Chapter 1

Chapter 1

I balance on the edge of the curb, humming, arms outstretched as though I'm flying.

Today, I finally managed to dye the school mashed potatoes bright blue without Mr. Smith, the cafeteria server, noticing. I grin to myself. Not because I'm picturing the look on Madison's face, or anyone else's, but because I've officially passed the admissions test for the most important club in the whole high school. Which makes me the first person in our grade to make it in, and only the third person in our town.

Although "town" is an exaggeration when it comes to this tiny village in the Nevada desert. Not even a hermit would want to live in Ash Springs. It sits forgotten in the middle of nowhere, lifeless like a shed snakeskin. I should probably be grateful that this wasteland even has a school bus stop. A veil of sullen thoughts descends over my mind, but I push it aside immediately. Nothing can ruin my good mood today—not the extinct-looking streets, not the heat that seems to burn the life out of everything around me. Today, I'm only focusing on the positives.

The sun prickles my skin; my hair tickles my shoulder blades through my backless top, and my colorful bracelets jingle softly.

How will joining the Hades in Love club change my life? Will I automatically become one of the popular kids? I mean, the members are considered the high school creme-de-la-creme—it's an honor just to be nominated for the admissions test. I bet this is finally going to turn my life around completely!

At the intersection, I turn off the main road and onto a sparsely populated side street Jayden has fittingly dubbed the Road to Nowhere. From there, I take the worn footpath to our house, dodging sagebrush every few feet as I walk. Today, even its herbal smell is like some enticing perfume.

No sooner have I reached the picket fence than I spot my third-oldest brother. Liam. He's standing under the apple tree with his eyes closed, balancing on one leg with the sole of his other foot nestled against his thigh. His palms are pressed together above his head, forming a triangle with his arms.

Ever since he came back from India, he's spent every afternoon in the prickly grass, contorting into bizarre positions he calls the Swan, the Crane, or the Crow.

"Is that the Vulture?" I ask, tapping Liam on the shoulder as I walk past, but lightly, so he won't lose his balance.

"It's the Tree, goober," he replies quietly without opening his eyes.

I pick a puny-looking apple and take an energetic bite. Chewing, I watch him for a moment. Liam's the brother I feel closest to. When I was little, he always came up with the best games for me.

"Go catch the rhinoceros!" he'd exclaim to wake me every Sunday morning, and I'd immediately jump out of bed and run into the yard to rope the beast with my invisible lasso. While Ethan and Avery set the table on the veranda, I'd polish my imaginary animal's horn until it gleamed and "feed" it raspberries before popping them into my own mouth.

"Someday Louisa's going to go crazy, and it'll be your fault," Ethan would tell Liam every time, but Liam would just laugh and bring me a bowl of water for my pink rhino. Liam claimed I was more likely to go crazy from doing too much math homework.

"Jayden home yet?" I ask Liam now, even though I know I should quit bugging him while he's trying to meditate.

"Already in there working on one of his million stories."

I have to smile. "Of course." I picture Jayden's slim fingers flying across the keys on his laptop. Living in Ash Springs obviously doesn't bother him, since he can travel to any world he wants through his stories. Liam doesn't mind anymore, either, not since he hiked across India and up into Nepal in order to find himself. When he returned from Kathmandu, he was as emaciated as an ascetic and his matted hair was crawling with lice, but his soul was filled with inner peace. Somehow I seem to be the only one on bad terms with Ash Springs. Avery and Ethan don't want to leave, either. They both work on the same farm that Dad used to.

On a whim, I stretch up on tiptoe and blow into Liam's face. I'd kind of like to share my joy with him, but I don't think the name Hades in Love will make him explode in rapturous excitement. "Wind in your treetop, you knotty old oak," I say, hefting my backpack, and head for the rickety stairs leading into the house. It's a one-story wooden building on short stilts that's always reminded me a little of an old longhouse. The front door is open because of the heat, as it always is when at least two of my brothers are at home.

The wooden floorboards creak beneath my feet as I walk toward the kitchen. There's a plate of sandwiches on the counter beside the gas stove. Jayden probably took it out of the fridge and forgot to put it back. Nothing left of the ham-and-cheese rolls but crumbs. Typical. I take one with salami and flop into a chair in the breakfast nook. I could have eaten at school, of course, but after the whole mashed-potatoes thing, making myself scarce seemed like a wiser course of action. Too bad Jayden's home already. He could have told me how everyone reacted.

