The Year I Became Isabella Anders

  "I HAVE TO change before we leave," I announce to Kai after he walks out of his bedroom, wearing different clothes.

  He's now sporting a long-sleeved grey Henley, black jeans, and boots. He also has on a grey knit cap and a collection of leather bands on his wrist, including the one I gave him. I won't ever admit it to him aloud, but he looks dangerously sexy.

  He evaluates me from head to toe while shoving up the sleeves of his shirt. "Why? You look fine." He tugs on the bottom of my still-damp tank top. "And I think a lot of people will probably appreciate the wet t-shirt look."

  I fold my arms over my chest, mentally cursing myself when my cheeks go all melted chocolate warm.

  Please don't notice I'm blushing. Please don't notice I'm blushing.

  His lips spread to a grin. "The blush would be an added bonus too. Between the t-shirt and that, you might be able to get free drinks all night."

  I square my shoulders, scrounging up the little dignity I have left. "Bradon charges people for drinks at his parties? Really?"

  "Not all the time, but sometimes." Kai nonchalantly shrugs. "He's an entrepreneur."

  I run my hands over the front of my shirt. "As much as I'd love free drinks for the night, I think I'd rather wear some clean, more weather appropriate clothes, and just pay if I drink."

  "If you drink?" Kai questions with amusement. "You're a virgin drinker, aren't you?"

  "Oh, please. You think I spent three months overseas and didn't touch a drink?" I scoff with a roll of my eyes. "I've drank a ton."

  His lips twitch as he wrestles back a laugh. "Okay, I believe you. But just a warning, I'd stay away from any baked goods if I were you."

  "Warning noted."

  I can't believe I'm doing this. Going to a party where I might run into people I know and that Kai is going to introduce me to. This will be so much different, and I'll be way more out of my element, than when I was dancing in clubs and kissing guys I barely knew.

  Before Kai and I leave, I go over to my house to change my clothes.

  "You can just wait on the sofa, if you want to," I tell him when Kai tags along with me as I head upstairs to my room.

  "Nah, I'll just wait outside your bedroom door for you."

  "You're such a weirdo."

  "That's why we get along so well," he replies, grinning.

  Smiling, I dash up the stairs and to my room. After I get the door shut, I head for the closet to pick out an outfit. As I pass by my bed, though, something catches my attention and makes me grind to a halt.

  A piece of paper is on the mattress.

  I pick it up and my heart slams against my chest. "Holy shit! Holy shit! Holy shit!"

  Kai bursts into, wide-eyed and panicked. "What happened?"

  "I don't . . ." My hands and legs are shaking about as badly as my voice. I sink to the mattress, struggling to catch my breath. "It's nothing. I just found my birth certificate. That's all." When a pucker forms at his brow, I add, "I've been trying to find it for a week or so."

  "Okay. I get where all the crazy was coming from now." A beat or two goes by as he glances from me to the paper in my hand then shifts his weight and cracks his knuckles.

  "You read my post, didn't you?" I can read the truth all over his face and by how twitchy he's acting. "Why didn't you say anything when we were in your kitchen?" I ask, pushing to my feet. "You said you hadn't read it in like four or five days."

  "That was a guesstimate." He seems like he feels guilty. "And I was just saying what I felt like you wanted me to say. It didn't seem like you wanted me to know."

  "I didn't. Not yet anyway." Looking down at my birth certificate, my excitement bubble pops, because where the mother's name is supposed to be is blank. But my father's is there in dark ink, a reminder that yes, he may hate me, but I am his flesh and blood.

  "So, does it say it?" Kai asks tentatively, leaning over to get a look at the certificate.

  I lift my gaze to him. "Say what?"

  "Who your mother is. That's why you were so excited to find it, right? Because you want to know who she is."

  I really, really wish I would've gone with my gut instinct and deleted that post. "Kai, you can't tell anyone about this, okay? My dad, he doesn't know I'm looking for her, and he got really upset when my grandma asked him about my mom."

  "Does Lynn or Hannah know you're looking for her?" His voice conveys worry.

