Defy Me - Tahereh Mafi Page 0,35

doing little to guide my way.

The shower is quick and cold. Awful in every way. There are no towels in this shithole, so I’m always freezing until I can get back to my room and wrap myself in the threadbare blanket. I’m thinking about that blanket now, trying to keep my thoughts focused and my teeth from chattering as I wend my way down the dark tunnels.

I don’t see what happens next.

Someone comes up on me from behind and puts me in a choke hold, suffocating me with a technique so perfect I don’t even know if it’s worth a struggle. I’m definitely about to die.

Super weird way to go, but this is it. I’m done.

Shit.

Juliette Ella

Mr. Anderson says I can have lunch at his house before I meet my new family. It wasn’t his idea, but when Aaron, his son—that was the boy’s name—suggested it, Mr. Anderson seemed okay with it.

I’m grateful.

I’m not ready to go live with a bunch of strangers yet. I’m scared and nervous and worried about so many things, I don’t even know where to start. Mostly, I feel angry. I’m angry with my parents for dying. Angry with them for leaving me behind.

I’m an orphan now.

But maybe I have a new friend. Aaron said that he was eight years old—about two years older than me—so there isn’t any chance we’d be in the same grade, but when I said that we’d probably be going to the same school anyway, he said no, we wouldn’t. He said he didn’t go to public school. He said his father was very particular about these kinds of things and that he’d been homeschooled by private tutors his whole life.

We’re sitting next to each other in the car ride back to his house when he says, quietly, “My dad never lets me invite people over to our house. He must like you.”

I smile, secretly relieved. I really hope that this means I’ll have a new friend. I’d been so scared to move here, so scared to be somewhere new and to be all alone, but now, sitting next to this strange blond boy with the light green eyes, I’m beginning to feel like things might be okay.

At least now, even if I don’t like my new parents, I’ll know I’m not completely alone. The thought makes me both happy and sad.

I look over at Aaron and smile. He smiles back.

When we get to his house, I take a moment to admire it from the outside. It’s a big, beautiful old house painted the prettiest blue. It has big white shutters on the windows and a white fence around the front yard. Pink roses are growing around the edges, peeking through the wooden slats of the fence, and the whole thing looks so peaceful and lovely that I feel immediately at home.

My worries vanish.

I’m so grateful for Mr. Anderson’s help. So grateful to have met his son. I realize, then, that Mr. Anderson might’ve brought his son to my meeting today just to introduce me to someone my own age. Maybe he was trying to make me feel at home.

A beautiful blond lady answers the front door. She smiles at me, bright and kind, and doesn’t even say hello to me before she pulls me into her arms. She hugs me like she’s known me forever, and there’s something so comfortable about her arms around me that I embarrass everyone by bursting into tears.

I can’t even look at anyone after I pull away from her—she told me her name was Mrs. Anderson, but that I could call her Leila, if I wanted—and I wipe at my tears, ashamed of my overreaction.

Mrs. Anderson tells Aaron to take me upstairs to his room while she makes us some snacks before lunch.

Still sniffling, I follow him up the stairs.

His room is nice. I sit on his bed and look at his things. Mostly it’s pretty clean except that there’s a baseball mitt on his nightstand and there are two dirty baseballs on the floor. Aaron catches me staring and scoops them up right away. He seems embarrassed as he tucks them in his closet, and I don’t understand why. I was never very tidy. My room was always—

I hesitate.

I try to remember what my old bedroom looked like but, for some reason, I can’t. I frown. Try again.

Nothing.

And then I realize I can’t remember my parents’ faces.

Terror barrels through me.

“What’s wrong?”

Aaron’s voice is so sharp—so intense—that I look up, startled. He’s staring at