law of the universe. So why did I have the insane feeling she'd planned it?

"Wow, Gwen, you just created some great content!"

I looked up to see Valeria triumphantly holding out her phone. Perfect. Whoever hadn't seen my fall firsthand would now be able to watch it over and over on the internet. The loose crowd of onlookers parted as she stepped closer. I watched her eyes travel over me, taking in the shapeless fit and fraying hems of my thrift-store clothes, the rubber separating from the sole of my right sneaker.

"Oh no, Gwen," she said, her voice dripping with sarcasm. "You got grass stains on your already unacceptable outfit."

Laughter erupted from the kids around us. Celeste, who had come to stand proudly by her side, was practically peeing her pants. But Valeria wasn't paying attention to anyone but me. She was studying me intently, as if searching for the hurt her words had caused.

I did hurt. Memories rushed and receded like waves in my mind: Two little girls barefoot in the woods. Hollow logs and black feathers. The crawling things revealed beneath a flat stone.

I wished I could stare back at her and make her feel as ugly as she was inside. Instead, I got on my hands and knees and began stuffing tampons and crumpled dollar bills into my bag as she quite literally looked down on me. The library books were scattered in a haphazard radius around me, and it looked like the whole crowd was just going to watch as I picked each one up.

My eyes froze on a small leatherbound notebook in the dirt beside my copy of "The Tell-Tale Heart." My journal must have flown from my bag when I fell. Instinctively, my hands shot out to grasp it, but Valeria read the desperation in my movement, and she pinned it to the ground with one designer heel.

"What's this?" she smirked. "Your secret diary?"

"Give it to me!" I cried in a tone that sounded far more pleading than threatening.

That told Valeria all she needed to know. She picked it up and began flipping through it as casually as if it were her own. To my horror, she began to read aloud.

" I am solitary as the moon, which only shows its face in the dark. Will I always be the lesser sister to the sun's blazing day? Oh, to be a meteor whose power lies not in light but in destruction. Oh, to combust with you until we are embers, innumerable and free."

Giggles erupted around me, Valeria's laughter louder than the rest. My face burned. I'd written that poem one night as I sat alone in my bedroom. I liked to listen to the night outside—the wind in the leaves, the sounds of living things—as I sat beside my open window and wrote whatever felt true.

That part about the meteor, I wasn't even sure what it meant. All I knew was, for as long as I could remember, I'd had the sense that I was destined for some sort of destruction. I just wasn't sure whether I'd be the one hurtling toward Earth or the one flattened under burning rubble.

"Okay, that was steamy !" Valeria gushed like we were two girlfriends at a sleepover. "Sooo, who's it about? Who do you want to combust with?"

She began thumbing through the pages excitedly, searching for a clue.

Celeste was grabbing at the book now, too, crying, "Lemme see!" like a little kid who didn't want to be left out.

Valeria elbowed her away and kept on flipping, her red fingernails shining like daggers in the sun. This couldn't be happening. Panic flooded my senses. I didn't know exactly what the poem meant, but I did know who it was about. She'd find his name if she kept looking.

"Enough, Valeria."

A gruff male voice spoke over the chorus of laughter. We turned in unison to see Luke Nichols standing on the edge of the circle that had formed around me. Luke wasn't the biggest guy in school—he was more lean muscle than brawn—but he was tall, and right now, something about his presence felt imposing. The crowd began to hush.

I thought a hint of nervous color rushed to Valeria's cheeks when she saw him, but it was so brief I could have imagined it.

"You on a charity mission now, Luke?" she said.

"Give her the book."

"Why should I?" she replied, flipping through a few more pages. "It's just about to get juicy."

He shook his head, and when he spoke, there was genuine pity in his voice. "Val, you think you're embarrassing her, but you're only embarrassing yourself."

The kids around us were completely silent now. All eyes were on Valeria. Her Miss America smile seemed to flicker like a candle in danger of blowing out.

"Screw you, Luke," she replied. She tossed the book at my feet and walked away.

I snatched up the journal and held it protectively to my chest as the group of onlookers began to disperse, heads down. After a moment, Luke and I were standing alone on the quad. I'd never been this close to him, face-to-face. His blue eyes were darker than I thought. Less like the ocean, more like the night sky.

I pulled my gaze away from his. I didn't trust any of the rich kids who lived on Cascabel Road, their towering mansions obscured among the towering evergreens. Some of them didn't seem so bad, but they were strangely close-knit, and Valeria was the sun at the center of their weird little galaxy. What was that de Cervantes quote I'd read once? Tell me what company you keep and I'll tell you what you are. I was aware of the company Luke kept. He was Valeria's boyfriend. For all I knew, he was playing his part in an elaborate prank.