  "I don't know." I glance down at the certificate again, and my good mood deflates even more. "Someone had to, though, for this to be sitting on my bed when I walked in." I bite on my lip as I mull it over. "The only person here right now is Hannah."

  "You think Hannah put it on your bed?" Kai looks unconvinced.

  "Maybe she read my blog," I say, even though the idea is pretty ludicrous.

  "I hate to say this, because it might hurt you, but even if she did read your blog, why would Hannah try to help you?"

  "Nothing you can say about Hannah is going to hurt me, Kai. I've pretty much developed an immunity to her."

  Kai presses his lips together as he stares at me with insinuation in his eyes.

  "Why are you looking at me like that?" I ask. "I'm being serious. Hannah doesn't bother me anymore."

  "Okay . . . but I've been wondering if maybe your new hot girl look thingy may have had something to do with what I said to you before I left." He stuffs his hands in his pockets, tense as a tightly wound rope. "That this was your way of trying to get her to stop being mean to you all the time."

  "That's not what that was about." My tone comes out more clipped than I want it to, and I clear my throat. "My change was about me. I don't--didn't even know who I was. And I wanted to figure that out."

  "You're still kind of confused, it seems like," he accuses, carrying my gaze.

  "Maybe a little." Maybe a lot. With each passing day, I feel more lost as the possibility of finding my mom grows dimmer.

  What if this is it for me? This lonely room with bare walls and a family who loathes me? The idea is so depressing, so dream squashing. No, I won't go there.

  "You know it's okay, right?" Kai says, scuffing the tip of his boot against the carpet as he stares down at the floor. "To be confused over who you are."

  "Are you confused over who you are?" I don't really expect an answer, since he usually changes the subject whenever someone mentions his bad boy makeover.

  His gaze elevates to mine and that let-me-hypnotize-you-with-my-eyes look is smoldering fiercely. "I was. It's actually getting clearer now, though," he says then immediately changes the subject. "Quick question, though. Why would Hannah put your certificate on your bed? Isn't that kind of, in a way, helping you find your mom? Because that doesn't seem like something Hannah would do."

  "It's not really helping me, since it doesn't have my mom's name listed. I mean, I already know her first name is Bella, but only because my dad let it slip out to my grandma. And he was really mad when he did that." I blow out a stressed breath. "So either this is Hannah's way of rubbing in my face that I'm motherless, or maybe she thinks if she helps me find my mom, it'll get rid of me."

  "Now that sounds like Hannah." His gaze falls to my hand and he takes the certificate from me. "Mind if I hang onto this for a couple of days? I may know a guy that could help you with your search. I'm not sure what kind of information he needs, but I could give it a try."

  "You know, this is the third time you've said something very mafia-ish to me," I point out. "You want to tell me something about you and these new friends of yours?"

  "No way. That would take away all of my mystery." His lips quirk as he looks at me. "Then I'd just be boring Kai again."

  "I kind of liked boring Kai." I playfully nudge his foot with mine. "Well, sometimes anyway."

  "You never really knew him, Isa. No one really did."

  "I did a little, though."

  "Maybe a little," he agrees, tucking the certificate into the back pocket of his jeans.

  Well, I guess that's that.

/>   It makes me nervous to think about what he's going to do with that piece of paper. Who's this guy he's going to talk to? And how could he find my mom without knowing more than her first name?

  "Hurry and get changed and let's hit up this party, so we can relax." He backs toward the door, fishing his phone from his pocket.

  Relax? Yeah, fat chance that's going to happen. Now that someone in this house knows what I've been up to for the last week, there's no way I'm ever going to be able to relax again.

  THE HOUSE WHERE the party is at is way the hell out near the foothills, about a thirty minute or so drive from the suburbs where Kai and I live. For the first half of the drive, Kai and I argue about what song we should listen to. He wants to turn on his party song, which is pretty much just bass and dirty lyrics. When he turns the song on, my ears groan in protest, and I reach forward and snatch up his iPod.

  "Hey." Kai blasts me with a zombie rage, 'I'm going to eat your brains out' look. "I know you're new to riding with me, so I'm going to tell you the rules as nicely as I can." He extends his hand over the console to steal the iPod away from me, but misses. "No one, under any circumstances, ever gets to touch my stereo."