As I eat, I fumble my phone out of my backpack and check Facebook. Twelve new messages jump out at me immediately.

Congrats , Madison's written. She's not one to waste words, especially not on gushing praise. She's like Ethan that way. Welcome to godhood , Ava's message says. My stomach starts fluttering in anticipation. Hades in Love means tons of fun, tons of parties, even weekend trips to Vegas clubs with the older boys. Provided, of course, that I manage to convince Ethan that I'm spending the night at Elizabeth's. I scroll through the rest of the congratulatory messages and accept my new friend requests, all of them from club members. Even one from Damon, one of the hottest guys in the senior class. I blow a few sweaty strands of hair away from my face and smile to myself as I accept the request. Every girl at school has a little bit of a crush on Damon, and I have to admit that he's the first boy I've seen that the thought of kissing him doesn't gross me out.

"Where is she?"

Ethan's voice whip-cracks through the open kitchen window, and I jump. Oh, man, he sounds pissed. I hear Liam reply with his usual serenity but don't hear what he says, because I'm busy rummaging through the apocalyptic chaos of my backpack to fish out some books and pens as fast as I can.

Ethan's footfalls thunder across the floorboards. By the time I open the book, he's already in the kitchen doorway, staring at me with narrowed eyes. He's still wearing his work clothes: the plaid shirt with the sleeves rolled up, the mud-caked lace-up boots. Not a good sign. Apparently he was in such a rush to get here that he didn't change at the farm the way he normally does. Hopefully he wasn't hurrying on my account.

"What were you thinking?" he snaps.

Oh no! Suddenly it's even hotter in here. I pretend to continue doing my homework. "What was I thinking when?" I ask cautiously.

"Do you have any idea what kind of consequences this will have?"

I hate when he doesn't just come out and say what the problem is. Especially because I can think of several possible reasons he might be mad right now.

I adjust the ruffles on my pink lace top and then look back up at him. "Ethan, I need to finish this homework, and I really don't know what?—"

"Homework?" His gaze shifts to my textbook, and one corner of his mouth twitches derisively. "You should probably turn the book right-side up, then."

"I was just about to get started."

"Your math teacher called me."

A sinking feeling spreads through the pit of my stomach as I flip the math book around. "Ms. Fitch?" I can only think of one reason why she would want to talk to him, but it's even worse than the blue potatoes.

"Oh, so you know her name? That's comforting." He scowls at me, folding his arms. He's only twenty-nine, and I know a lot of girls at my school think he's cute, but to me he's always seemed like he came into the world old and uptight. Even his hipster ponytail does nothing to remedy it.

"Louisa. She. Saw. You."

My heart somersaults in alarm, but then I remember: Ms. Fitch can't have seen me. Nobody but Mr. Smith was in the cafeteria, and he didn't notice me, because he was busy sorting silverware.

"Of course she saw me," I say evasively. "We had math today."

"You dyed the school cafeteria mashed potatoes blue and caused mass hysteria. Don't you dare deny it." He looks so furious that I really don't dare deny it. He's standing in the door broad-legged, almost like he's trying to block my escape.

"She would call a little prank ‘mass hysteria,' wouldn't she..." I murmur in a lame effort to defend myself. But goddammit, why did he have to be the one to find out? Why couldn't it have been Avery? Because Ethan's the one Ms. Fitch always calls, obviously. It's like they're united in a losing battle against me. She probably has a secret crush on him. I mean, she was totally thrilled to hear that he'd managed to get custody of us—at barely eighteen years old—right after Dad died.

"So you admit it?" Ethan shakes his head in exasperation.

"I thought I'd already been tried and convicted."

He takes a deep breath. I stare at the words and numbers on the page in front of me, mentally bracing myself for the impending lecture, but he's silent. I look up. There's a lot more than just irritation in his eyes. Frustration. Worry. Grief.

"That's not all, Louisa."

True! I smooth the textbook page with my palm, just to have something to do.

