to the radio to drown out the sound of my crying. My parents hadn’t lived together, but they shared custody. After Val had failed to answer Dad’s many phone calls, he’d found me some hours later in my cot, my diaper so soiled it outweighed my tiny body.
I hadn’t been crying. Not anymore.
Not when he’d picked me up.
Not when he’d taken me to the emergency room for a thorough checkup.
Not when he’d cooed and kissed and fawned over me.
Not when hot tears had silently run down his cheeks and he’d begged me to produce a sound.
Not at all.
Since that day, I’d become what they call a selective mute. Meaning I could speak, but I chose not to. Which, of course, was real stupid, since I didn’t want to be different. I simply was. My not speaking wasn’t a choice as much as it was a phobia. I’d been diagnosed with severe social anxiety and attended therapy twice a week since babyhood. Usually, selective mutism means a person can speak in certain situations where they feel comfortable. Not me.
The nameless tune on the radio that day had been burned into my brain like an angry scar. Now, it popped up on the radio, assaulting me again.
I was sitting in the car with Edie, my stepmom. Rain slapped the windows of her white Porsche Cayenne. The radio host announced that it was “Enjoy the Silence” by Depeche Mode. My mouth went dry at the irony—the same mouth that refused to utter words for no apparent reason other than the fact that when I’d spoken words aloud, they hadn’t been enough for my mother. I wasn’t enough.
As the music played, I wanted to crawl out of my skin and evaporate into thin air. Hurl myself out of the car. Run away from California. Leave Edie and Dad and Racer, my baby brother, behind—just take off and go somewhere else. Anywhere else. Somewhere people wouldn’t poke and pity me. Where I wouldn’t be the circus freak.
“Geez, it’s been a decade. Can’t she just, like, get over it?”
“Maybe it’s not about the mom. Have you seen the dad? Parading his young mistress…”
“She’s always been weird, the girl. Pretty, but weird.”
I wanted to bathe in my own loneliness, swim in the knowledge that my mother had looked me in the eye and decided I wasn’t enough. Drown in my sorrow. Be left alone.
As I reached to turn the radio off, Edie pouted. “But it’s my favorite song!”
Of course it was. Of course.
Slapping my window with my open palm, I let out a wrecked whimper. I shuddered violently at the unfamiliar sound of my own voice. Edie, behind the wheel, sliced her gaze to me, her mouth still curled with the faint smile that always hovered over her lips, like open arms offering a hug.
“Your dad grew up on Depeche Mode. It’s one of his favorite bands,” she explained, trying to distract me from whatever meltdown I was going through now.
I struck the passenger window harder, kicking my backpack at my feet. The song was digging into my body, slithering into my veins. I wanted out. I needed to get out of there. We rounded the corner toward our Mediterranean mansion, but it wasn’t fast enough. I couldn’t unhear the song. Unsee Valenciana leaving. Unfeel that huge, hollow hole in my heart that my biological mother stretched with her fist every time her memory struck me.
Edie turned off the radio at the same time I threw the door open, stumbling out of the slowing vehicle. I skidded over a puddle, then sped toward the house.
The garage door rolled up while thunder sliced the sky, cracking it open, inviting more furious rain. I heard Edie’s cries through her open window, but they were swallowed by the rare SoCal storm. Rain soaked my socks, making my legs heavy, and my feet burned from running as I grabbed my bike from the garage, flung one leg over it, and launched toward the street. Edie parked, tripping out of the vehicle. She chased after me, calling my name.
I pedaled fast, cycling away from the cul-de-sac…zipping past the Followhill house…the Spencers’ mansion darkening my path ahead with its formidable size. The Coles’ house, my favorite, was sandwiched between my house and the Followhills’.
“Luna!” Knight Cole’s voice boomed behind my back.
I wasn’t even surprised.
Our bedroom windows faced each other, and we always kept the curtains open. When I wasn’t in my room, Knight usually looked for me. And vice versa.
It was more difficult