  Smirking, I line my back against the door so I'm out of his reach then quickly scroll through his songs.

  "Isa," he warns, his gaze dancing back and forth between the road and me as he drives down the busy street. "I'm being serious. I have issues with music."

  "Clearly." I snicker as I note some of the songs he has on the device. "Dude, your music taste sucks. What happened to that obsession with 80s punk music? There aren't any songs that are even close to punk."

  "I go through music phases." His fingers tighten around the steering wheel as his expression darkens. "And I'm super touchy about people insulting my current music taste." He suddenly relaxes, shaking and rolling out his shoulders. "You know what? I'm going to let that one slide just as long as you put the iPod down."

  I quickly tap the folder labeled 'For Your Eyes Only', click the first song, and set the iPod down. A song by Violent Soho flows through the speakers and I smile. "Okay, this one's not too bad."

  "Whoa. Whoa. Whoa. You turned on one of my private songs," he says then grins and twists up the volume of the radio, singing along.

  Private songs? God, I don't even want to know what he does when he listens to those.

  I laugh at my own thoughts and end up doing an awesome snort.

  "What's so funny?" Kai asks, giving me a curious, sidelong glance.

  I swiftly shake my head. "It's nothing."

  A grin creeps up his face. "You were thinking something dirty, weren't you?"

  "No, I was just thinking about . . . something."

  "About something dirty with my private playlist."

  I stick out my tongue at him, and he just laughs. Then I relax back in my seat and cross my legs, moving carefully, since I'm wearing a skirt and don't want to flash him. I matched the skirt with a long-sleeved black shirt, clunky black boots, and a studded leather jacket I bought in one of the shops on Oxford Street in London. I hope I look good enough for a party, but since I've never been to one, I'm unsure.

  I run my fingers through my wavy hair, trying to add volume, being careful not to snag any of the braids.

  "You look fine," Kai says, misreading my primping.

  My hands fall to my lap. "I was just trying to make my hair bounce more."

  He taps on the brake to slow for a stoplight then twists in the seat, looking at me with his brow cocked. "Bounce? I didn't know hair bounced."

  "Tell that to my cousin Indigo, because she seems to think hair needs to bounce all the time."

  "I'll never understand girls sometimes."

  "And I'll never understand guys sometimes. It's like one minute, you're sweet, and then the next, you're all like," I drop my voice to a low baritone, "'Whatever, I don't care about anything anymore.'"

  "I always care about stuff," he says, driving forward as the light turns green. "Sometimes I just can't show it."

  "That's really silly."

  "About as silly as pretending we were wizards."

  "Hey, I was a witch." I smile as I remember how during our walks home, we'd sometimes stop at the park and pretend we were awesome enough to possess the power of magic. "Not a wizard."

  "Whatever. It was still silly. I mean, we were almost thirteen years old for god's sake. We were too old to be playing make-believe." Even though his eyes are glued to the road, I can sense the tension flowing off him.

  "Well, I didn't. And I still don't think it's silly." I focus on the shops, the local bank, and the small grocery store lining the street, trying to ignore the pain over how he thinks our time together was silly--that I'm silly.

  "You're still the same," he remarks, and I can feel his eyes on me.

  "I'm a little different," I reply without looking at him. "But yeah, I'm kind of the same too."

  "That's not a bad thing, Isa." His fingers brush right above my injured knee.

  I jolt in the seat as his touch ripples across my body and zaps my heart like a defibrillator. What in the wild, wild, crazyland was that?

  "I know it's not a bad thing. I know I'm weird, but I've always been pretty okay with that. I just wish I knew why." An unsteady breath eases from my lips as I peek down at Kai's hand on my leg and then over to him.

  He quickly withdraws his hand and places it on the steering wheel. "Why what?"

  "Why I am the way that I am. I've never fit in with anyone, especially my family. And then I found out that Lynn isn't my mom and I kind of, I don't know, felt relieved, which probably makes me a bad person, but that's how I feel."

  "That doesn't make you a bad person at all. I've heard some of Hannah's stories, about the stuff they've done to you. You should hate her."