But he was wordlessly gathering my scattered books, brushing the dirt off the worn covers. When he'd collected them all, he handed them to me. I accepted them, dumbfounded. Thank you didn't seem appropriate, but I felt the need to say something .

"I didn't need you to rescue me like that," I blurted. As soon as I spoke, I felt my face go red. I couldn't remember the last time I'd been this blunt with anyone.

He shot me an unbothered grin.

"I know," he replied. "See you around, Gwen."

He walked away, leaving me alone on the quad, my arms full of books.

In eighth grade, Thomas Fitzgerald—yes, prettier-if-you-smiled Thomas Fitzgerald—asked me out. I didn't even like Thomas, and I knew there was a good chance it was some sort of joke at my expense. But something inside my na?ve heart had been thrilled. Maybe , I'd thought, I'm the kind of person who gets asked on dates now .

We'd arranged to meet in front of Diggin's, our local fast-food spot, after school. I'd waited outside for him, the damp winter air making my hair frizzier by the minute. Then, suddenly, he was walking toward me. My heart pounded. It had been real after all.

That was when I'd heard the laughter. Valeria and a few of her minions had stepped out from behind the line of shops across the street. She'd put him up to it, of course. Thomas had never thought twice about me.

I worked at Diggin's after school now. Every time I walked through those doors, I couldn't help but see the ghost of my thirteen-year-old self standing outside in faded jeans, waiting for Thomas Fitzgerald.

After Luke made his mysterious exit, I spent the rest of the school day half expecting him and Valeria to jump out at me from behind a pillar, tears of laughter in their eyes. Strangely, it almost made me angrier to imagine Luke's intentions had been genuine. Did he think he was some kind of saint because he'd picked up a few books? Valeria had implied he was on a charity mission. Well, I didn't need his charity. And I wasn't going to let him use me to make himself feel better about a lifetime of associating with horrible people.

I took my usual route home after school: down Main Street, past the fancy shops and cafes, then left over the iron bridge. There were no boutiques or five-star restaurants on my side of the river, just apple orchards and decaying farmhouses and, beyond that, the yawning mouths of defunct gold mines. I walked the dirt road along the water until I reached my gravel driveway. Across the river stood the lush evergreens that bordered Cascabel Road. Valeria's house stood somewhere within those woods—Luke's, too, though I didn't know for sure which rambling Victorian structure was his. The trees were so thick, the forest floor was dark beneath them, casting its surface into permanent dusk despite the afternoon sun. I longed to wander through those woods, to lose myself among the pines and brambles like I had as a child.

At the end of my overgrown property were the charred remains of an old wooden bridge. Railings still stood on either side of the water, nothing connecting them but empty space. My eyes lingered on the nonexistent bridge as old pain mixed with new in my heart.

I turned away from the beckoning forest and started up the driveway. My dad's car was in its spot, another newer car parked behind it. That wasn't good. I considered walking all the way back to town and killing time in the shops on Main Street until they closed or I was politely asked to leave, but the thought of wandering aimlessly through town made my heart weary. After the day I'd had, I longed for somewhere to land. Or, more accurately, I longed for somewhere to belong.

There's a journal entry, I thought wryly. Dear diary, today I will dissect my literal and figurative desire for belonging. Cue the melodramatic music. I would never put anything like that down in writing, of course. I told myself I preferred my emotions clouded in metaphor, or that I was content to live in a world of fantasy, reading about imaginary people's lives and loves. The truth was, there were some things that seemed so impossible, I had grown afraid to hope for them.

I took a deep breath and walked the gravel path to the front door. As I did, a man emerged from the house. He wore a cheap suit and his black hair was slicked back with what looked like a combination of gel and sweat. As he walked, he examined his knuckles, which were red. I felt my chest tighten. His eyes traveled over me in a way that was at once casual and intimate, as if he could see right through my clothes and it didn't make him uncomfortable at all.

"Hey, Pop-Tart," he said as we passed each other on the driveway.

My skin crawled and my steps quickened, but I replied, "Hey," like the fear of being impolite was somehow worse than whatever this man might do to me.

