Chapter One

“Fuck you, motherfucker,” I grunted in peppermint flavored fury. Tap, tap, tap. My fingers danced an angry staccato on the worn-down pleather of my steering wheel as I watched my check engine light glare at me from the dashboard while I lamented my life.

The black polish adorning my nails had just the wrong amount of glitter. It danced in the flickering moonlight that slipped between the overlapping branches of the trees I raced past, unsure if I needed to stop yet.

I’d bought the polish over a year ago, blasting into the Sally Beauty store by my work in an explosion of black leather and rebellion. I’d made the glitter discovery later, under cover of darkness, when I began to slather the paint across my bitten-down nails. I’d tried to be neat. I really had. Despite the shit job, I’d still beamed with pride down at my first outward rebellion. That was, until I realized the name “Black Midnight” on the label did not, in fact, mean “Midnight Black.”

What it did mean, however, was glitter.

The unassuming kind, sure.

But glitter is still glitter, no matter what form it takes.

I’d grown to love my almost-sparkly-rebellion-fingers just as I’d grown to love the piece of shit blue Yaris I’d gotten as a hand-me-down from Jeffrey.

The fact I’d been allowed to get a license at all was a miracle considering how tight a hold she had always kept on my leash.

Now, here I was, the pine trees climbing towards the indigo sky like little (big) parasites. It probably would’ve been beautiful if my eyes weren’t dry as a forest fire and my blood hadn’t been replaced with burnt coffee about four gas stations ago. Right now, my body composition was almost eighty percent righteous indignation.

Except the person I was pissed at was myself, so maybe it was more self-loathing.

I had almost reached my destination, but I had no plan of action, only trees, my own determination, and now my check engine light for company.

I’d never driven before.

Well, I had. But not beyond the city limits in my small hometown in Oregon.

There were thousands of miles of asphalt between me and the apartment—and the brother—I’d abandoned.

Zooming down the road, I realized I was nothing but a speck passing by on the distant highway. The houses I passed were lit up, the families inside sharing lives I would never know about.

 They were people I’d never meet.

People who had dreams, hopes, ambitions just like I did.

Every glimpse I got of their silhouettes was nothing but a phantom of the lives I knew they shared, and I was just a voyeur.

A shadow.

A ghost.

With the rain-slicked road stretching out in front of me and the lights of houses glimmering behind me, the loneliness I’d felt for all my life came to mind. It had always been claustrophobic.

 It had seeped inside my body like an ocean breeze. Slipping inside my cracks and crevices until I was made of nothing but isolation and the will to survive.

I felt loneliness now, but instead of claustrophobia, I felt power in it.

I’d been numb for so long, I welcomed each new feeling with open arms—good or bad.

It felt like I’d been asleep so long the world had moved on without me.

As I passed by driveways, mailboxes, and power lines, my heart stuttered to life for what felt like the first time in my chest. I was almost to my destination.

There was potential to my anonymity that made the parts of me that had long been dead begin to wake up.

This was the path I had chosen.

 Not the one that had been given to me.

 I wasn’t being denied anything, because I had set myself on this course. I was following my own trajectory into the unknown. Maybe I should’ve been frightened of what I would become. Maybe I was.

Fear and I had always kept close company.

Frightened or not, I was an arrow traveling through space with no tether. And though the unknown was full of terrifying new things, thinking about falling face-first into it also made me feel…real, for probably the first time since I’d been nine years old and my world had been torn apart.

I was tangible.

This was just another step in a long line of rebellions.

First, after first, after first.

I’d been stuck, trapped like a bird in a cage built just big enough for me to squeeze inside. I’d had no room to flap my wings, no room to do anything but wilt.

After a while, it had almost been like I had forgotten how to fly at all. My mind became the trap, and I knew one day when the cage opened and I stretched my wings for the first time in over a decade, it would take me a long time to figure out how to fly again.

I was free now though.

My wings were spread wide, my puppet strings cut, and even though I was scared, at least I wasn’t numb.

I passed the sign that led into Elmwood, my gaze catching on the text below the town name that was scrawled in nearly illegible white letters: Come for a day, stay for a lifetime.

I wasn’t sure if this was an omen or not, but I figured I already knew what hell looked like. I could handle a few creepy locals and a dead-end job for a while if it meant finding my freedom on a larger scale.