"You lied to me." His tone is serious, and he sounds like he's struggling to keep it objective. "You told me you got a C+ on your math test, but you got an F."

My cheeks start burning. I'm ashamed of the grade, ashamed at my own inability to think logically. Liam says I perceive the world using feelings rather than reason, which has its advantages. Ethan, unfortunately, sees it differently.

"Nothing to say for yourself?"

The disappointment in his voice is boundless, which I assume is more due to the lie than the grade. I know it was shady of me, but then again, he's always putting me in these emotional headlocks, acting all injured, and it's completely infuriating. "I have dyscalculia, I can't help it."

"That's not what I mean."

"I didn't want to make you mad."

"So you faked my signature? Don't give me that wide-eyed look, I know you did. And anyway, having trouble with math is no excuse for getting bad grades. It means one thing: study, study, study. More than anyone else. But you never even opened the book, did you?"

"Studying doesn't help me. I don't get math!" I straighten the dog-eared corner at the bottom of the page. "And besides, I wanted to?—"

"You wanted to go to the movies with Ava, so you decided to just bump your grade up a notch." Ethan snorts with indignation. "Louisa... I won't tolerate you lying to me!" He's still standing in the doorway. The heat is hanging in the air, sticking to my skin, and all at once I feel like a cornered animal. Ethan's not letting me off easy this time. But in a way, this situation is his fault, too.

"If you'd let me do more, I wouldn't have to lie," I blurt out angrily. "You're stricter than any dad I know. Why can't you be like Ava's dad?"

"Ava's dad works twenty-four hours a day. He has no idea what his daughter gets up to."

"At least Ava's allowed to go out with her friends if she wants!" I slam the book shut. "And I always have to ask your permission. To do anything! Even if I just want to go over to Emma's. It's so unfair. I'm not three anymore!"

Ethan regards me for a while, his gaze softening slightly.

I look back at him, at the face that's so like mine and my other brothers'. An oval face with a high forehead, wide-set turquoise eyes, and nicely curved lips. Five different variants on the same basic idea, except my features are softer. I have fuller lips, and my blonde hair is one shade lighter.

I can barely remember my dad anymore—he died in an accident when I was five, while he was out baling hay—but everyone in the village says we Scriver kids all look just like him. Especially Ethan. It's pretty obvious from the photos, too.

The problem is that I know he means well. But it doesn't change the fact that sometimes he acts less like my brother and more like my personal dungeon-master.

"Why did you do that today?" he asks now.

I realize I probably do owe him some kind of explanation, and I can't lie to him again. "It was an admissions test," I tell him. "For the Hades in Love club."

"The what?"

He knows perfectly well what I said—the club existed back when he was in school. He's just saying it to show his disapproval as clearly as possible. He raises a reproachful eyebrow. "Aren't those the stuck-up chicks who wear a ton of Tommy Hilfiger and the look-at-me-I'm-so-tough guys?"

"You mean ‘bad boys'?" I ask in a snide voice, although I know there's a grain of truth to his description. Of course only the popular kids are in the club. That's the whole reason I want to join. It's not like I don't have any other friends, but Emma and Elizabeth are like Ethan and Avery: deeply rooted in our village. And I'm sick of vegetating—I want to get out there and start living, before I end up as dried out as the sagebrush.

"You wouldn't fit in with them." Ethan ignores my snarky tone. "We're not super-rich, and you're not super-talented."

That stings, but I don't let it show. I try to remain calm and collected, like Liam. "And yet Ava and Madison asked me if I wanted to join, imagine that!"

"Sure they did. But it was probably the boys that wanted you in. Maybe having a pretty face counts as a special talent. It certainly wasn't your amazing math skills that caught their attention."

I press my lips together to keep myself from hurling some cheap shot back at him, which would only mean even more punishment.

Ethan walks over to me and stops beside my chair. I keep my eyes stubbornly focused on the nick in the kitchen table—left there by a blade years ago, the time Jayden and I were playing knife-throwers. "To get anywhere in life, you need more than just a pretty face."

I roll my eyes. Not this again.

"Under the circumstances, I'm not sure I can let you do that modeling camp. It's not too late to cancel the reservation."

