would be better than being sent away like a criminal, but getting back at someone was not a good reason to run away.
A floorboard creaked on the landing by my door.
“I made dinner, pix,” Grandma said.
But she knew the drill. “I’m not hungry,” I said, hardening my voice and my heart.
They could have made me go downstairs and eat with them anytime they wanted, and at first I wondered why they didn’t. Then I figured it out: guilt. They felt guilty for keeping all that information from me growing up. For my near-death experience. For not telling me about the monster inside. So I was getting away with way more than I normally could have.
“I’ll keep a plate for you in the oven,” she said. My grandmother was the feistiest, cleverest, most direct person I’d ever known. She never let me get away with even the slightest white lie. The fact that I was getting away with treating them like lepers astonished me. And made me feel almost as guilty as they did. They had given up everything to raise me. When my parents had disappeared, they were nearing retirement. They had plans to travel the world, and then I was dropped into their laps like living anvil—a constant burden, a constant reminder of what they’d lost.
And there I sat, treating them like the enemy. But I was beginning to wonder if they weren’t.
THE CLEARING
I waited until after ten. My grandparents had gone to bed an hour earlier, but I had to make sure they were asleep before descending the stairs. I didn’t dare take the stairs outside my bedroom window. Since this whole building used to be a store and my grandparents transformed the back part into living quarters for us, there was a fire escape right outside my room. I took those stairs often, but the metal clanged with every step. No way would my grandparents not hear me.
Worse, I had two bodyguards by the names of Jared and Cameron just outside somewhere. Surely they didn’t actually stay up all night every night. They had to sleep sometime. But I couldn’t risk going out the back door. Jared’s house, a small apartment my grandparents had used as storage and remodeled for him to live in, sat right behind the store. If he didn’t see me, Cameron—who camped out behind the store in his truck while on sentry duty—surely would. So I decided to sneak out the front door.
I crept down the stairs, through the store, and out the front door. Thankfully, when the lights were turned off, so was the door chime, but I did have to turn off the alarm, which beeped every time I pushed a number. I cringed and waited to make sure no one heard, then headed out into the frigid night toward a waiting car.
“I’m glad you called,” Tabitha said when I shut the door to her Honda. Her car was warm and smelled like Tommy Girl.
“Thanks.” I strapped on my seat belt and settled in. I felt like I’d wandered into the cave of the enemy, but my curiosity had gotten the better of me. Why would Tabitha Sind invite little ol’ me to a party? And where was her entourage? She never went anywhere without Amber, her second-in-command. Maybe it was a trap. Maybe Amber was waiting for us in some remote part of the forest and they were going to beat me to death with rocks and sticks. That would suck.
Tabitha drove down the winding canyon and took the cutoff to the Clearing, which was pretty much party central for high school kids. I’d been there once, but only during the day, never at an actual party. I waited for Tabitha to make a point in her ramblings, hoping she’d fill me in on why she’d invited me, but she went on and on about her hair and her chem test and about who all was going to be at the party. Riley’s Switch had taken state this year and we were apparently still celebrating three weeks later, no matter how cold it was.
“Help me with the bags?” she asked.
We got out and she handed me a paper bag with glass bottles in it.
“My dad will kill me if he finds out I raided his liquor cabinet,” she said, offering me a conspiratorial wink. But all I could think about was how she was going to navigate the uneven ground in those heels.
The party was everything I’d expected it to