For the first few years of my life, I’d lived in Elmwood, basking in the sun of my mother’s smiles, until those smiles turned to storm clouds and I watched as the woman who raised me disappeared from my life.

I tried not to think about her much—either of my parents, really. I’d let the memories fade like old photographs in the hopes that if they were gone, somehow the hell I lived in would be easier to bear.

Forgetting had always been my coping mechanism of choice. But the happy memories seemed to cling despite the fact I’d lived sixteen long years with only my parents’ ghosts for company.

I could still feel the places she’d last hurt me, the woman who haunted me like a specter in the night, her touch cruel, her smile even crueler.

My demon wore Gucci slides and acrylic nails. She smelled like cinnamon-flavored gum and open chapels, and when I looked in the mirror on days I was feeling particularly vulnerable I saw her eyes staring back at me.

She wasn’t my mother, but her face was close enough that I had tried to forget my mother’s likeness so it wouldn’t hurt quite so much to look at her.

“Fuck,” I swore under my breath, a sharp snapping noise echoing through the air as something deep inside my car broke, and every warning light known to man lit up my dash.

At least I crossed the town limits, I thought distantly as I was forced to pull onto the side of the road barely ten feet in front of the sign.

The exhaustion that had plagued me for the past five days—my whole life really—caught up to me as I saw my chance to sleep somewhere other than the back of my car slip between my fingers.

It was midnight on a weeknight. There was no way in hell any sort of mechanic was going to be open this late. The town I’d grown up in had been at least four times the size of Elmwood, and everything closed by nine most nights.

Which meant more than likely I was shit outta luck.

Frustrated tears burned behind my lids and I closed my eyes for a moment, my forehead pressed to the sticky pleather of the steering wheel as I tried to get my breathing under control.

Though the air was chilly where it crept through my open window, the night felt stifling. Anxiety squeezed its fingers around my throat as I opened my eyes and stared blearily at the trees on either side of me.

They were both familiar and unfamiliar; a glimpse of a past I didn’t remember. Their spindly branches reached towards the stars, like they thought if they just tried hard enough, long enough, desperately enough—they could cross the distance and finally touch.

I could relate.

Wanting my car to be fixed wouldn’t fix it though, so I did the only thing I knew how to do.

Smack, smack, smack.

No dice. Predictably, hitting my dashboard did not in fact fix my problem.

I hit it again just to be sure.

I glared at the dashboard where the engine lights remained on and I remained…just as lost, just as drained, just as frustrated as before. Except now I had a stinging hand on top of my morose thoughts.

“Fuck my liiiiife.” My head thunked back against the headrest as I stared up at the gray ceiling only a foot above my head. It was discolored from years of use, the fabric worn but solid, still stained from that time I’d accidentally erupted orange Fanta all over the interior. I breathed a frustrated huff through my nose before I wilted and the wind left my sails.

I’d sleep another night in the back seat of my car. This was fine. This was all fine. It wasn’t that big of a deal. It didn’t matter that I had a roof waiting for me only a few miles up this very road. Just like always, I was going to have to do what I had to do.

This was fine.

Good, even.

It meant I would have daylight to light my way as I broke into my parents’ abandoned house.

Everything would be just fine.

Maybe if I told myself that often enough I’d start to believe it.

The spring chill that crept through the cracked window felt a lot like the one I’d left behind in Oregon. I tipped my head towards it to inhale greedily, rolling it down further when the small trickle of air wasn’t enough to make my lungs expand. The lingering breeze caressed my cheeks, blowing my bangs away from my eyes, and I taught myself to breathe again.

I had money. If I needed it. I refused to use it for anything other than a roof over my head or food to fill the ache in my belly. I’d need to add ‘paying for a mechanic’ to my list of approved expenses. My car was a major part of my get-out-of-Dodge plan and there was no way I could survive without it.

The sweet crooning of Taylor Swift singing about teardrops on her guitar echoed through the empty interior until I flipped the ignition off and the car became silent as the grave.

The CD had gotten stuck when I was sixteen, riding around in the passenger seat as Jeffrey sang—bellowed—with reckless abandon at the top of his lungs. He’d always been like that. The sun to my moon. The big brother that was mine in everything but blood.

That was part of why I’d had to run in the first place. One of us had to leave so the other could follow. And for the first time in my life, I’d decided that I wasn’t content to sit on the sidelines. I’d let too much shit happen to me for too long. When I’d discovered papers hidden deep within my uncle’s desk, my fate had been sealed.