"What?" I exclaim in outrage. Model camp is going to be the highlight of my summer, and it took me a million years to convince Ethan to let me go. "Madison's mother is coming with us and staying right nearby. It's totally safe!"

"You're only five-five, you're too short to model anyway. And besides the fact that neither Ava nor Madison are model material, they're a bad influence. Madison drinks too much, and Ava jumps into bed with any guy who gives her the time of day."

I leap from my chair so forcefully that it scrapes across the ground. "You always ruin everything for me," I snap at him.

"You know we talked about this. You have to get your grades up first." Ethan is perfectly calm, which is not good at all. "Ms. Fitch tells me that you'd rather paint your nails in biology class than participate. You never do your math homework at all, and you're conspicuously absent from physics." He looks me over from head to toe, and then points to my pink-flowered sandals with the silver pearls. "Yesterday I got a bill from Stylight. For five things I doubt I'd wear even if I were a size extra-small and wore a women's eight and a half."

Crap. I totally forgot to tell him. I open my mouth to mount my defense, but Ethan keeps right on talking.

"My issue isn't with the two hundred dollars. It's with the fact that you used my credit card without asking and pretended to be Ethan Scriver."

"I'll pay you back, promise," I say hurriedly. "I just needed a cool outfit for Hades in Love, like, just in case—" I regret it the minute I say it.

And Ethan promptly sighs. "Hades will have to wait."

I stare daggers at him. "What do you mean, wait? You can't just forbid me from joining the club!"

"Lou." I hate it when he does that soft Mister-Nice-Guy voice. It leaves me defenseless, makes it impossible to argue with him. But he's not getting me that easily today! "I don't know what's going on in your life these days," he continues. "I look at you and I see a girl heading in the wrong direction for getting what she wants. What she really wants, you know what I mean?"

"Oh, like you've ever been interested in what I really want," I snap at him. "All you care about is whether I ‘make something of myself,' whether I get good grades so I can get into college and live the life that you wish you had. But you could care less what I think about anything!"

His eyes bore into mine as he fishes his phone out of his jeans pocket, but then he turns his gaze to the screen and scrolls until he finds what he's looking for. "Hi, everybody out there," he reads aloud and glances up at me. I chew on my lip, already half-sure what he's reading. The next sentence confirms my suspicions. "Here in Ash Springs, the asphalt's melting in the sun again, and I'm hanging around and don't know what to do. Does anyone else ever feel like their life is like the monotone road from Ash Springs to Rachel? Like, nothing but dry sand and branches roasting in the heat? Don't you wish something would happen? Something that would grab you like an eagle and carry you into the air, until you can see the whole world from above? Something that makes you soar so high that the rays of the sun light up your heart? Something that turns you inside out and leaves behind a person you don't recognize? Do you dream about that too?"

When he finishes, I swallow. I posted that publicly to my Facebook wall, and when Ethan reads it, it sounds like a prayer demanding to be heard. By someone, somewhere out there.

"Trust me, I know how you feel," he says quietly. "I understand what you want." He slips the phone into his back pocket again. "But this isn't like the movies, it doesn't work like that. We should just be glad that Avery and I have jobs, and that we all have each other. Life can be worth living even if it isn't dramatic."

I study the doorframe intently. "So you're criticizing my dreams now?" I ask in a small voice.

"Mom and Dad would have wanted me to look after you, Lou. I can't just let you do whatever you want all the time."

"You always bring up Mom and Dad when you want me to feel guilty." My throat is closing up, and the words are hard to get out. "When you run out of arguments. But they're dead. They have no idea what my life is like, or yours. None. So who cares what they would have wanted? They'll never know you're here playing Mother Teresa!"

Ethan takes a deep breath, and I can see he's struggling to keep calm. Unlike him, I don't remember our mom at all. She died giving birth to me, and sometimes I wonder whether Ethan subconsciously blames me for it. Maybe that's why he's always so strict. He was twelve when it happened, so to him Mom is more than just a woman's face in a picture frame and a couple of anecdotes. And Dad, he practically idolized. When I think about Dad, I remember a sad man who didn't talk much and almost always smelled like horses and hay. Who rarely had time for me because he worked day and night. But Mom and Dad were everything to Ethan, and I don't know why I said those mean things to him. Maybe because he was comparing my dreams to movies, acting like they're worthless.

