Then
Sutton at thirteen: a stunner in the making. Long colt legs, flowing strawberry hair that grazed budding breasts, eyes the color of summer skies. She became a woman overnight, it seemed, one day a gawky, bespectacled geek who got along with everyone; the next, in contacts and a new outfit, a glorious creature who struck awe in the eyes of everyone around her.
This sudden transition made her a very unpopular girl. It seems contradictory: teenage beauty should be the golden ticket to love and popularity, but on Sutton it worked the opposite way. She kept a few friends, though even they wandered away soon after, not wanting to be in her shadow.
There was Joe, too. Joe was Siobhan’s third husband. He was a metalworker of some sort, held down a good, steady second-shift job at the plant in Smyrna. They met at a bar on the outskirts of town. He drove her home and never left.
Sutton knew the timing of her losses had more to do with Joe’s arrival in their lives than with her budding beauty. He wasn’t bad at first. Brought Sutton candy, treated her mother well. Was entranced by their hard-luck backstory, humored Maude’s name change to the more glamorous Siobhan. He liked the idea of glamour, Joe did.
After a couple of months he asked Siobhan to marry him, and she saw a good paycheck and a warm body for cold nights, so the ring went on her finger, and then he started turning...skeevy.
He hung around Sutton’s room too much for her liking. She yearned for real privacy, but they were living in Joe’s house, and it was the first time in a long time that she had a room with an actual door instead of a curtain drape, so she couldn’t complain too much. Joe would stop by when he got home from work. Knock, knock. He wanted to hear about school. He wanted to hear about her friends. He suggested they have a sleepover party. He even provided the booze.
Seven hungover twelve-and thirteen-year-olds draped around the kitchen table made the parents quite angry, and of course, Sutton took the fall, almost willingly. After all, she now had a cool stepdad. She had a room with a door. She didn’t want to jeopardize things. Didn’t want to rock the boat. The newly bribed sleepover friends peeled away, one by one, until Sutton was left alone in the microcosm with Siobhan and Joe.
Soon after the disastrous sleepover, Joe came home from second shift, knock, knock, sat next to her on the bed with the pink princess comforter, put his hand on her knee, and explained the birds and the bees to her.
Sutton, aghast, complained to Siobhan, and a huge fight ensued.
Joe, though, was nonplussed. “Look at her. She’s beautiful. There’s gonna be boys hanging around her like wasps to sugar water, and she needs to know how to protect herself. She needs to know what to expect. That’s all I was trying to do, explain the ways of the world.”
Still, it felt wrong to everyone, and the household was filled with tension. Siobhan, instead of getting them out of there, was jealous, unhappy that her catch was eyeing her kid.
Sutton was forever aware of how Joe looked at her, his eyes sliding over her nubile form like he was taking stock. Sutton decided a room of her own wasn’t worth what was surely about to come, and began acting out. It was logical to her. If she became a bad kid, he’d get mad and ask them to leave.
She started hanging out with a crowd of tattered boys who kept rolling papers in the glove box and fifths of Jack under the front seat, and the fights started almost immediately. She was grounded. She snuck out. Her phone privileges were taken away. They forced her to ride the bus, but she cut school anyway.
Her actions worked wonders. As her home life (happily) deteriorated, her street cred rose. She was willing to do most anything she thought would piss Joe off, and soon she had herself a you can call me your boyfriend, if you want.
His name was Hayden. He was seventeen. She thought she might even love him.
She’d had her eye on him from the start of her rebellion, certain he could help her on her path to fury. Hayden did his own tattoos, and they weren’t bad, considering. Secondhand Doc Martens, too-long black hair falling in his eyes, teeth as askew as scattered dominoes. A fog of cigarette smoke clung to him, and sometimes patchouli, just so everyone could know what he was really doing when he cut class.
He had a beat-up Jeep Wrangler and a certain way of talking about Kerouac and Proust that made her crazy with longing. She rode in his Jeep without a seat belt, drinking beer out of brown paper bags and smoking cigarettes. They made out in the cramped back seat, squirming around, taking things almost too far.
She didn’t want to live a biscuit-colored life. She wanted excitement and joy, pain and exhilaration. She wanted it all.
So when Hayden suggested she come to a party at his friend’s house, she jumped at the chance. Accepted the upperclassman-only party invitation with sheer delight and excitement coursing through her teenage veins. She knew exactly what was going to happen. She’d been planning this for a while. Finally, they would have the proper privacy to do all the things she’d been dying to try.
God bless that little idiot.
She was thirteen, angry at her parents, trying hard to be popular by taking risks—no, not taking, throwing herself against them like waves against a rock—seeing a boy who cared nothing for her and knew exactly how to take advantage of her. What happened next was almost inevitable.
*
When Sutton missed her period, she didn’t think anything of it.
The second month without one she blamed on jogging, which she’d taken up with a vengeance in lieu of throwing herself at bad choices. She might even go out for track. Wouldn’t that be fun?
The third month, when she was feeling sick and sore, she bought a test. Two pink lines. Her first thought: I’m going to die. The second: They’re going to kill me.
Once she couldn’t deny it anymore, she did her best not to panic. She knew exactly what had happened that night, even though she couldn’t remember it all in detail. She’d gone in wanting to be the cool party girl, and wow, had she ever gotten her wish. And now she was going to pay the price.
But she was going to handle things herself. She knew what she needed to do. Get rid of it, and fast. There was no way in hell she was going to face any of the boys who’d been there that night, especially Hayden, that prick, and tell them she was in trouble. Hell, no.