I owned a house.

It was my parents’ house, the one I’d spent the first half of my childhood in. It was halfway across the country, but it was mine. We’d hatched up a plan, and though I’d left earlier than expected, I knew where I needed to be if I was going to escape once and for all.

I, Blair the coward, would be brave for once in my goddamn life.

Even if it killed me.

I listened to crickets chirp outside my window as the cold crept into my bones and my hands began to sweat in the anxious way they did when I was about to sleep out in the open. I’d learned from a young age that being vulnerable only meant pain. I’d built walls, and forts, and fortresses to protect the parts of me I still had left.

So much of who I was, who I was supposed to be, had been broken apart to fit inside the mold my aunt had created for me.

Now I was Pinocchio, desperately trying to become a real boy, Frankensteined together from spare parts.

I moved to the back seat, noting not for the first time that my nails were due for a fresh coat of paint. When I looked at them I could still feel the original spark of the rebellion that had led me to where I was now, exhausted and dissociating, as I slumped across the cushions with a bruised knee and a chip on my shoulder.

Before the polish, my rebellion had started with even littler things.

Things so small even I didn’t notice. Years of my soul fighting back before my conscious mind made the decision to do so. I’d always controlled what went into my body with a vengeance because it had been the only thing in my life she had allowed me to choose. With each food I crossed off, I felt a piece of myself slot back into place. After that, I’d expanded in specks of rebellion, scattered here and there. Anything I could get away with. The type of music I listened to when I was alone. The movies I downloaded on Jeffrey’s laptop. Stolen eyeliner. Explicit Google searches when I was away from home.

Then came the lies.

One by one they grew larger until the sick feeling that roiled inside my gut every time I spoke faded to a numb sort of nothingness. Bits and pieces of who I was that had been buried long ago broke through the soil of my self-imposed prison with each battle I won.

And yet, despite the foundation of my escape, still—I had taken the nail polish off every time I went to her house for Sunday dinner. My cuticles bled from my nervous chewing, the sting of acetone nothing compared to the burning sensation that accompanied shutting myself back into my coffin once again. I became a corpse whenever I was in her presence. And even though I turned to clay for her—moldable, malleable—it was never enough to get her to love me.

I’d learned that too late.

I bunched up my sleeping bag, shifting it around into a makeshift bed as I leaned between the two front seats to turn the keys in the ignition enough I could roll up the windows until there was only a crack left open. The breeze was nice now, calming, but I knew the moment my eyes shut it would remind me of open spaces, of choices I now had but didn’t know what to do with.

That much possibility was as stifling as it was liberating.

When the windows were rolled up and my ass was wedged between the seats I let myself breathe. The sound of crickets and other wildlife rustling outside was stifled by glass and I relaxed incrementally with each breath I took as I settled back into the back seat to wait for sleep to overcome me.

Suddenly, it occurred to me that someone might find me here.

Even though it was late, I was currently parked just off the main road into town, the only road into town. Elmwood was tiny, so an unfamiliar car would be more notable here than it would’ve been back home. Anxiety buzzed bright in my chest, but I forced it aside.

There was no hiding when I was stranded like this. I’d be lucky enough to have someone come to help me. Even though my brain screamed about serial killers, psychopaths, and that one scene in Silence of the Lambs that had made me swear to never help someone stranded on the side of the road.

I was a five-foot-nothing ball of rage. I ran on plant fuel and sarcasm—even dragging a thousand-pound chain of trauma behind me, I still only weighed about five pounds soaking wet. I knew I was about as intimidating as a bug-eyed chihuahua. Even with the vitriol I consumed like coffee I was still self-aware enough to realize I’d spent more of my life under fists than I had raising my own.

And now I was paranoid.

Great.

I tried to settle down but my pulse wouldn’t stop hammering and my palms were slick. Fuck. Sometimes I was my own worst enemy. Thoughts of my own physical ineptitude were bound to keep me up as I imagined every scenario that could possibly ruin my night. The trees swayed outside my window and I startled when an owl hooted in the distance.

Get yourself together, Blair. You’re fine. It’s just a bird.

Likely story.

Just a bird, my ass.

God. What had that story been about? The one with the parked car and the guy with the hook and the—

Yep. I’d take angry villager over a murderous psychopath any day.

