Curvy Girls Can't Date Best Friends - Kelsie Stelting

One

Ten Years Old

CARSON

“This is going to be a good move for us,” Mom promised as the GPS told us we were two minutes from our new home.

The home I’d never set foot in.

The home away from my grandparents.

The home away from my friends.

But it would still be filled with the same people.

The same mom who worked eighty-hour weeks.

The same dad who didn’t work at all.

The same sisters living the same nightmare as me.

My oldest sister in the front seat barely looked up from her phone. “Sure, Mom,” Clary said. I didn’t even see a glint of the hope in her face that I was afraid to feel in my chest. But there was a reason Dad was alone in the moving truck while we piled five people into a car that barely fit all of us, especially now that my sisters were older and had bigger hips that made less sitting room for me. (Mom said that was because they’d gone through puberty. Whatever that meant.)

“It will be better,” Mom asserted, her eyes dark blue in the rearview mirror. They got that color when she was upset. Even darker when she cried. “Your father grew up his whole life in that small town. Around the same patterns and the same people. When he’s in a new place, he’ll realize that we’re what matters. I know he will.”

No one had talked to me about the Cook Family Curse directly—they thought I was too young—but every man on my dad’s side of the family was abusive. Had been for generations. Clary said it was like they didn’t know any other way to be. My sister Sierra, who was into witchcraft, took the curse part more literally. No one had ever said what that meant for me.

One thing I knew—our home life couldn’t get worse. At least, I hoped it wouldn’t.

“And you’ll all be at a great school,” Mom continued. “The best school money can buy. You’ll meet your best friends there; I just know it.”

On my left side, Gemma rolled her red-rimmed eyes and leaned against the window. Her best friend had lived next door to us at our old house, and Dad had to peel her off the mailbox to get her in the car.

“Just stop, Mom,” Sierra said, her body stiff on my right. “You married an abusive narcissist, and instead of leaving him, you’re staying with him and taking us so far away from the only family we’ve ever known. It’s pathetic.”

I flinched at her words. I hated the fighting. I hated how mean everyone was to Mom. Especially since I’d seen how it felt to have some of Dad’s anger directed at me.

Mom’s eyes grew darker. “You’ll just have to wait and see.”

She turned onto a road at a sign that said Rhodora Home Owners’ Association. The houses lining the wide street were nice—not as big as the ones in Texas; Gramps did always say, “Everything’s bigger in Texas.”

Each home had bright green lawns and big bay windows, and everything looked just as perfect as Mom wanted us to believe it would be. The moving truck was parked in front of a house painted light blue—like it had tried to blend in with the sky but missed a shade.

The house on the left was a boring brown color, but right next door there was a bright yellow home with the windows open, and I swore there was a pie sitting in the windowsill. I wished I could move into that house, with a perfect mom and a perfect dad and maybe even a brother and a sister who weren’t so busy dealing with their own problems they forgot about me.

“This is it,” Mom announced, putting the car into park along the curb. She got out and said, “Carson?”

After my sisters left, I scooted out of the middle. Mom waited for me by a white mailbox shaped like a swan. “Yeah?”

She knelt down and put her hands on my shoulders. “I want to thank you for staying so positive.” She glanced over her shoulder where Dad stood by the truck, smoking, and lowered her voice. “I know Dad’s been hard on you, but you keep being the bright, silly, fun, good kid I know you are, and great things will happen for you.”

My throat stung like when I had to tell Grandma and Gramps goodbye. “Are you sure?”

“I promise. This move will be the best thing to happen in your life.”

CALLIE

Through my bedroom window on the second floor, I watched