His left eye closed in what I think was supposed to be a seductive wink, but he kept walking. I heard his car start as I pushed open the screen door and stepped into our tiny living room. I was greeted by the familiar scent of smoke, the kind that clings to the walls when cigarettes are consumed in a small space with the windows shut. The living room was dark, but the TV was on, bathing my father in ever-changing shades of blue light. He sat on the living room floor, a thick red gash above one eyebrow, the skin around it already darkening to a bruise.

"Dad!"

I rushed to him and tried to get a good look at the cut above his eye, but he turned away from me.

"I'm okay, Gwen," he said, his speech slurred. An overturned bottle of Coors lay beside him, the remains of its contents dripping onto the faded carpet. "It's just a shiner."

"What did that man—" I took a deep breath. "How much do you owe him?"

"Don't worry about it," he replied, his tone more defensive than comforting. "I'll win what I owe him tomorrow night. And more."

The casino was about twenty miles east of town. My dad used to take me there all the time when I was little. My mom died when I was a baby, so it's always been just my dad and me. At first the casino felt like a fun house—neon lights and bright colors and cool video-game sounds buzzing out of the slot machines. But it got boring fast. He'd sit me down with a book as he played for hours at the craps table, pausing only to refill his drink. I can still see the pattern in the casino's multicolored carpet. He never came out of that place better off than when he'd walked in.

"Maybe I can take some extra shifts at Diggins for a while and?—"

"Aw, honey, you're not going to earn that kind of money flipping burgers," he said. "Leave the grind to your old man and just be a kid for once, will you? Go hang out with your friends or something."

I didn't have any friends, but I smiled and nodded like the mythical normal teenager my father imagined me to be. "Okay, Dad."

"Now," he said, his tone brightening, "how was school?"

I sighed. Well, Dad, a mean girl made fun of me. Then her boyfriend stood up for me for reasons that remain unclear. Oh, and I think I was attacked by invisible fire, so I might be losing my mind.

"Weird," I said.

He gave my hand a little squeeze, then his eyes closed. His back had come to rest on the couch, his head lolling onto one of the cushions. I went into the kitchen and put some ice in a hand towel. When I pressed it to his eye, he barely flinched at the cold.

Somehow, he looked younger in sleep. Almost innocent. Without thinking, I ran a hand through my hair, feeling its even length. The memory of a dream floated back to me, one so distant and strange I hadn't thought about it since I was a kid.

A couple years after the wooden bridge burned down, I'd sat up in bed in the early morning. A flicker of movement drew my attention to the window. In the dim light of early sunrise, I made out two figures at the river's edge. One was my father; the other was a woman. I watched as he handed her something. Then, my dad lit a cigarette and the woman's face was illuminated momentarily by the light from his Zippo.

It was Lili Garcia, Valeria's mom. In her hand, she clasped what my father had given her, something long and wispy, alight on the breeze. A lock of dark hair.

I woke the next morning with the image of those hazy figures still hanging in my mind. I was no stranger to vivid dreams, probably a consequence of reading before bed and an overactive imagination. Still, all that day, my fingers worried through my hair as if searching for a lock that was shorter than the rest, a lock someone had snipped as I slept. But my hair, as usual, was tragically unkempt; all I found were knots.

In time, the dream faded like the others. I wondered why I was thinking of it now.

I draped a blanket over my dad's sleeping form and propped a pillow behind his head. I switched off the TV and the light in the hallway. I washed the dishes and rinsed out the ashtray that sat on our kitchen table.

This was my favorite time to be at home. My dad was safely sleeping, the world was shutting down for the night, and I was free. In my bedroom, I opened the window and breathed in the cool air. The trees stretched toward the dark sky like hands. I held my arm out the window, my fingers reaching for the half moon. Crickets and frogs sang their little songs to me, and I was at peace.

Leaning back inside, I retrieved my journal from my bag and placed it safely on my bedside table. No matter what else had happened today, I was grateful Valeria hadn't spotted the name scrolled idly between lines or tucked in the margins.

Luke Nichols.

That night, I dreamed I stood beneath the night sky. A blazing meteor hovered above me, crackling heat radiating from its surface. It was larger and closer than the moon had ever been, so close I could almost touch it. I knew that if I did, something terrible or wonderful would happen. Hesitantly, I lifted my hand.

The smell of smoke filled my nostrils. My eyes opened and I blinked at the sight of my bedroom, now flooded with morning light. All the candles I kept on my dresser had burned down to stubs, and one of the flames had begun to ignite the wood itself.

Quickly, I snuffed out the fire with my pillow. After it was out, I stood for a long time, staring at the smoldering wood. I hadn't lit any candles before I went to bed.