I start to apologize, but the way Ethan's shaking his head, with his lips pressed together adamantly like that, keeps me from saying anything.

"You can hurt me all you want, Louisa, but it doesn't change the situation," he says. "Even if you don't honor Mom and Dad's memory, I do. And I sure as hell am not going to let you go chasing a ridiculous dream." He nods toward the door. "I'm going to drive up to your school now. Not everything is just about you this time, for once. Mr. Smith is going to be in a lot of trouble with the administration. If he's really unlucky, they'll call in the Board of Health, and he'll lose his job."

My jaw drops. "That's not true!"

Ethan turns to go, but then pauses and looks down at me. "Did you know he was color-blind?"

"Yeah."

"And you took advantage of it." He gives me a look of contempt.

I try to hold his gaze. "I didn't mean to get him in trouble. Really, Ethan. I'm sorry." Poor Mr. Smith. Ava makes fun of him sometimes because he's such a dumb old coot. I picture them grabbing him and hauling him out of the cafeteria. I feel bad for laughing at the things Ava said about him, even though I actually like Mr. Smith.

"You never mean to do anything," Ethan replies coolly. "And you're always sorry afterward. Maybe next time you'll think twice before you risk a man's job for a bunch of self-obsessed douchebags."

Quickly, I grab my phone and put it in my bag. "Let me come with you, Ethan, please! I can explain that I?—"

"That won't do him any good anymore now. The point is, it shouldn't have happened in the first place. What if some nutjob had put poison into y'all's food?" Ethan sounds like even he can't entirely forgive Mr. Smith's inattention, although he knows perfectly well what happened.

"But it was just food dye," I protest weakly.

"It doesn't matter what it was, he neglected his duties. Don't worry, you can make your case to the principal tomorrow." Ethan points to my book. "You're staying home for the rest of the day. Do your homework, and help Jayden fix the rotten boards under the house. We'll talk about the consequences for your actions after dinner."

I nod, and he leaves. The creaking floorboards sound like they're sighing out his disappointment in me with every step he takes. Although I'm still furious at him, I run over to the kitchen door. "Ethan."

He stops at the front door and looks over at me.

"I'm sorry I said that about Mom and Dad," I tell him quietly.

He nods, but the expression on his face is distant. "I know."

I do actually do my homework, or at least I try to, but months of slacking on algebra means the gaps in my knowledge are more like craters. Plus, I keep getting distracted thinking about Mr. Smith—and about all those rude things I said about Mom and Dad. For the first time, I start thinking maybe they would be just as disappointed in me as Ethan is. That they would think I was a superficial, irresponsible daydreamer whose only good quality was a pretty face. The idea hurts in a way I hadn't expected. Right now, I'm almost glad they're dead so they don't know about any of this.

After an hour of staring at the same equation, I give up. Maybe Jayden can help me later. Instead of moving on to bio, I empty the dishwasher. Motivated by my guilty conscience, I gather the colorful pile of clothes on my bedroom floor and dump it into the laundry bin in the bathroom, and then vacuum the entire house. Then I clean the bathroom as a surprise for Ethan, even though it's his turn to do it, and pick up all the empty yogurt containers and half-full chip bags in the living room.

Cleaning distracts me from sulking. And maybe when Ethan sees it, he'll go easier on me, as in not ground me until the end of the school year. The word "grounded" is so childish that it turns my stomach. Who actually gets grounded anymore?

As I knot the trash bag in the kitchen, I think about what the worst possible scenario could be. He threatened to cancel modeling camp, but he was probably just saying that because he was so mad. "Hades will have to wait"—yeah, okay, he might make me wait until next year to join the club. That would be sort of medium-catastrophic, mostly because I would have to tell Madison and Ava what happened. Hopefully the offer will still be on the table next year.

I mop the floor, too. Better safe than sorry. If I know Ethan, he'll just leave it at a lecture and a week or two of grounding. He can never stay mad at me for too long.