Headlights blinded me momentarily as a truck approached from down the road. I had only a moment to pull myself together before the truck was flipping a U-turn behind me and pulling up behind my car.

Fuck.

Did I have some sort of weapon? A flashlight? Pepper spray? I scrambled around under the seat and was greeted with a half empty bag of potato chips and a barren burrito wrapper.

My pulse tripped as I flailed the rest of my way out of my makeshift sleeping bag cocoon. I wasn’t sure if it was too paranoid of me or not to wait inside the car to be approached. The feeling of fear that settled like lead in my gut was as familiar as slipping on an old pair of skinny jeans. Bile rose up the column of my throat and a voice in the back of my mind whispered run, Blair.

Run before they can hurt you.

Footsteps crunched on gravel and then a man’s hairy face filled the window to my left. His eyes were kind, and even though my grip on my sleeping bag was deathly tight, his expression remained friendly. There was nothing noteworthy about him aside from his smile and his furry beard. He rapped on the window twice before pulling back and giving me room to move.

It took me an embarrassing amount of time to exit the car, and when I did I could feel sweat lining my temples, slick and colder than the rain that drizzled on my head the moment I stepped into the brisk night air.

“You need help?” the man asked. He was probably in his forties, his face weathered—but in a way that screamed kindness and a life full of laughter. He had sunspots and freckles, and I found myself relaxing despite my earlier paranoia. I curled my arms around my torso to keep in my body heat as I self-consciously hid my painted nails inside the folds of fabric in my hoodie, scared as I always was of standing out in a bad way, especially with no witnesses around.

There was nothing I could do about my bruising or the fact that I hadn’t showered since passing through a Flying J in Indiana. I’d grown up practically glowing neon from an invisible sign over my head that said ‘this one’s gay.’ I had little hope of hiding, even though I tried. I would probably always be wary of strangers, concerned how I was about to be received, not because I was ashamed, but because I knew how it felt for hatred to be turned like a knife toward me and I wanted to minimize the possibility of more abuse.

I’d been touched by unfriendly hands so often it was always my first thought. Maybe some day that would change. But not today. Not stranded on the side of the road with a possibly murderous stranger.

“Yeah.” I flushed awkwardly, nails digging into my arms through the fabric of my hoodie. The rain was mist-like  and it soaked inside the cotton, through my undershirt and my skin until it settled inside my very bones. “My car made this…snapping noise, or whatever? And it just—” I made a helpless gesture with my hand, remembering too late that I was trying to hide my polish.

Most people could ‘handle’ a gay boy.

Add in the goth part and they started to have a problem. Not that I was really much of a goth anyway, other than my obsession with all things fanged and furry and my tendency to wear weirdly erotic Dracula themed items of clothing. They were campy. I liked it.

Not everyone else did.

“Snapped?” He ran a hand over his beard thoughtfully, his headlights glaring from behind us as he hummed for just a moment and then shifted to move around to the front of my little hatchback. I’d always thought the car was cute. I’d nicknamed it the bat-mobile about the same time Jeffrey and I had watched the original Dracula for the hundredth time. He’d let me scribble doodles of it all over his arms in Sharpie as I gesticulated my plan for adding vinyl bat wings to the doors and fangs on the little grate between the two front headlights. The car was short and round enough it vaguely resembled a rodent and I’d thought I was brilliant at the time.

I hadn’t gotten around to doing it yet, but I still had the vision inside my head, burned in the back of my mind along with my plans to get more tattoos and my nose and nipples pierced. There were a lot of things on my to-do list. But I knew the opportunity to do them wouldn’t come until I was at least safe enough to breathe again.

After all, even though I was thousands of miles away from the condo I’d left behind, Elmwood was still my hometown. It would be easy enough for her to find me here. I didn’t dare utter her name. She was my own personal Voldemort and I’d avoided acknowledging her or what had happened to me as much as possible. Most of the time the memories faded quickly anyway. That was my brain’s coping mechanism of choice. Forget, forget, forget.

It’s what I’d done with my parents’ deaths.

Self-preservation at its finest.

I watched the friendly villager pop my hood and ‘hmm’ and ‘haa’ for a minute before he turned back to me with a thoughtful look. “I can’t be sure, but it looks like your timing belt broke.”

