Every morning I’d roll over to turn off my alarm and fall half out before I remembered I wasn’t home in my full-size tucked-in-the-corner-against-the-wall vintage brass-frame bed. I was in the attic of a creaky, converted cabin, sleeping on a secondhand twin with a lumpy mattress and musty blankets. Nothing like a sudden plunge toward the floor to wake a girl up.
Outside, thick clouds mumbled low over the trees. It would probably rain, and I wondered if that meant Rachel would take Norah and me to school.
And then I remembered—Adrian was picking me up.
No way my aunt would miss it this time.
Breakfast was its usual, awkward affair: Rachel and Joe asked me about school; I gave them intentionally short answers; we dissolved into hostile silence. Just as we were finishing up, I heard the unmistakable sound of a motorcycle making its way down the gravel driveway. Joe looked out the window, pulling aside the floral curtains with one of his massive fingers.
“We expecting company?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” Rachel replied, turning to the window. Norah just glared at me.
Without saying a word I stood, grabbed my backpack, and left through the front door. I resisted the urge to glance back at the window, but Adrian could see the grin on my face plain as day.
He held the spare helmet out. “You’re in a good mood.”
I swung onto the bike behind him far more gracefully than I had the day before and wrapped my arms intimately around his waist for the benefit of my aunt and uncle.
“I’m using you to scare the crap out of my caretakers. Hope you don’t mind.” I waved at Joe and Rachel, who were staring gape-mouthed at the window.
Adrian glanced at them, too. “Your uncle own a shotgun?”
I smiled. “He owns three.”
“Ah.”
I laughed as he peeled out of the driveway. I think the kicked-up gravel was mostly for effect, as was the speed with which we rocketed toward the main road. I could have kissed him, he played the part so well. It was all petty, but I was feeling petty, and vindictive, and angry.
Underneath it all, so, so angry.
*
Lunch was such a strange time. I mostly tried to keep to myself, but it was impossible not to be drawn in when the conversations were this absurd.
“I could be slutty bunny,” Meghan said, pouring a bag of Skittles into her mouth and chewing on them thoughtfully.
“You’re not gonna be slutty anything,” Laura replied. “You know how cold it gets in that barn? It’s not like it’s heated.”
“What if I’m bundled-up slutty bunny?”
Laura stared at her. “That literally doesn’t make sense.”
All the upperclassmen girls were gathered around the lunch table discussing costume plans for the party. I looked at Trish and she grinned at me before turning on her megaphone voice. “What if we picked a theme this year?”
“Like what?”
“I dunno, like royal romance, or Disney characters, or fairy tales—”
“Only if we go with the originals,” Meghan interrupted. “Like how Ariel dies to gain an immortal soul instead of killing the prince and his fiancée so she can return to being a mermaid.” From the look of her outfit, Meghan liked fairy tales so much that she dressed like them—all at once. I could pick out bits of punk Cinderella, Snow White, and Sleeping Beauty in her ensemble.
When nobody responded, she said, “I guess I could be slutty Little Red Riding Hood after she slashes her way out of the wolf’s stomach with an axe. I’d be warm with a cape. And sexy.”
Laura threw an apple slice at Meghan. “Enough with the sexy and the slutty!” she demanded. “And the gore.”
“I don’t want to be a fairy-tale character,” a senior whined.
“Okay, okay!” Trish said. “What about, like, mythical creatures in general?”
There was a moment of silence as people considered this. My mind immediately went into creative overdrive, thinking of half a dozen costumes I could create—and then I remembered that all my supplies were boxed away in my grandma’s basement. My brief enthusiasm deflated.
Trish looked around. “So we’re agreed?”
“Sure.”
“Yeah.”
“As long as I don’t have to be an ogre.”
“I bet I could be a slutty ogre.”
Luckily, the bell rang before Laura could retort. Trish passed me funny notes during music and history, which honestly cheered me up quite a bit, but I was on my own for study hall.
Well, almost.
I came to a pause in the back corner of the library and stared at the one who had intruded upon my sacred place. “Is this your table now?”
Adrian was already settled in my corner nook. I hadn’t been here a week, but I’d grown attached to this table. It was out of view of the librarian. I could play solitaire on my phone and no one would ever know. The heater vent was directly under my chair.
He glanced up at me from a very complicated trigonometry assignment. “Figured we could share.”