Jayden walks into the kitchen just as I'm pulling the overflowing trash bag out of the wastebasket. "What happened in here?" He runs a hand through his mussed hair, blinking like he just woke up. He always looks vaguely disoriented when he first steps away from one of his stories, like he's still remembering where he is. "The bathroom and the living room are, like, hospital clean," he says, motioning vaguely toward the hallway with his chin. "You could perform open-heart surgery in there." He regards me for a moment, and breaks into a grin. "What'd you do this time? I mean, besides the baby-blue potatoes? Judging from the cleanliness of the house, it must be something horrible, right? Did you poison Ms. Fitch?"

"You heard already?"

"What, you really did poison her?" His grin widens in amusement, though he obviously knows that wasn't what I meant.

"I hate to disappoint you," I mutter, pushing past him, "but Ms. Fitch is just fine. How did you hear about the potatoes?"

"Avery texted me."

"Traitor."

Jayden laughs. As withdrawn as he is around everyone else, he always seems perfectly relaxed in my presence, though I'm never totally sure what's going on in his head. "He's on his way home right now to cook you your favorite meal."

An uneasy feeling begins to spread in my stomach. Ethan probably called Avery and told him what I did. Maybe he even told Avery how he's going to punish me, and Avery thinks he needs to cook my favorite meal to make me feel better. That would be just like the two of them: Ethan's strict, Avery's a softie. Sometimes I feel like they're trying to replace Mom and Dad for me. If so, Avery's definitely the mom.

I take the trash down to the Dumpsters outside our fence. Liam's standing on his head now. If the President of the United States came on the air and announced that the world was ending, Liam would probably go right on doing yoga.

Later, after I've watered the young tomato plants and the string beans behind the veranda, I squeeze in beneath the house with Jayden. We lie there on our backs, shoulder to shoulder, with the wooden floorboards over us and the warm, red earth under us. There's barely three feet of headroom under here, and I feel like I've been buried alive. Thick swaths of cobwebs hang from the support beams. Not the slightest breeze gets through down here, which is why I keep having to put my forearm over my nose and breathe into my sweaty skin to get away from the musty smell.

"This one spot under the bathroom is almost totally busted." Jayden tugs at a plank he's just finished unscrewing with the battery-powered screwdriver in his hand. It snaps in half. "Good thing the floor has two layers—otherwise we might fall right through here while we're sitting on the toilet! We really need to figure out some better ventilation."

The thought of Ethan crashing straight through the floor with his pants around his ankles makes me grin. "Like a better bathroom vent?" I ask.

Jayden groans and laughs at the same time. "The vent in the bathroom doesn't do any good under the floor. I was thinking more like a ventilation system for underneath the house." He uses two fingers to peel away another hunk of rotten wood. "We need to get the air circulating down here."

I feel like a moron. How does he know things like that? He just turned eighteen three months ago, so he's only a year and a half older than I am.

"I looked it up for a novel," he explains as though reading my mind. "Board!"

I reach over to grab one of the boards beside me and pass it to him. "Do you think Mom and Dad would be disappointed in me?" I blurt out.

He stops short and turns his face toward me. Someday I'll probably see it in the New York Times, when he makes it onto the bestseller list. Jayden's totally on another level. He's not like Liam, whose whole life is one long journey to "find" himself. He's known what he wanted to do with his life ever since Avery read him his first book, and he's been working tirelessly to make it happen ever since. He's probably the most ambitious of any of us. A kid Mom and Dad would be proud of. I get another sharp pain in my heart at the realization.

Jayden fixes me with a penetrating gaze. Tiny mosquitos cling to the sweat on his forehead. "That's ridiculous," he says after a moment, a shade too gruffly. "Why would you even think that?"

I confess everything. When I'm done, he whistles through his teeth, which doesn't make it better. "Ethan will get over it," he says then.

I know he's just trying to cheer me up. "Do you think I'm egotistical?" I ask him.

"Obviously."

"I'm serious, Jay. Tell me what you really think of me."

"You're my sister, what am I supposed to think? I think you're annoying."

"Jay!"

"Okay, okay. You're all right, overall."

I'd throw the pack of screws at him if I had room. "Overall?!"

"Like, in general, as a complete package. I mean, I don't think you're available as individual parts."

It makes me think of our old game, where one of us would describe something in three words and the other had to guess what it was. Nowadays, we do it the other way around sometimes. Describe Ash Springs in three words. Describe American history in three words.

