She always called me “sweetheart,” even though there was nothing sweet about me anymore. I was soaked in sour, dripping in resentment and hurt and everything bad. I felt like an outsider to everything and everyone. People seemed so happy, especially the other kids at school. Everyone moved around as if their lives didn’t suck, while I dragged myself around with a dark cloud of angst sitting heavily over my head. I was burnt toast in a world of Pop-Tarts.
After muttering a pathetic goodbye to Grandma Claire, I climbed out of her car, shut the door, and stood still on the sidewalk for a few moments. People hurried past me in a blur, laughing at seven in the freaking morning, as I studied the large, concrete building that resembled a cage.
Who laughed at seven in the freaking morning?Happy people, Karla. Happy people laughed at seven in the freaking morning.
That was probably why it seemed so foreign to me. For a moment, I wondered when the last time I’d laughed had been, but then I remembered. It was the day of the accident, before we climbed into the car. Mom and I were singing the theme song ofGilmore Girlsas we walked to the car, arms linked together, excited about our vacation.Gilmore Girlswas her favorite show, which was why Lorelai was named after the main character. We giggled like idiots walking—no, skipping—to the car, as if all we knew was happiness.
I blinked my eyes a few times, needing to shake off the happy memory because the saddest one followed shortly after.
Whatever. Laughing was overrated. So wasGilmore Girls. I hated it every time I had to call out my little sister’s name, because I couldn’t do it without feeling a tug at my heart. I wished she could change her name. It was soaked in memories of the woman I loved the most.
My fellow classmates kept passing by me, as if they were quick-paced lemmings hurrying into their prison sentence. It was a strange feeling seeing so many familiar faces that were no longer familiar to me.
Clover High wasn’t a huge school, and I knew all my classmates by name. Many of them used to be my best friends. Many of them used to invite me to their parties. That stopped after the accident. I couldn’t blame them for distancing themselves from me, though. I hardly wanted to be around me, either.
I did sometimes wonder why they pulled away. I wondered if it was due to the physical scars on my body or the psychological scars in my mind. Either way, I didn’t blame them.
Except for Missy.
She was supposed to be my best friend forever.
We’d made bracelets for it and everything.
My eyes followed as my ex–best friend walked with her arm linked to a senior, Colton Stevens. The biggest jerk ever. He had Missy acting nothing like herself. She wore a ton of makeup and dressed how Colton liked her to dress.
After my accident, Missy told me we couldn’t hang out because my scars creeped Colton out.
I guess “best friends forever” had a different meaning to her than it did to me.
Unfortunately, all my other friends were followers of Missy and did whatever she said to do. Which meant they ditched me.
They never looked my way, even though I knew they could see me out of the corner of their eye. They just kept moving toward the building, just as everyone else seemed to do as I stood there frozen on the sidewalk, debating if I wanted to go inside the prison or run away to never be seen again.
My eyes fell to everyone’s feet as they scurried by.
On average, it took most students 70 steps to get from the sidewalk to the entryway of Clover High School. It took me 214steps with my limp. My father told me I should use a walking cane, but the last thing I wanted to do as a fourteen-year-old girl was use a cane to move through my freshman year of high school.
I already had people calling me “Scarface” thanks to the apparent damage to my face from the car crash ten months ago. I didn’t need to add walking with a cane to my already-high level of embarrassment.
I hated life, but I guess it would’ve been odd for me to like it. I didn’t have much going for me, so every day felt like a chore. A curse, even. It felt like I’d landed in a novel, and I was the tragic villain.
Speaking of novels, those were the one thing I still enjoyed in my life. Words were so important to me. Reading and writing were how I escaped the world around me. I didn’t read or write love stories, though. I read horror books with monsters and crafted the same kind of stories. It was easier for me to relate to them than some blond girl who had the body of a goddess and some hot guy who was grumpy toward everyone but the goddess girl.
“Watch out, Scarface,” a kid said as he intentionally bumped into my left shoulder, making me lose my already-unstable footing. I fell forward, only stopping myself from hitting the concrete ground by placing my right hand down to brace the impact.Unfortunately, doing so scratched up the palm of my hand, leaving it red with the feeling of a brush burn.
I shut my eyes.
I took a breath.
I stayed down in the hunched-over position for a little bit longer before standing up. Humiliation filled my gut, even though everyone else was already out of my view. Everyone moved on so quickly while I stayed stuck in quicksand, wishing that it wasn’t too slow to drown me.
Instead of moving toward the building, I started walking to my left.
I was going to run away from the prison instead of spending the next seven hours wishing I would’ve.
It took me thirty minutes to get to where I was going. My leg ached as I moved down the streets. After the piercingly painful journey, I found myself at the one place I always ended up whenever I was feeling lost and alone.
Mom’s grave.