  "She's told people about the things she's done to me?" Nausea sets in as I think about all the incriminating pictures she snapped of me doing embarrassing, dorky things. What if she's shown them to everyone?

  He offers me a look of empathy. "I'm sorry. I thought you knew."

  "No, but I'm not surprised." I scrape at the black nail polish on my fingernails. "Sometimes I wonder if Hannah's always known that we don't have the same mom, and that's why she treats me bad."

  "Hannah treats you bad, because she's a spoiled princess." Kai downshifts the car. "She's basically gotten everything she's wanted since we were kids."

  "I know . . . I don't get why people even like her."

  "Because they're afraid of her. They'd rather be her friend than her enemy."

  "So, you were afraid of her then?" I ask. "Because you liked her once."

  "I've never liked her." He grinds his teeth. "I told you I just hit on her, because I knew Kyler had a thing for her and it would piss him off. There was never anything more to it."

  "If Kyler had a thing for her, then why isn't he dating her anymore?" I attempt not to sound bitter, but fail epically.

  "He liked her when he was younger, but grew out of it," he explains, making a right down a side road that weaves between the rolling foothills. "It's probably the one smart thing he's ever done in his life. The whole date thing at the beginning of the summer pretty much happened only because Hannah's pushy as fuck when she wants something."

  "I completely agree." I restrain a smile, but it's difficult when I just found out Kyler never really wanted to go out with Hannah. He was probably being nice.

  "So, you're still obsessed with him, huh?" Kai asks, jostling me of my Kyler Lust Trance.

  "What . . . no . . . I'm not . . ." My cheeks erupt in flames, but fortunately, it's dark enough that there's no way Kai can see my mortification.

  "Relax, Isa." He pats my uninjured knee, all buddy, buddy like. "It's not really that big of a secret."

  I frown. "But it makes me sound pathetic. Obsessing over some guy for years, who I have no chance in hell of ever going out with."

  "Why don't you have a chance?" he asks, genuinely baffled.
r />   "Um, because I'm me."

  "Yeah, so? He asked you to his football game, didn't he?"

  "I guess he did." I replay the two second conversation I had with Kyler in the kitchen, trying to remember if when he asked me, he was sending out date vibes. But I have zilch experience in the boyfriend department. "You think he was asking me out?"

  "Probably." Irritation creeps into his tone. "He's shallow enough that he would."

  "Why would him asking me out make him shallow?" I ask, offended.

  "Because he doesn't know you, which means he was only asking you out based on the fact that he thinks you're hot now."

  "That's kind of harsh. Maybe he knows me and likes me."

  "How could he possibly know you?" Kai asks, flipping the blinker. "You two haven't ever talked."

  "We hung out a couple of times when I taught him how to improve his free throw shots, and he used to stop Hannah from picking on me," I tell Kai. "There was this one time when he even stopped his own friends from picking on me. A couple of his football buddies had me cornered, because Hannah basically had a choke collar on them. He came up and said something about them being late for practice so they'd have to leave."

  "He should have called them out on what they were doing, not just fed them a lame-ass excuse to make them stop without making himself look bad." He makes another turn, this time down a street lined with single-story, seventies-style homes.

  "You didn't do that for me either." I clench my hands into fists as they begin to tremble.

  I hate memory lane. Let's not go there ever again.

  "Yeah, well I was a fucking asshole back then. Still am most of the time, but I don't want to be when I'm around you." He parks the car on a curb at the end of a very long line of vehicles. "My brother, on the other hand, walks around pretending he's all high and mighty, when really, he's a fucking arrogant prick who always puts himself first." He slides the keys out of the ignition. "You may not want to believe this, but you're too sweet and smart for Kyler. It'll never work out." He shoves open the door to get out. "He'd be better off with your sister. The two of them are pretty much the same, except your sister doesn't give a shit that people think she's a douche."

  With that, he climbs out of the car, leaving me to wonder if he's right. Could Kyler really be the asshole Kai seems to think he is?

  I shake my head. No, there's no way. Not when he's always been so nice to me. Plus, I know he doesn't want to be the guy he is now; like he told me on the porch that day years ago, he wishes he could be different.