"Describe me in three words," I say. "Pretend you're trying to characterize me for your novel, and you can only use three adjectives."

"Nobody would buy that novel." His eyes still light up at the challenge, but he takes his time about answering. First he screws the new board into place and loosens the screws on the next one. The boards creak up above somewhere behind us. Avery's probably home, starting the spaghetti. Or maybe it's Liam, coming in from his yoga session.

"Well?"

"Fun-loving, emotional, insecure." Jayden smiles to himself as he twists a screw into the hole. Hopefully he's not trying to imagine what kind of character I'd make in a book.

"Insecure? Why?"

"Because you need other people to tell you who you are."

"Ethan says I'm superficial, irrational, and difficult."

"And you believe that?"

"Isn't it true?"

Jayden shrugs his shoulders, which looks weird on a person lying on his back. "The negative way of saying fun-loving, emotional, and insecure."

He's given me a lot to think about. He goes on working—silently, which is normal for him—and I just lie there. Afterward I take a shower to scrub all the dirt off. I make sure to pick a top that isn't too low-cut and shorts that aren't too short—my "revealing" clothes are another thing that Ethan and I fight about constantly. He thinks dressing sexy is like advertising to guys that I'm easy. Or worse, that I'm one of those girls that guys like to think "no" means "yes" with. I asked him what went through his mind when he saw scantily clad women, but he waved the question away. Whatever. Tonight I have to make nice, so I slip on a coral-colored blouse trimmed with lace and a pair of dark-blue shorts that go to just above my knees. Then I braid my hair so it'll be wavy in the morning.

When I emerge from my room, the house is already filled with the delicious scents of garlic and fresh basil. I join Avery in the kitchen and snag a couple of the diced sun-dried tomatoes. He gives me a comforting hug, even though I'm the one who's done something wrong.

"Did Ethan say anything to you?" I ask.

Avery makes an indistinct gesture. His face is most like mine, softer than our other brothers', which makes him look a lot younger than twenty-six. Most people think Liam's older, but he's only twenty-two.

"You're not allowed to tell me," I realize after a few more moments of silence.

"Ethan wants you to hear it from him." Avery stirs the pot of pasta, avoiding my gaze.

"That sounds bad."

"I don't think you're going to like it."

"Can't you just tell me? Come on, Avery, I have to be prepared!" I pluck at his sleeve and gaze up at him with a doe-eyed look that almost always works on him.

"You sure did it this time," he says evasively.

"Is that why you're cooking for me?"

"Oh, Louisa," he sighs, turning back to the stove. Maybe he's disappointed in me too. "Ethan just wants you to be able to go to college. You should get a proper degree so you don't end up on a farm."

"You guys enjoy working for Mr. Goodman, though."

"I never wanted to do anything else, but Ethan's not like me... I mean, he had to take the job because we needed the money."

"But I'm not Ethan!" I protest, pushing aside the thought that Ethan had probably sacrificed a lot in life because of us. "Maybe I don't want to go to college."

"What do you want to do, then?"

"I don't know yet."

"See? And as long as you don't know, you should be trying as hard as you can. When you don't make an effort, to Ethan it's like you're just spitting on all his hard work and sacrifices."

I pull some dishes out of the cupboard and start setting the table. "You've said yourself that he's too strict."

Avery turns back around, still holding his cooking spoon. "I'm just trying to explain how he feels."

Normally Ethan is the one explaining how I feel. The anxious feeling in my stomach has been growing ever since I first saw the food, and now it's a hard knot. I'm starting to suspect that he's planning to do something way worse than just ground me.

We eat in awkward silence. Ethan is at the head of the table, his face inscrutable, and the others don't seem particularly approachable, either. I guess they probably all know. The sound of forks scraping against plates is fraying my nerves, and I almost choke a couple of times because the spaghetti with tomatoes and pine nuts keeps getting tangled in my mouth. I feel Ethan's eyes on me. He didn't say one word about how clean the place was—he just asked me about my homework. When I confessed that I hadn't gotten past the first problem, he simply turned away, which was worse than getting yelled at.

After Avery and I have cleared the table and sat down again, my trial begins.