“Okay.” I nodded, not really sure what the hell that was but I wasn’t about to admit that. I squeezed myself tighter, holding together the shattered pieces that threatened to fall off. I had no idea how serious this was going to be and the money I had been saving was barely enough to get me by. I needed a place to stay after all. Staying inside the abandoned house was a temporary measure, and the first thing I hoped to rectify.

Aside from the food thing.

Because fuck, I was so hungry I could feel the hollow ache all the way up my throat. I’d never understood the phrase ‘hungry enough to eat an elephant’ until now. Except, I was vegan. So maybe I was hungry enough to eat a prize-winning pumpkin?

“What did you say your name was?” the man asked me as he fiddled with his phone. It looked like he was texting someone and distantly I wondered if he had a mechanic on speed dial. Somehow I found it unlikely anyone would be willing to drive out here, especially considering the hour. Actually, if I thought about it, it was really strange that the man before me was out at all.

Paranoia struck again.

I watched his large shoulders absorb the rain as I inspected him for clues. My eyes caught on the extra body hair, the almost yellow glint to his eyes, and the way his nostrils flared every time a bird chirped in the distance. Or maybe he was just smelling me? In the end, my observations were inconclusive.

I took an awkward step back in embarrassment, suddenly worried he could smell the bean burrito I’d tried to clean off my jeans with determination, spit, and two unfortunate napkins just that morning.

“Blair.” I realized belatedly it might actually benefit me to tell him my full name. After all, I was about to become a semi-permanent fixture in the town as I figured out a way to make some quick cash and sell my inheritance. “Evans,” I added, as an afterthought.

If I hadn’t been watching him so closely I might not have noticed the way his entire body tensed up the moment my name settled in the space between us. He went still before his fingers were blurring across his phone screen with purpose and his gaze snapped up to mine. I watched the blue light from his phone flicker in the whites of his eyes as he seemed to do a double take, as he clearly realized the startling resemblance I bore to my mother.

Despite having few memories of her, I knew that I was her spitting image. But where she’d been elegance and summer, I was rain and rocky shores. I could see her face hidden like a shadow beneath mine, and I was sure that those that had known her would be startled to see how closely I’d grown to resemble her.

In high school they’d called me Blair Bitch. For many reasons, though the primary one seemed to be because from the right angles I was just on the wrong side of feminine. My eyes were too large, my hands too small, my jaw pointed where other mens’ were square. I’d long since come to terms with my differences however, and I pushed aside the self-loathing as best as I could as I waited for him to speak.

It took a long time.

Too long really.

He tapped at his phone for far longer than I would’ve expected. My skin flushed with humiliation as a raindrop caught in the groove between my nose and cheek and slid down to tickle my upper lip. It tasted like spring and memories long forgotten, and I swallowed bile as I waited.

“I’ve gotta get home,” the man said, not acknowledging my introduction or offering one of his own. Even though he said it apologetically, I saw it for what it was. A rejection.

Though why, I didn’t know.

Now I was fucked though. He was the only good Samaritan I was bound to run into. Maybe I shouldn’t have told him my name at all? I had no idea why he would’ve reacted so strongly to it but…it wasn’t like I knew my parents well either. For all I knew, they’d owed him money before they died or something.

I chewed on my nails, nodding along because what the fuck else was I supposed to do? There was nothing I could do but accept what he was saying, even though my pulse was sluggish with anxiety and I could feel a tension headache throbbing in the back of my head.

“Do you know of a mechanic in town?” I asked quickly as he turned from me. It was clear he was keeping his distance now, his eyes wary as he began the short trek back towards the pickup truck.

“Joe’s usually open this late,” the man said and I nodded, confused but grateful. “Good luck.”

I thanked him for his help, even though all he’d done was make me stand in the rain and feel self-conscious, and watched him leave. There was a weird feeling in my gut that I couldn’t shake. Like somehow I’d monumentally fucked up somewhere but no matter how many times I thought through our interaction I couldn’t see how. I missed the quiet solitude of the road, the isolation, the peace.

My head was anything but peaceful. It was splashes of color and weather changes. Sometimes blistering with the heat of determination and others the cold chill of nothingness that reminded me of being nine years old with my back to the wall and only shadows for company.

No matter how far I traveled, it was clear I couldn’t outrun the fact that I dragged bad luck behind me. I shook my head and climbed back into the car, shivering from the chill as I curled up on the damp seat and pushed my palms hard enough against my eyes I saw black spots. I wanted to erase the parts of me that made me feel like this was my fault.

It was always my fault.