Ethan starts by listing off my many misdeeds with stoic calm: faking his signature, faking my identity online, using his credit card without permission, failing my math test, lying, skipping class, sneaking in through the back door of the cafeteria, dyeing the mashed potatoes blue—which was thoughtless, he adds, and will have consequences as yet unknown. And then there are my bad grades in biology and physics, and the "Ms. Fitch, The Bitch" graffiti Ava and I did on the gym wall... all of which Ethan just found out about today.

Even I have to admit that it's a pretty sizeable list, though to me it sounds like a bunch of minor stuff. "Ava was the one who actually sprayed that," I say meekly, and it's true: I just kept watch and acted like I thought it was cool so Ava wouldn't think I was boring.

Ethan doesn't acknowledge my protest any more than he did the clean house. "This wasn't an easy decision, Louisa," he begins, and then glances around the table like a king regarding his subjects before issuing a new decree. His gaze comes to rest on me. "Long story short, Hades will have to get along without you next year."

His words hang in the air between us. They can't possibly be true. "All next year?" Mind. Blown. He's actually serious. "You can't do that!" I ball my fists under the table in fury and try to hold back the tears forming in my eyes. "What's so bad about the club? You're always saying how important it is to have good friends."

"Do you seriously believe you're going to find real friends in that snobby clique? The sole purpose of that club is to belittle nonmembers to make themselves look better."

"Ava and Madison are okay."

"Besides, you have good friends. Emma and Elizabeth, for example."

Emma and Elizabeth are nice but boring, though I'd probably better not say that out loud right now. "Can't you think of a different way to punish me?"

"You really think that's it?" Ethan shakes his head in disbelief.

My eyes widen. "Isn't it?"

"I canceled model camp. You're coming on vacation with us instead."

Now I can barely breathe. "You expect me to go camping with you guys in the wilderness? You're out of your mind!"

Ethan goes right on talking, unmoved. "Enjoying nature, getting some fresh air, and being somewhere without commercialism or Facebook will all do you good. Oh, right, and speaking of Facebook: your account is being deactivated for the next six months, and you're only allowed to use the Internet for homework purposes. You're also grounded until the start of the next school year."

"Until the start of—that's in August! It's May!"

"That's correct."

"And the end-of-year party..."

"No parties. No sleeping over at friends' houses. Nothing."

I'm utterly speechless. My lips are trembling, but I definitely, definitely do not want to start crying. I never would have thought he'd go this far, that he'd ruin my entire life!

Avery lays his hand on my arm. "It'll be fun, Lou, you'll see. We're going to some national parks. We're going camping, and we'll see the giant sequoias, and there are lots of waterfalls in Yosemite... and we might even spot some elk or caribou."

I shake his hand off. A million thoughts are racing through my head, but before I can turn them into a sentence, Ethan starts talking again.

"From now on, every night when I get home, we're going to review a chapter of your math book. Hopefully by the end of summer break you'll be caught up to the others."

"I have to study during vacation?"

Ethan allows himself a smile that makes me want to strangle him. "It's not like you'll have anything else to do. If necessary, I'll bring your books with us on the camping trip."

"You're only doing this because I said that stuff about Mom and Dad," I manage to stammer, and a tear runs down my cheek. Impatiently, I wipe it away and jump out of my seat. I glance over at my other brothers. Jayden's staring at the table, Avery's trying to keep his expression as breezy as possible, and Liam is rolling some herbs he picked himself into a cigarette. Not one of them is taking my side—Ethan must have prepped them in advance. For my own good, of course! I feel betrayed and abandoned by them all.

"I'm sorry, Louisa," Ethan says as he rises to his feet and comes toward me. "You have to learn to show responsibility. Food dye has no business being in school food, just like your most personal hopes and dreams have no business being on a public Facebook wall. I genuinely think this is what's best for you."

He tries to put a hand on my shoulder, but I jerk away, shaking my head vehemently. "No, it's what's best for you, so that you can feel great about yourself!" I choke out. "Maybe I should just leave! Then all your worries will go away, and I finally won't have to be around you anymore! That would seriously be the best thing that ever happened to me!"

I storm out of the room. Before I slam the door, I hear Liam and Jay reasoning with Ethan.

None of them stuck up for me. I really do wish I could just start packing!